Chapter 2: The First Test
He spent the next three nights in the blue glow.
The archive was a time-lapsed hellscape of corporate mundanity, punctuated by moments of stark, chilling violation. James watched, his eyes gritty and red, as he scoured the break room footage. It was always the words“casual dress,” woven into the conversation. Each time elicited the same smooth, automaton response. The commands were almost always delivered by men from Sales. Bill and Michael were the most frequent, but there were others. A guy named Trevor. Another named Carl. Once a janitor named Jerome. The ritual was always the same. The blank politeness. The efficient removal. The neatly folded garments tucked into a folder, a drawer, once into her own handbag. The men watched. They always watched. Sometimes they’d make a joke after, a crude remark that sailed right over her blank, pleasant smile. Then she’d snap back, wholly herself, and continue whatever she was doing, utterly unaware. James felt carved out. The love was still there, a raw, screaming wound, but it was now walled off behind an ever-thickening dam of cold, hard data and beneath that dam, something else pooled. A dark, shameful fascination. He’d watch the moments before the trigger. Stacy, laughing, smart, engaged. Then the void would swallow her. Her face would go soft, empty. The transition was the most terrifying part—the absolute eradication of her and then he’d watch her hands move. He knew the curve of her back, the shape of her hips. This was hers, and it was being stolen but he couldn’t stop watching it be stolen. He found the earliest instance. Sixty-three days ago. The first day she and been talking to Carl about some “mandatory IT system update” that required her to sit at her desk for an hour with a flashing screen when Bill and Michael walked in. The image of Bill, Michael and Carl grinning wolfishly as Stacy blouse gaped nearly exposing her braless breasts for the first time was seared into James mind.
She came home tired, dropping her bag by the door with a sigh. “You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had,” she said, leaning in to kiss him. Her lips were warm.She smelled of her perfume and stale office air.He flinched. He couldn’t help it.“You okay?” she asked, pulling back to search his face. Her eyes, a clear, guileless blue, were full of concern.For him. The hypocrisy of it was a physical weight on his chest.“Yeah.Just… long day on my end too. Tell me about yours.” His voice sounded normal.It was a marvel.
She kicked off her heels and sank into the couch, curling her feet beneath her. He sat in the armchair, keeping the coffee table between them.A fortress of normalcy.
“It’s that stupid IT thing from last month,” she started, frustration coloring her tone. “My screen still does that weird flash every morning for, like, an hour. It gives me a headache and of on top of that, the sales guys have decided my desk is the new watercooler. Bill came by three times with ‘paperwork’ that was literally just a Post-it note. Michael just leans on the partition and types on his phone, pretending to be busy.It’s so obviously just to stare. It’s gross.”
Each word was a screw twisting into his gut. The timing was perfect. The mention of Bill and Michael. His hands were cold. He saw the archived footage behind his eyes: Bill’s tongue on his lips, Michael’s grin. This was the moment. A controlled environment. His test. To understand. To… know.
He waited for a lull, as she ranted about the new coffee machine that only dispensed lukewarm water. His mouth was desert-dry.
“Sounds stressful,” he interrupted, his tone carefully casual, molded in the same bland corporate clay as Bill’s. “Maybe tomorrow you should dress more casually, you know?Take the edge off. Just a casual dress kind of day.”
The effect was instantaneous. Her sentence trailed off. The vibrant frustration smoothed from her face like a hand passing over water. Her expression didn’t go slack, but placid. Serene. The same blank politeness from the videos.
“Oh,” she said, her voice light and distant. “I almost forgot.”
She stood up. There was no urgency. Just method. Her fingers went to the button of her jeans. Pop. The zipper hissed down. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband, shimmied the denim over her hips in a practical, unsexy motion, and let them pool around her ankles. She stepped out, one foot, then the other. She was wearing the black lace panties he’d bought her for her birthday. He remembered her twirling in them, laughing.
Now, she hooked her thumbs into the lace at her hips. A slight bend of the knees. A step. She held the scrap of fabric in her hand, looking at it for a blank second.
Then her hands went to the hem of her t-shirt.She pulled it up just enough to slip a hand behind her back. He heard the faint snap of the clasp. Her arm maneuvered inside the shirt, a strange, intricate dance, and pulled the bra out through the sleeve. She held it, black and lacy, alongside the panties.She folded them.Into a neat, precise square. She placed the square on the arm of the couch, smoothing the fabric once with her palm.
Then she sat back down, tucking her feet beneath her again. She looked at him, her face clearing back into its familiar, loving contours. She was utterly, profoundly unaware. The thin cotton of her t-shirt clung to her, draping the full, soft weight of her breasts. Without the structure of the bra, the nipples were visibly hard against the fabric, two distinct points in the dim light of the living room.
“Anyway,” she said, picking up her thread as if the last thirty seconds had not existed, “the coffee thing is just the latest in a long line of crap procurement buys. I swear, they get a discount on defective appliances.”
James couldn’t speak. He couldn’t breathe.
The experiment was a success. The trigger worked. He had proof.
He stared at the folded square on the couch arm.A tombstone for her autonomy. He had done this. He had chosen to do this. His eyes dragged back to her.To the clear outline of her body under the shirt. She was smiling at him now, waiting for a response to her coffee machine anecdote. She was here, and she was gone.He had just erased her, and she had no idea.
The horror was absolute. It coiled in his stomach, cold and nauseating.
But beneath it, undeniable, was a pulse of something else.A dark, galvanizing thrill.It was him. He had done that.He had made that happen. The power of it was immense, a drug hitting his system all at once. He looked from her trusting, confused smile to the blatant intimacy of her exposed body, presented to him by her own unconscious hands. The two realities existed in the same space, and he was the only one who could see both.“James? You’re spacing out.You sure you’re okay?”
He managed a nod.His voice was a stranger’s. “Yeah.Just thinking.About work.” He forced a smile. “Want to order in?”
“God, yes.”
As she reached for her phone, leaning forward, the neckline of her t-shirt gaped.He saw the shadowed swell of her breast, the vulnerable curve. His chest tightened.He wanted to cover her.To scream. To pull her into his arms and confess everything.He also wanted to see what else he could make her forget.
The two wants sat side-by-side in his mind, and he knew, with a sick, final clarity, which one was going to win.He had crossed the line the moment he opened that archive. Now he was just figuring out how far he could walk.He stood up, his legs unsteady. “I’ll get the menus,” he said, just to move, to break the spell.
As he walked past the couch, his hand, seemingly of its own volition, brushed against the folded square of lace and cotton. The fabric was still warm from her skin.