Home Security
I don't believe in old-fashioned peepholes. The glass is flimsy and someone could poke through, returning me to my source of darkness, the way I must have experienced life before I could dream in colors. I prefer wide-angle peepholes, offering at least a 120 degree sweep. This way I can bar three or more intruders posing as new neighbors. They might have heard that I stash money in aluminum cans, the ones where I once kept generous amounts of pipe tobacco for a foggy day. They might think that loneliness has made me gullible, more than willing to open for them all kinds of drawers. Or hampers. I hate the thought of anyone snooping through the contents of my hamper while I'm preparing acid-neutralized coffee for two or more guests . I hate their subtle hints about lint on my dryer screen. And their smiles. Their smiles could be masks and they might want to steal my fingerprints and the various names I went by in the past. I could be left without a raincoat. And what if there's a nuclear war? What would I wear? If an invasion of a land-locked country, such as mine, what good would ultra-wide peepholes do? What role would thermal sensors play? On a recent episode of Myth Busters, the experts were trying to prove that thermal sensors were not reliable in detecting if a real person was behind a fingerprint. Each morning, I stand before my bathroom mirror, my cheeks burning and flushed, wondering if the fingerprints there are mine, or stepping off to the side, whether I have been truly obliterated.
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Author's Note
Written as a response to a writing prompt at Zoetrope.
A 20-gauge pump is best for keeping those damned punks off your lawn. The sound of the slide shucking in a round from the magazine is often enuf to get the message across without need of speaking, especially if too many years of cheap tobacco and rotgut bourbon have shriveled your larynx to the significance of a pre-adolescent's. (I've done the research) *
"They might think that loneliness has made me gullible, more than willing to open for them all kinds of drawers." ***
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A splendid little hothouse of suspicion and self effacement.
Thank you, Gary, Sam, R.K., and Mathew
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Thank you, Oliver.
Makes me think about isolation; how people isolate themselves, why people isolate themselves, in fear, in suspicion. And what isolation does. And how much view of the self might be the way we reflect off others and how, without that, we might lose our ability to view ourselves. But really it's the finish that does it for me:
"Each morning, I stand before my bathroom mirror, my cheeks burning and flushed, wondering if the fingerprints there are mine, or stepping off to the side, whether I have been truly obliterated."
Thank you, Frankie. Yeah, isolation does some weird things to a person, to say the least.
Woah. Like this a lot! I like the sweeping view contrasted with the small details like dryer lint.
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Thank you, Michelle!