All my work fetches premium prices. It still amazes me, a little, that somebody would want a photo of a mangled possum on their foyer wall, or of cum-crusted panties draped over an empty box of disposable diapers. But ugliness presented aesthetically has always been in demand. The Nazis used to make lampshades out of Jew skin. Today one of those—if you can even find the genuine article on the black market—would set you back a few hundred grand. There’s always someone who will gladly pay it.
My new project I might call Peeping, but that sounds kind of sophomoric. Maybe Peep Show. That’s provocative, if unoriginal.
At least I don’t have to leave home for this one. The convenience is definitely a bonus. I don’t have to shower, get dressed, brush my teeth. Working dirty suits me. And there’s the additional benefit of not having to intermingle with any of the assholes and dumbshits out there. I can order everything I need online and get it delivered right here 24/7.
I live on the top floor of a luxury high-rise. It merits the label “luxury” for its prime location, state-of-the-art kitchen (though I don’t cook), and a doorman who’s paid handsomely to keep the tenants’ private lives private. He always gets a generous Xmas tip from me.
The view leaves something to be desired. My window looks out on a tall wall of other windows belonging to the neighboring apartment tower. A mosaic of the mundane, if you’re looking at it from the eyes of a tenant. But the artist’s eye offers a much different perspective, as long as it’s on duty. Aside from my darkroom, my home had been solely my place of relaxation and recreation, not of inspiration. And the more familiar you become with something, the more blinded you are to its possibilities, its potential.
And then one day, maybe, you see it.
*****
The day I saw it I’d just returned from a crapshoot, which is when I go out photographing random stuff in hopes I hit pay dirt. This rarely occurs. The vast majority of the time the shots turn out to be discardable dreck. Often the subject ruins their candidness. When people spot a camera pointed at them, they either want to shun it, punch it, razz it, or fuck it. None of these work. The subjects should never have a relationship with the camera. It should be a god they cannot observe, have no knowledge of its existence. Otherwise it becomes just another bullshit religion.
I made prints of the day’s worthless bounty and hung them on the stone mantel. From the sofa I took potshots at each with my air rifle, riddling them with holes until their banality was obliterated.
This was only mildly satisfying.
As I sat there in my boxers idly stroking my gun and staring out the window, I noticed something I hadn’t before. Aquariums. That’s what the wall of windows of the apartment building opposite mine resembled. Thirty-two huge fish tanks stacked one on top of another in rows of four. Within each, people swam in their own private worlds, seemingly unaware they could be watched, scrutinized, judged.
In one tank an anorexic girl in a leotard bounced around to an exercise show on TV. Two floors up a Latino (or Arab) dude wearing a baby blue blazer was giving tango lessons to this fat lady in a floral sundress. Diagonally to the left a family of five ate supper at a round table, mother yelling at her two pajamaed kids while father fed soup to their ancient grandmother.
People are never more true, less on guard, than when they are inside their own homes. Sure, most of the time it’s just the same old, same old. Lives unadorned and uninteresting. But odds are, afloat in their sweet obliviousness, there’ll be a delicious moment they display their primal, perverse, pitiful tendencies. All I had to do was wait for it. Not such an unappealing prospect in the comfort of my own home.
After switching off all the lights in my apartment, I hauled out my trusty Leica DSLR camera with 80-400mm telephoto lens and mounted it on my Sachtler fluid tripod, a holdover from my days shooting 35mm. I set the rig in front of my window, sparked up a cig, and hunted for treasure within those glass and steel containers.
That first night I snapped about a hundred pics and panned only a single gold nugget: an underwear-clad, beer-bellied guy lazing in a wide leather recliner, his white T-shirt stained with vomit. He was alone, had been all night, a conical birthday hat strapped to his head.
A 1% return on my time investment. It was enough.
In the morning I called my agent Chas Grubstein and told him about my concept.
“Hallefuckinlujah,” he said.
We discussed the legalities of invading people’s privacy in the name of art. I suggested we blur out anything that could identify the subject, maybe Photoshop smiley faces on everybody. Grubs thought this was a terrific idea. It’ll be the official follow-up to Beautiful Smiles, he said. Not really, I thought, but what the hell. He was excited. I like it when my agent is excited. He’s much less whiny.
