Chapter 3: The Performance
Three mornings later, the video file sat in the upload folder, a malignant little icon. Dave clicked ‘send’ before he could think about it. The progress bar zipped across the screen.Done. He’d done it.
For two days, the knowledge of what he’d filmed had sat between him and Katherine like a third person in the apartment, silent and watching. The recording played on a loop in his head, superimposed over every moment. Him, moving above her in their bed, the angle weird and secretive from the shelf where he’d hidden the camera. Her responses.Polite. Encouraging, even. Soft moans timed to his thrusts. Her hands on his back, patting gently. The dutiful arch of her spine. It had been competent.Affectionate. A perfect imitation of intimacy, performed by a skilled technician.
When he’d finished, collapsing beside her, she’d rolled over and kissed his shoulder. “That was nice,” she’d murmured, already half-asleep.Nice. The word had echoed in the hollow of his chest. In the break room video, she’d said ‘good meeting.’ The vocabulary of satisfied completion.
The vocabulary of satisfied completion. He stared at the laptop in the pre-dawn gloom of the living room, the taste of old coffee and something bitter coating his tongue. A notification chimed, soft and lethal, from the encrypted email he’d used.
He’d expected silence. Maybe, in some twisted part of his brain, he’d hoped for validation. The sender’s address was a scrambled string of characters. The subject line was blank. His cursor hovered, then clicked.
“See?” the message began, just that one word. The body text was brief and typed in a casual, conversational font. “Told you you’d see the difference. You can see how much more she enjoys herself at work.” Below the text were two file links, neatly labeled. The first: Katherine_B_ConferenceRm4_DSK.mp4. The second: Melissa_G_HROfficeC_FHC.mp4.
His breath hitched, a sharp, involuntary spasm in his chest. He clicked the first link. The video buffer wheel spun once, twice, then the image resolved. It was a different angle, higher quality than the break room footage. It showed an office, expansive, with a wide mahogany desk. Katherine was bent over it, her palms flat on the polished wood.
Her head was turned to the side, cheek resting on a spread-out financial report. Her eyes were closed, but her mouth was open in a soft, slack circle. A man—older, with silver at his temples—stood behind her, his hands gripping her hips. Her skirt was pushed up around her waist, the same black lace garters from the break room video stark against her skin. She wasn’t making the polite, timed sounds from his own recording. This was a low, continuous hum in her throat, a sound of deep, engrossing pleasure that built with each movement.
“Christ,” Dave whispered to the empty room. The sound was tinny through the laptop speakers but utterly unmistakable. It was the sound of someone gone, fully absent in sensation. Her fingers curled against the report, crumpling the paper. The man grunted, a dull, productive sound. Katherine’s hum broke into a gasp, then a string of muttered words that weren’t words at all, just shapeless, fervent noise.
This wasn’t performance.This was consumption. She was being consumed by it, and she was starving for it. The video ended abruptly. The screen went black, reflecting his own pale, wide-eyed face back at him in the dark room. His hands were shaking. He didn’t pause. He couldn’t. He moved the cursor, a jerky, mechanical motion, and clicked the second file.
He moved the cursor, a jerky, mechanical motion, and clicked the second file.
The scene resolved into a stark, fluorescent-lit office. A laminated nameplate on a cluttered desk read ‘Melissa Gelhman’. A woman, blonde and older, was sprawled on her back across the desk itself, sending a stack of papers fluttering to the floor. She wore only black stockings and a garter belt, her body a pale contrast to the dark wood. Her large breasts shifted and bounced with a chaotic, urgent rhythm.
A man in a rumpled dress shirt, his tie loosened, was thrusting into her mouth, his hands gripping her head. His movements were efficient, her throat working around him. Simultaneously, a second man, younger with his sleeves rolled up, gripped her spread hips and drove into her from between her legs. The sound was a wet, choking symphony of skin and strained breath. Melissa’s eyes were glazed, focused on the ceiling tiles, her moans garbled around the intrusion.
“Fuck,” Dave breathed, the word a dry crackle in his throat. This wasn’t the focused, almost intimate devouring of Katherine’s video. This was something else, mechanical and overwhelming, a transaction of pure function. Yet, on Melissa’s face, through the strain, was a similar expression of vacant, profound saturation. She wasn’t fighting it. She was using it.
His stomach clenched, a sour wave rising. He should close it. He should smash the laptop. His hand, however, lay frozen on the mouse. He watched the younger man’s knuckles whiten on her hips, saw the older man’s abdomen tense. Melissa’s legs trembled, then locked. A sharp, muffled cry escaped her, vibrating through the man in her mouth. The rhythm fragmented into frantic, final pushes.Then, stillness. The men withdrew. Melissa coughed, turned her head to the side, and swallowed with a wince. She didn’t look at either of them. She just stared at the wall, a slow, languid smile spreading across her flushed face. It was the same smile Katherine had worn in the break room. The “good meeting” smile. The satisfied completion.
