Caroline Eriksson - The Watcher

The woman with the honey-colored hair comes in, wearing a white blouse and high-waisted pants. Her hair is up in a tight ponytail and she looks pretty put together, the way she usually does. The only time I’ve seen her otherwise was that night when she peeked down at her husband through the gap in the upstairs curtains. She walks over to the kitchen table now, over to a bouquet of flowers. It’s a large armful of roses. They look like the long-stemmed variety. They extend above and beyond the edges of the vase, and their dark crimson color stands out in sharp contrast to the table, the kitchen cabinets, and the lamp, which are all a severe white. The woman with the ponytail tenderly touches the flower petals, leans over to smell them, and then starts arranging the stems. Every now and then she takes a step back and inspects the arrangement, but she doesn’t seem satisfied, because she keeps fiddling with the flowers, really taking her time.

Eventually something else captures her attention. She turns her face toward the kitchen doorway. A couple of seconds later, the Suit Man reveals himself at the edge of my field of vision. I call him that because I have yet to see him wear anything else. He doesn’t walk over to his wife but remains standing in the doorway. It looks like they exchange a few words, maybe he does most of the talking. After a few minutes, she turns back to the flowers, but her hands remain motionless in the middle of the bouquet.

My gaze returns to Suit Man. He’s still there, but there’s something indecisive about his body language. Then he takes a few steps forward and quickly kisses his wife’s cheek before leaving. The front door opens, and he emerges with a briefcase in one hand and a carry-on bag in the other. Only now do I notice the taxi waiting by the curb. Suit Man lets the cabbie deal with his bag and seats himself in the backseat with his briefcase. His wife stands at the kitchen window and watches him. Her face is like an open wound.

When the taxi pulls away, her expression changes and she turns her back to me. She seems to be looking for something over by the sink, and when she turns around again, she’s holding a large pair of scissors. A second later she raises the scissors and aims a powerful chop at the roses. I stiffen. She does the same thing again, and yet again. She slices through more and more stems, and red petals rain down. The woman’s face is blotchy and her motions furious. I’m transfixed, unable to move from this spot. All I can do is watch as she continues slaughtering the bouquet, alternating between the scissors and her own hands. She chops, cuts, and rips apart the flowers.

She doesn’t stop until every flower is completely destroyed. Then she tosses aside the scissors and clutches her head in both hands, squeezes her eyes closed, and opens her mouth wide. The sound of her scream doesn’t reach me, but I can clearly see her entire body vibrating. I wrap my hands around my upper arms and hug myself. My palms are ice-cold.

The scream appears to give way to crying as the woman slumps onto a chair, her face falling to the table and disappearing from my line of sight. I remain motionless for a few minutes, waiting for her next move, but all I can see is part of her high ponytail sticking up over the bottom edge of the window. Then it’s suddenly as if the kitchen across from me recedes, as if I’m watching it from the other end of a tunnel. That strange sense—intense presence blended with strong oversensitivity—comes over me again. Dig where you are.

My eyes fall to the computer in front of me. My fingers move of their own accord, opening a new document, finding their way across the keyboard. Sentence is added to sentence. It’s as foreign to me as it is straightforward. Authors write, right? And I’m writing, I really am now. For the first time in ages I’m writing something of my own, something new. This insight leaves me with an effervescent feeling.

When I look up, I can no longer see any ponytail. The woman appears to have left the room. Only the massacred roses remain. I feel a sense of urgency. I turn my attention back to the screen and read what I just wrote, then glance over at the kitchen across the yard and then back at what I’m writing again. What am I going to do with this? Where is this going? I stare at the blinking cursor. All I need to do is select all and hit delete. Just do it now, forget it and move on.

I raise my hand. My fingers hover in the air for a moment before they hit the keyboard. But they don’t hit delete. They hit save.

How did it happen? It’s impossible to say.

Suddenly she was just holding the scissors in her hand.

A moment later, the flowers had been abused and shredded and strewn across the floor.

Afterward, she had nothing other than disconnected memories of what had happened. She remembered the thorns that had torn up her skin, and the red streaks etched over the thin blue veins in her forearms. She remembered the uncontrolled roar that forced its way out of her throat.

A noise an animal might sooner make than a scream.

It hadn’t contained any words, and yet she knew exactly what it meant.

“You bastard. You’re next.”

No, there are no new jobs available at the moment. My contact at the agency sounds almost amused when I call at 8:01 on Monday morning to find out if they have any more manuscripts they need read.

“You just finished two manuscripts, Elena. I’m looking at your email now, and everything looks great. As usual.”

He says that they went through a large batch of manuscripts on Friday and divvied them up to a handful of readers. But since I had two other open projects then, they chose to place them with other freelancers this time.

“You’re one of our hardest-working readers, Elena. I’m sure you could use a break every now and then, right?”

I have to bite my lip to keep from screaming. What I need is something to fill my time and occupy my mind, something to stave off the effects of idleness and passivity. I don’t need to take time off. I need to keep the worried turbulence inside me in check.

But of course the man at the agency knows none of this.

“Take a walk in the city,” he advises me. “Go meet a friend for coffee. You can do that kind of thing when you work freelance. Call back next Monday, and we’ll see what’s come in by then.”

I ask him to keep me in mind if anything should happen to pop up in the meantime. I force myself to sound calm, but when I hang up, I’m cringing. Next Monday? There’s a vast ocean of time between now and then. What am I going to do with myself until then?

I take a bite of my sandwich and look out the window just as the woman with the ponytail walks out her front door and across the yard. She is wearing an elegant coat and a pair of dark sunglasses that cover half her face. She looks like an old-fashioned movie star, cool and collected. But I saw you, flashes through my head, I saw you go berserk on those flowers. I watch until she disappears around the corner. At some point during the day yesterday, Suit Man must have returned from his trip, because he also left the house a little while ago, around the time when I walked into the kitchen. His back straight and his shoes highly polished, he hurried out to the street, holding tight to his briefcase. He looked stressed out, like an important man on his way to deal with important matters. The complete antithesis of me.

My sandwich tastes like nothing, and I toss the rest in the trash and get up from the table. What was it the man at the agency recommended—going for a walk?