“St. Martin’s wants to see something in three weeks. At least half of it.”
“I bet,” I boasted, “I have the whole goddamned book for ’em.”
*****
That was three months ago.
I caught a naked bodybuilder shooting dope on his weight bench. A little boy in an army soldier costume spanking his napping mother. A middle-aged guy with no kids fixing the broken tail on a toy dinosaur. A teen girl in a torn prom dress crying in front of her mirror. A three-legged Siamese cat sunning itself beside an empty bottle of JD. I have maybe a dozen decent shots that’ll probably make the cut.
It’s not enough.
My agent is riding my ass of course. I tell him I can’t predict instances of indelible reality. He tells me St. Martin’s is threatening to drop my contract. I scoff. Grubs whines. It’s making me anxious, and an anxious artist produces slapdash work. Hack grade shit. Fuck that. I got my integrity to consider. My reputation. My fans. A great artist does not settle for mediocrity just to earn a paycheck. I’d rather starve.
Fortunately, Saturday night serves me up a feast.
Together, his chest glued to her back, they shuffle into the 8th floor corner apartment. They’re one of those young and attractive hipster couples, smartly dressed, dumbly drunk. I knew it was the chick’s place, so the guy has to be her hot date du jour. Many of her dates wound up at her place, in her bed. I’d captured her carnal trysts no less than six times before. The first occasion was pretty titillating. Now it’s like watching an old porno video you’ve seen so often you could hum along with all the music. On the way from the front door to her bedroom, they shuck off their clothes like rusting robots.
The woman is gorgeous. Blonde, slim, long legs, big tits. Nothing special. The man is soap star handsome, yawn inducing. He shuts the bedroom door behind them, spins the woman around by her waist, and kisses her with well-honed passion. It may as well have been choreographed. He clumsily guides her to the canopy bed. They collapse onto it, probing and groping one another in all the expected spots. They ultimately arrange themselves into the standard missionary position. I take a few perfunctory pics, but I’m not harboring any delusions of snapping anything remarkable.
And then something extraordinary happens.
His pelvis pounds into hers, harder, faster, and I anticipate the usual climax. But next he wraps his huge hands around her slender throat. She initially appears to enjoy his fire, his ferocity, until she realizes the grievousness of his intentions. She latches onto his forearms, trying to tear his paws away from her neck, digging her fingernails into his flesh. He squeezes tighter. She chokes, he cums.
She dies.
I freeze, though only for an instant. A professional artist cannot afford to squander moments like these. I continue clicking.
The man releases his grip. I see his hands have left a deep red imprint on her milky skin. Her mouth and eyes gape. He stares at her, what’s left of her. He runs his fingertips across her lips. He then dismounts and sits on the edge of the bed, his sweat-glistened back to her. He appears both peaceful and panicked, the extremes of his experience, the gratification and gravity of it, colliding and converging within him.
He peers
out the window—straight at me—then looks away. He cannot see me in my shadows.
The man rises from the bed, gathers his clothes, and hastily dresses himself. He scans the apartment, probably for anything that might be incriminating. However much he cleans up after himself, I’m sure it won’t be near enough. Dude must’ve dropped more DNA there to convict him for multiple lifetimes. But he does what he can and skedaddles.
I wonder about him. I wonder if he’s done this before, if all his dates end this way, if he’d killed kittens as a kid. I wonder until I stop caring. He doesn’t matter anymore. I can no longer observe him through my lens.
I direct my attentions to her. I had not only witnessed her final breaths and bucks but recorded them. My photos alone can seal her paramour’s fate. Aside from the evidential value, I consider their artistic merit. I should be thrilled, but I’m not. What did I really capture? Another crime of passion. Another one-day news headline. Murder is so ordinary, so routine. So uninspired.
I decide nobody will ever see the photos. They weren’t even interesting enough to jack off to.
I focus in on her body, her corpse. Her shell. I take a single shot, a close-up of her face. She’s still beautiful. Typical beautiful. Too beautiful.
My fans crave more.