The satisfied completion. Dave watched, his own breathing shallow, as the two men in Melissa’s video pulled away. They dressed in a familiar, wordless routine, tucking in shirts and smoothing hair, as if buttoning a cufflink was the most natural next step after what they’d just done. One patted her bare shoulder, a gesture like congratulating a teammate.
“See you Thursday, Mel,” the younger one said, his voice rough but casual, like commenting on the weather.
“Bright and early,” she croaked back, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
They left, the office door clicking shut softly behind them, leaving only the hum of the fluorescent lights. Melissa lay still for another moment, eyes closed, that faint smile still touching her lips. Then, with a sigh that seemed to carry neither regret nor joy, she pushed herself up.
She reached for a box of tissues on her desk, pulled a few, and wiped between her legs with a practical, wiping-down-a-countertop motion. She bent, picked her discarded bra off the floor, and put it on without fastening it, letting the cups hang loose. A simple, loose black skirt was stepped into and pulled up over her hips. She then knelt, gathered the scattered papers from the floor, tapped them into a neat stack on the desk corner, and finally sank into her office chair. She leaned back, swiveled once, and picked up a pen, glancing at the top sheet as if reviewing a mundane memo. The video ended.
Dave slammed the laptop lid shut. The sound was too loud in the silent apartment. He stared at the closed black plastic, the afterimage of Melissa’s routine burned onto his retina. It was the same. It was exactly the same as Katherine’s routine in the break room footage, the same dispassionate tidying up. A pit opened inside him, cold and bottomless. This wasn’t just about Katherine. This was a system.
This was a system. A protocol. The thought was a cold stone in his gut. He opened the laptop again, the glow making his hands look cadaverous. The blank reply field in the encrypted mail client pulsed.
His fingers trembored over the keys. He typed, deleted, then typed again, the question stark and stupid in its simplicity.
‘Who is Melissa G? Why did you send me that one?’
The reply came back less than a minute later, the ping of the notification slicing through the thick silence of the room.
‘Melissa Gelhman. Assistant Director of Human Resources.’
Dave stared at the words, his brain stuttering over them. HR.She was in HR. The department that handed out the sexual harassment pamphlets and mandatory online training modules. He could picture her in a sensible blazer, facilitating a seminar. His fingers were numb as he typed his next question, the logic of it all curdling in his gut.
‘Why? Why show me that?’
Three dots pulsed on the screen. They pulsed for a long time. Dave’s knee began to bounce, a frantic, jittery rhythm under the desk. The sender was typing, then stopping, then typing again. Finally, the message appeared.
‘She’s my wife.’
The words didn’t compute at first. They just sat there, black and static on the screen. He read them again. Then a third time. The pit in his stomach turned into a void.The sender. The faceless, taunting voice behind these emails, behind the videos… was married to the woman on the desk. Was married to the Assistant Director of Human Resources, who was currently wiping herself clean with office tissues after being used by two colleagues. A dizzy, greasy wave of understanding washed over him.
This wasn’t just some anonymous weirdo. This was a husband. A man who knew.Who watched. Who sent it.
“What the fuck?” Dave whispered to the glowing screen. His voice was cracked, unfamiliar. “What the actual fuck is wrong with you people?”
His hands flew to the keys, anger heating the back of his neck. ‘You sent me a video of your own wife? What is your problem?’
The reply was instant this time, as if the sender had been waiting for this exact question.
‘The problem is she comes home happy. She comes home sated. She kisses me on the cheek and asks about my day, and her skin smells like them. Like their sweat and their cologne. She falls asleep in seconds, a deep, contented sleep she never has with me.’ The words kept coming, a rapid, damning flood. ‘I wanted you to see it isn’t just your girl. It’s the whole place. It’s how it works. The best orgasms of their lives, Dave. That’s what they get. Not from us.’
Dave pushed back from the desk, the chair wheels shrieking on the hardwood. He stood up, his heart hammering against his ribs. He paced to the darkened kitchen, grabbed the edge of the sink, and squeezed until his knuckles ached. The city lights bled around the edges of the curtains. A normal night. Out there, people were ordering pizzas and watching TV. In here, his reality was being dismantled piece by diseased piece.
He walked back, drawn helplessly to the glow. Another message had appeared.
‘She’ll be home soon.My wife. She had a late “strategy session” with the regional VP tonight. I’ll ask her how it was. She’ll say it was productive.’
