Deal Pigs – Part Six
The video loads for a few seconds and then plays. The camera is blurry at first, but pulls into focus with a grainy fish-eye effect. The first shot is of a man with an obscured face awkwardly fumbling with his camcorder. He sits in the driver’s seat of a car at dusk wearing a white hoodie and dust mask. The street lamps outside his car door window are masked by the silhouette of palm trees. The camera is positioned on the dashboard of the car and the man begins talking incoherently, pausing every ten to fifteen seconds to take swigs from a brown bottle. After each drink, the man winces uneasily. The shadows of cars fly over the man as he rambles behind a face mask. He shifts between slow and fast speech, gentle and angry tones, all while drinking more and more from the bottle. He seems to disassociate for a few seconds, then furiously hammer-fists himself in the forehead. Thud, thud, thud, thud. His complexion is bruised, beaten and flushed—similar to the gaunt man at the auction. I skip the video forward a few seconds and he continues to slam down liquor and beat himself in the forehead.
Thud, thud, thud, thud.
I move my cursor further down the video track and click into a position a few minutes ahead. The sun has completely set and the thin man is now clumsily maneuvering the camcorder in front of an affluent family home. He curiously whispers to himself as he brushes past a lavish garden and edges towards a dim light on the porch. He creeps down the left side of the home and peers inside a French glass door bathed in a warm glow. The camera autofocuses on a a little boy and girl watching TV cross-legged with their backs to the glass door. They are within an arm’s length of each other. A middle-aged woman walks into the frame, unaware she and the children are being watched and recorded. The thin man mumbles to himself and lets out an exhilarating snicker. He places the camcorder on the ledge of the porch, takes a few steps back into the darkness of the front yard and rummages through his jam-packed backpack.
Skip ahead. The video freezes to buffer the image. The thin man is now in a brightly decorated bedroom with toys scattered across the carpet. He quietly mounts his camcorder on the roof of a dollhouse in the child’s room and carefully slides his slender body into a built-in closet. The door is left ajar so he can keep an eye on the room.
Hrrrrf—hrrrrs—hrrrrf—hrrrrs—hrrrrf—hrrrrs.
The camcorder picks up the Russian man’s laboured, nervous breathing from within the closet. He continues to wait.
Hrrrrf—hrrrrs—hrrrrf—hrrrrs—hrrrrf—hrrrrs.
A minute later, the middle-aged woman filmed with the little girl casually walks into the bedroom and bends over to pick toys up off the carpet, unaware there is someone lurking.
Hrrrrf—hrrrrs—hrrrrf—hrrrrs—hrrrrf—hrrrrs.
“Claire, come help me clean up in here, will ya?” the woman calls out.
Hrrrf—hrrrs—hrrrf—hrrrs—hrrrf—hrrrs.
“Coming, Mum!”
Hrrf–hrrs–hrrf–hrrs.
The little girl walks in and stands adjacent to the camera. The slumped over woman looks up at the girl and fear devours her as her eyes fix on the mounted camcorder blinking.
Hrf-hrs-HRRRF…
The thin man pounces from the closet and grabs the woman’s waist from behind. Before she can flail out of the bear hold, he emphatically pushes a shiv through her right eye socket. Her hands instinctively go to the bloody, blunt object embedded in her skull as she screams and gurgles in disbelief. The little girl runs back out through the doorway, knocking the camcorder sideways off the dollhouse and onto the carpet. The attack continues in the top left corner of the frame. The man pushes the shiv deeper into her skull with both hands, while pinning her body in place with his elbows and knees. The gash that once cradled her eyeball twitches uncontrollably. He dislodges the shiv and stabs her again in the neck, but the tip of it breaks off and stays embedded in her jugular. He stabs her again with the broken weapon, in the face, then in the chest and jaw. Blood seeps out of her wounds like a colander full of water. Small, reddish-brown geysers. The man breathes heavier after each attack. The victim’s cries fade to a helpless whimper.
I pause the video by punching the spacebar with my palm, then I hear something.
Hrrrrf—hrrrrs.
I jostle out of my chair and dart my eyes around the office. It sounds like there is someone breathing in the room just like the thin man, but the night stays quiet.
I scan the room again, then reluctantly reclaim my seat. I fight the urge to close the lid of my laptop and go to bed. Instead, I take a moment and move my position ahead in the video track. My index finger trips while clicking the play button.
It starts again. The camcorder is sitting on a bathroom vanity. I see the limp body of a man lying face down in an empty clawfoot bathtub. The bath is covered in scratches and bloody smears. The man’s skin has been peeled back from the nape of his neck down past his shoulder blades. He has the same build and hair colour as the Scotsman from the auction.
The thin man puts on thick, protective gloves, lifts the victim’s head, fills the drain with a plug, turns the tap on, and lets hot water trickle into the wounds. Now clearly alive, the body convulses in agony as he holds the victim down under the boiling tap. Steam rises from the tub as it gradually fills with tap water. The thin man casually talks to the camcorder as he drowns him.
Hrrrrf—hrrrrs.
The phantom breathing sounds haunt my ears. It cuts the night air like a knife. I move the video track almost to the end.
It continues. The camcorder is being held by the thin man. It cycles in and out of focus as he moves around, but I start to decipher the image. The little boy and girl sit huddled together on blood-stained carpet. The weary cameraman rants unintelligibly at the young girl as she gives a desolate, thousand-mile stare. Her cheek is bruised, her lips are swollen, and her eyes are bloated. The cameraman runs his fingers down through her hair, across her temple, and squeezes her cheeks together, forcing a trickle of blood out of one nostril.
I swivel my chair around and walk over to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of Gin and soda. A loud, amateur porn advert autoplays in the background. I realise I need to get a better ad-blocker.