The Peephole

I was at a premiere for the new documentary, "Blowing Up Fat in America." The film ostensibly followed one man's struggle to go on after losing his wife and children to voracious overeating. Once the film began, though, I soon realized that it's central event was completely at odds with what the posters and press had described. In actuality, the family died because of an overnight gas leak from the fast-food restaurant next door.

After the film ended, I decided to go the premiere party. At the open bar, I fell into a conversation with the bereft man, himself. He had a repulsive, fleshy mouth with two teeth, sraw-like black hair, a scaly face riddled with blisters, and hands with gnarled and stubby fingers. I didn’t speak to him, really. He did all the talking, trying to convince me to come over to his house for a late-night support group meeting. He told me that with eyes as dead as mine, communal support could "enliven" my "stinking heart." Once another mingling pack of people approached, I shimmied out of the conversation and left the party.

I arrived at my girlfriend's apartment and told her about my night. She listened, then described an incident that befell her that same evening. She was in the parking lot of her housing complex, walking from her car to the building. Two visibly drunk men in suits approached her with a stack of Polaroids. They asked my girlfriend if she had seen the lady in the photos. They held one up for her eyes to scan. The picture was of a bare-chested woman who had been singed all over her body. The men said that the burning was due to her being unknowingly drugged by her husband before she stepped into her private tanning bed. She had woken nine hours later. Her home had been fleeced of all it's furniture, apparel and windows. She was left naked in a shell at the top of a hill.

My girlfriend had never seen the woman, but the photo reminded her of some of the graphic, gruesome photos in a book of dermatology her parents had stored in her bedroom when she was a little girl.

There was a knock on her front door. We looked at one another before she inched toward the door’s peephole. Through it, she viewed the two men in suits. Each held a polaroid of the singed woman at their chests. My girlfriend backpedalled quickly as possible, nearly tripping over her own feet and ignored the following knocks. They continued for another few minutes, each one quieter than the last. We both let our breaths go once the knocking had stopped. We decided to just get to bed and were under the sheets within a few minutes.

Before we turned out the final lamp, I went to look through the peephole to be sure the men in suits had left for good. I looked through the fisheye lens and there he was. The bereft father smiled wide and knowingly into my eye.