I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me, And I Have No Privacy, I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me, Who's Playing Tricks On Me

--"Somebody's Watching Me", Rockwell

When Callie arrived home from the funeral she immediately knew something was wrong. It wasn't the fact that the house felt slightly more lonely without Kevin or Kate there that tipped her off. She suspected as much would be the case with their passing. What she didn't suspect was how sterile the whole scene would feel. She felt the quiet and she felt the dullness pervade every room. Even without knowing it was the case, she could have told anyone who would listen that somebody had died in this house.

She placed her keys on the counter, grabbed a package of the Milanos she had been saving for after the funeral, and turned on the television.

It was 7:17 p.m.

At first when the television flickered on Callie couldn't tell what she was looking at. It seemed to be a happy couple sitting far away on a blue sofa staring back at the camera. It was hard to make out what exactly they looked like because the camera had been set up to allow a wide angle shot. They didn't seem to be doing much besides staring at the camera. Callie wondered if she happened to catch some kind of horror flick at the precise moment when the killer was about to attack, the so-called calm before the storm. She sat there for a few minutes, waiting for something to happen, anything to happen, before she attempted to change the channel.

Worst movie ever, she thought to herself as she pressed the button.

When the channel flipped over to the next station somehow the picture remained focused on the couple, except this time the couple appeared a few feet closer.

"What the hell is going on? What's happening?"

She supposed that she could have accidentally turned on the DVR to a program she had set to record earlier that week. Perhaps she was only watching different parts of the same story. Whatever it was, she didn't need the aggravation. Not today of all days. After spending over eight hours faking her way through being distraught over the deaths of her recent housemates, she couldn't take much more of reining her frustration in. All she had wanted to do is go home, relax, and not have to think about what step she needed to take next. That was tomorrow's problem. That was a bridge to cross some other day. Tonight she just needed to collect her thoughts. Tonight she just needed to vege out to something that wasn't going to tax her mind. Tonight she just needed to not worry.

When she had decided to kill Kevin and Kate, it hadn't been an easy decision at first. The three of them had grown up together in Essen. All three of them had decided to move out to the States together. And, though she felt like the thirteenth egg, Kevin and Kate had said that they wouldn't have dreamt of going anywhere without her. There was no thought given to them renting out two separate places. There was plenty of time to think about breaking up the group when the couple eventually got married, they had told her. Until then it would be the three of them.

For a time, everything had been happy. They settled in at Williamsburg, Virginia right away. They all managed to finish up their degrees at William & Mary without incident. The three of them still talked and acted like they had back in Germany when they were nine. They joked with one another. They managed to fall into a routine of classes and domestic bliss that she thought would continue in perpetuity for as long as they were all living. Callie started thinking that it would be the three of them growing old together in that very same house for the next forty years.

Kate arriving home from a weekend getaway with the news she and Kevin had gotten engaged changed all that. Callie saw her whole life, as she had had it planned crumble before her eyes.

She hadn't meant to kill them. It just happened.

Callie took a longer look at the screen. That wasn't any 'ole couple on the screen. The longer she looked at the screen and the more in-depth she looked at the screen, she saw that it was Kevin and Kate sitting on the couch. They still weren't doing anything. It must be an old videotape, she thought. Seeing them startled her. This soon after the funeral, it was jarring seeing their faces full of life once again.

It had been easy to shift the blame onto the couple. It has been easy convincing the police that Kate had been insanely jealous of her, what with Callie always having somewhat of a crush on Kevin, she had told them. Then when Kate had discovered Callie and Kate having sex right in their own bed, she flipped out. She had stabbed her boyfriend and then went after Callie. What choice did I have but to defend myself, Callie explained There had been a struggle. Then she had managed to loosen Kate's grip on the knife. It went sputtering on the kitchen floor. When Callie picked up the knife she had no idea that Kate would come lunging after her again. She had accidentally impaled herself on the knife.

There had been blood everywhere.

So much blood.

The more she watched the screen, the more she realized that it wasn't just Kate and Kevin in some videotape. It was the two of them alive and watching the screen on their end. While she was watching them, they were watching her. What kind of sick game is this, Callie asked herself. She couldn't understand how the three of them could be on opposite ends of the television set and watching each other. What was the point? She did notice one difference, though. While she had been watching them just sitting there gasping and Kate trying to hide beneath Kevin's arm, they seemed to be watching her doing absolutely nothing. Why were they so scared for her?

She couldn't piece it together.

It was a week since she had killed them. She had expected to feel some remorse by now. She had expected to be consumed with a kind of guilt that should have come from killing her best friends in the world. But it had never come. In fact, she had never felt more calm in her life. She had gotten away with something huge, big, and the thrill of that knowledge was enough to assuage any guilt that may have been building inside her. She felt invincible and pain-free. She would have loved to live out the rest of her days in the company of her friends, but she had to admit to herself that this alternative was slightly more satisfying. She not only had the knowledge she could live alone without her friends, but she had also found out she was capable of doing almost anything. That made her strong. That made her confident. That made her unstoppable.

When the three of them had been living in the house together after many late nights the three of them would wind down with a film on the VCR. Sometimes Kate had convinced them to watch some yuppy-puppy romance. Some days Kevin had insisted on his historical dramas. But when it came to Callie, she always went to horror. She had loved lording it over to the both of them that she had never once gotten scared like they did when they watched a scary movie. Until recently, that had been the closest to feeling better than they were. That's the one thing that she wasn't missing from her life that they were; that unshakable courage.

She had once joked that if she had been in one of those horror films she would know what to do. She would always know what to do if something horrifying was after her.


well, can the people on TV see me or am I just paranoid

It was now 7:41.

They hadn't once left the couch. They continued to sit there, mumbling to one another, Kate visibly shaken by this time. Kevin tried to be comforting, but was having little luck. Kate kept peeking at the screen, obviously waiting for something to happen. All he could do was pat her on the knee. Then about half-past 7:41, he got visibly excited. He pointed back towards Callie through the television screen. The next words were the first she could understand from Kevin.

Sie hat's endlich erfasst.

She finally understood. They weren't watching her go about her life.

They were watching and waiting for her to die.

The attack came suddenly from the kitchen. A wraith-like creature with no hands set upon her position on the couch. It was huge, the size of large bear, all in grays and whites and blacks. It didn't have a form exactly, but instead was a collection of vaporous clouds. And yet she could distinguish a face and feet. She could make out a definite torso. She could also make out that it had nothing but bad intentions for her. Callie tried throwing the remote at it, but it passed right through the creature as if it wasn't even there. She tried running for the front door to escape. It caught up to her before she could turn the knob.

Just as she fainted from fright she saw the second wraith pass through the front door.

The last thing she thought of before she dies was of how she thought ghosts would look more like sheets with eyeholes instead of these monstrosities. She also thought if she had known Kevin and Kate would have come back like this she would have never bothered to kill them at all.

Then she heard the last words she would ever hear.

Das leben ist kurz.

Breanne