A sound escaped Dave’s throat, something between a laugh and a gag. Productive. The word was now poison. He thought of Katherine last night, curled into his side after her own “late networking call.” She’d smelled of hotel soap and something else, something faintly sharp he couldn’t place. She’d hummed, contented, and been asleep within minutes.
He sat down heavily. The cursor blinked. He had a thousand questions, all of them terrible. He typed the one that felt biggest, the one that threatened to swallow him.
He typed the one that felt biggest, the one that threatened to swallow him. His fingers felt thick and clumsy on the keys.
‘Why tell me all this? What the hell am I supposed to do about it?’
He hit send. The message vanished into the void. The three dots appeared immediately, blinking with a steady, patient rhythm. Dave’s knee started bouncing again, a frantic telegraph under the desk. The hum of the laptop fan was the only sound in the apartment.
A new message popped up, the letters stark and simple.
‘You’ve got three choices. You accept it. You run from it. Or you join it.’
Dave stared. A bitter, metallic laugh burst out of him, too loud in the silent room. It echoed back at him, empty and brittle. He typed back, his movements sharp and angry.
‘Accept it? Are you insane? She’s my fiancée.’
‘She’s their employee,’ the sender countered, the reply appearing before Dave could even lean back. ‘There’s a difference. A big one. You’ve seen it.’
He had. The difference was in the vacant, happy smile. In the way she fell into a deep, contented sleep after her “networking calls.” It was in the scent of strange soap and something sharper he couldn’t name. Dave pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, bright patterns flaring in the dark. The pressure didn’t help. The words were just there, burned in.
‘What did you do?’ he typed. ‘When you found out about your wife.’
The three dots pulsed. They pulsed for a full minute, a torturous wait where Dave could hear his own blood rushing in his ears. He watched the cursor blink on the blank screen, a tiny, relentless heartbeat.
The reply came, just two words at first.
‘I accepted.’
Dave’s breath left him in a slow, defeated exhale. He read it again. He couldn’t imagine the scale of that surrender. To know what Melissa did, to see it, and to just… let it happen. To live with it. A strange, cold curiosity seeped in, pushing past the disgust.
‘And then?’ he typed.
The dots pulsed once more.
‘And then I joined.’
A jolt went through Dave, electric and cold. He sat up straight, his spine rigid. The room seemed to tilt slightly, the shadows by the curtains deepening.
‘What does that mean, joined?’
The reply was quicker this time, almost conversational.
‘How do you think I got the video, Dave? I didn’t find it in her email. I didn’t hack her phone.’ The words kept coming, each one a hammer tap on a nail. ‘I took a job. In security. I watch the feeds. I catalog the footage. I make the archives.’
The meaning crashed over him, wave after wave. The sender wasn’t just a cuckold or a voyeur. He was a participant. An employee. He was inside the machine, maintaining its gears. Dave’s own hidden camera, the one he’d pointed at his own bed, suddenly felt pathetic and small. Amateur hour. This was professional.
This was professional. He was talking to a professional. The realization made his skin crawl. He looked at his own hands, the hands that had touched Katherine, that had clumsily hidden a camera on a bookshelf. They seemed like a child’s hands. He thought of the man on the other end of this chat, in some dark room lined with monitors, watching his wife on a grid of screens. Watching Katherine. Watching everyone.
Watching him. The final, chilling piece slid into place. His mouth went dry as bone. He typed, the letters appearing slowly, uncertainly.
‘You see me. On the feed from our apartment.’
The reply was instant.
‘Building security feed, yeah. Saw you set up your little camera. Cute.’
Dave’s face flooded with heat, a blush of pure shame that burned from his neck to his hairline. He’d been observed the whole time. His pathetic attempt at gathering evidence, his confusion, his pain—it had all been a show for this stranger. This stranger who was married to the woman in the HR video. This stranger who now cataloged his private life alongside the conference room and the break room.
This stranger who now cataloged his private life. The silence from the other end stretched, thick and expectant. The three dots were still. The sender was waiting. Dave’s choices hung in the air, toxic and unavoidable. Accept it. Live with the knowledge, with the scent of other men on his fiancée’s skin, with her satisfied smiles that were never for him. Run from it. Rip the ring off his finger, pack a bag, and never look back, always wondering if he’d lost something real or just escaped a poison he didn't understand.
Or join it. The concept was so alien it felt like a door opening into a different dimension. To step into that fluorescent world, to watch the feeds, to become part of the system that had already claimed Katherine. To see it all from the inside. His eyes drifted from the screen to the silver-framed photo on his desk. It was from a picnic last spring. Katherine was laughing, her head thrown back, a smear of strawberry on her lip. She was looking at the camera, at him. He had taken that picture.
He looked back at the last line on the screen. I took a job in security. The cursor blinked, a steady, patient pulse.