*****
The doorman lets me pass. He knows me. My Spanish friend Hector, an illustrator, lives there on the 5th floor. We sometimes do blow together on his glasstop billiards table.
I’m not concerned about being accused of the crime. There will be no trace of my presence at the scene. I’m wearing these stylish leather driving gloves and a woolen cap. I take the elevator up to the 5th floor, then the stairs to the 8th. It’s quiet. Like my building, there are no surveillance cameras in the hallways or stairwells. Her date had left her door unlocked, as I hoped, so I have no trouble accessing her apartment.
Upon entering, I promptly draw all the blinds. Her bedroom smells like booze, sex, and perfume. She looks like she’s sleeping. She’s definitely not breathing though. I made certain of it.
I survey the room. In a rattan chair is sprawled one of those Harlequin clown puppets with a porcelain face. I grab it and start a pile. I find her fuzzy raccoon slippers and her cosmetic box, with enough shades and shadows for eyes, cheeks, and lips to make herself look like a thousand different versions of herself. In her nightstand she stows her vibrator and an assortment of condoms. I leave them there; these are too easy, too pedestrian. I move on. In the hall closet I uncover a roll of purple ribbon, Christmas lights, a zebra-print scarf, a green umbrella, and a bicycle pump. From her desk I scoop up a stapler and a pair of scissors. From the den I collect a bronze Buddha statue and a potted cactus. From the bathroom, a can of shaving cream and a polka-dotted shower cap. I hit the kitchen next. From the fridge I pull out a jar of dill pickles, ketchup, mustard, mayo, a bunch of carrots, an apple, and some deli meats. From the drawers a corkscrew, cheese grater, lemon reamer, metal tongs, spoons, forks, and an expensive set of steak knives (I own the same ones).
Then I go to work on her.
*****
I return to my place an hour later. After finishing at Sleeping Beauty’s I had roamed the city blocks in search of a cop car sans cops. I located one parked on 71st. The two officers were across the street inside a 7-Eleven, posted at the condiment station perfecting their supersized cups of coffee. On their windshield under the wipers I left the note I’d written on the back of a LOST DOG flyer.
I only have to wait about twenty minutes. The cop car cruises up to Wydell’s lobby entrance and the officers swagger in. Less than five minutes later the doorman lets them into her apartment. They switch on the lights, which I had turned off before I re-opened the blinds.
The officers, pistols ready, ease their way through the den. One veers off to check out the bathroom, the other the kitchen. They reunite at her bedroom door. They go in. Flip on the light. Gaze upon her.
There is a sublime moment, as the scene sinks in, when time seems to stop. Nobody moves. I click a pic.
The shorter officer then hunches over and pukes on his glossy oxford shoes. His partner stands there slack-jawed, shocked. But wait… is that a hint of a grin playing on his lips? Maybe he’s a fan.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
Today I will have enough for my book. For my fans.
I’m giving them the quintessence of human aesthetic inverted: an object of beauty uglified for the masses. Desecrated. Decimated. Transcended.
Yeah, let them take a good whiff of this shit. I know they’ll love it.
Somebody always does.
EVERYONE
IS A MOON
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sawney Hatton is an author, editor, and screenwriter. His published credits include the Dark Comedy novel Dead Size and the YA Noir novella Uglyville. He also edited the Sci-Fi Horror anthology What Has Two Heads, Ten Eyes, and Terrifying Table Manners? Other incarnations of Sawney have produced marketing videos, attended all-night film fests, and played the banjo and sousaphone (not at the same time). As of this writing he is still very much alive.
Visit the author’s website at
www.SawneyHatton.com
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my appreciation and gratitude to Emily Russell, Russ Colchamiro, Beckie McDowell, Heather Hutsell, Ali Mogar Hunt, Saint Joseph’s University Graduate Writing Studies Program, the West Philly Writers Group, and my family and friends for all their feedback and support over the years.
Written Stuff by Sawney Hatton
Dead Size (A Novel)
Uglyville (A Novella)
Everyone Is a Moon (Short Stories)
Edited Stuff by Sawney Hatton
What Has Two Heads, Ten Eyes, and
Terrifying Table Manners? (An Anthology)
Everyone Is a Moon Page 14