People Watching

This is a story from work. I work at a mall, and I work nights. It’s pretty well-known, so in the interest of not breaking any non-disclosure agreements, I’m not going to name it.

I don’t think sharing any of this is technically illegal, but I’m sure my mall wouldn’t appreciate me sharing any of this.

Our mall has over ninety different shops spread across different levels and has a huge fountain in the plaza. Most of the stores are big chains that operate out of outlets or smaller kiosks. They range from clothing stores, to outdoorsy stuff, to pizza places, and there’s also a movie theater.

I’ve been working at this mall for over five years now in security and surveillance, but I’ve only been working the graveyard shift for the past eight months.

And the way that I got my current job – being the lady who watches the cameras in the dead of night – is also a little unusual.

My job has the highest turnover rate. That’s not weird. I work long hours in the dead of night and I come home very early, usually midnight to seven in the morning, but there are times when the lady doing five in the afternoon to midnight will ask me to switch with her because she has a date. Part of the reason people quit here so often is because usually I don’t have the luxury of dating or socializing at normal hours.

I go to work around eleven at night and I don’t get back until about eight in the morning. Many people have had my job before but opted out because they wanted a social life of some kind. The pay is pretty good for my education level, and I don’t have any better options lined up, plus I have full benefits. I’ve worked here for a long time and I get more perks than most. Also, my job isn’t particularly dangerous since I watch cameras and don’t patrol anything, and I don’t work alone. I know the system better than most, and it doesn’t involve manual labor. In short, my job is mentally draining but not physically involved or very risky.

Before this, I was working day shift which had more people, but it was still the job of watching cameras. A lot of us watching the cameras here tend to be women.

I’m not sure if it’s a quirk of our particular mall, or if they’re really trying to get brownie points for hiring women. It’s probably because there are cameras in our changing rooms to keep people from shoplifting, and being that we have a lot of ladies’ clothing stores I assume women would feel better having another woman watching them through the fish-eye lens than some random guy. To keep the weirdos out.

There are security guards who check in with me and some of them are pretty funny. Our favorite thing to do in the dead of night is to pretend that we’re spies on a secret mission; I’m the one feeding them intel having “taken control of the system” with my “amazing hacking skills”, and they’re the secret agents. We try to have fun.

My call sign is Lady Liberty.

And the story behind that is the security guards hazed me the first night I took over the monitors, barging in on me to give me a jump scare wearing ski masks from the sporting goods store and all I had to defend myself was a book and flashlight.

The guys I work with are Nightblind and Radio Silence. The ladies I work with in the control room are Big Ben and Hungry Eyes.

I can’t say I know the people working in the stores themselves except for occasional food vendors, but I do know some of my bosses since I used to work days.

The real problem with this job is the monotony and boredom can play tricks on your mind. The other problem is that incidents at night are usually of the scary variety. Occasionally kids will break in to vandalize things, or we deal with trespassing homeless people or sometimes the elderly or people with mental issues. I don’t deal with them myself, but seeing a stranger in the mall is after hours feels like watching a home invasion from a panic room.

A small aside, Nightblind got that call sign when he was patrolling and couldn’t see very well and I got a front row seat to watching him stumble into the fountain in the main plaza thoroughfare. Radio Silence got his name when he wouldn’t check in at the scheduled intervals, only to find out later that he’d left his walkie-talkie in the security booth.

Hungry Eyes got her call sign from the song that’s her ringtone. She always has a boyfriend calling her at work. I hear the song Hungry Eyes at least twice every night.

Big Ben literally can’t shut up about the time. “What time is it?” is her catchphrase at this point. Sometimes she’s like the time channel, reminding us what time it is or how many minutes or hours until we leave. Usually it’s informing us what time we need to check in, or just mentioning the exact hour. She’s always wearing a watch.

If I’m honest, we’re bored and probably what you would consider unprofessional. We sometimes get called in by the bosses because we’re also monitored by security cameras. The only thing more boring and unsettling than watching empty rooms is watching the one you’re in already.

Big Ben and Hungry eyes work alongside me, and sometimes we work in shifts.

I’d say we’re all a little weird in different ways. Working nights for months means finding something interesting to do is a challenge. When nothing happens for six hours, you make up games or projects for yourself. Counting tiles on the floor or ceiling, having saltine eating contests, trying to scare Nightblind and Radio Silence with our creepiest voices or softly singing nursery rhymes in the creepiest way possible…

Boredom and morbid curiosity are the enemy here. As annoying as it is to hear Hungry Eyes’ ringtone, I’m jealous she has something to do that’s fun like talking to the flavor of the month.

This story is really about the video tape though. This is how I found it.

We have a break room and it has a TV with a VCR, because, for some reason, we never made it over to the modern age even when there’s an electronics department in the mall.

We’re really just glad that it’s a color TV even though our TV is a square behemoth on a dusty black dolly you can wheel around like they do at schools.

There isn’t much to do for fun aside from the movies on VHS, basic cable which is usually late night infomercials, or if you happen to read a book. Sometimes I wheel the TV out because the break room is boring and claustrophobic.

We have a handful of Disney movies, the Wizard of Oz, and old reruns of MASH recorded unprofessionally. “Be kind, rewind” is a way of life.

One day, I was bored and decided I’d look in the archives room for any other tapes.

It was a stupid idea. It’s probably illegal and I know I’m being taped. I didn’t read anything in the files. That’s almost definitely a fireable offense. I opened drawers on the filing cabinet, ran my fingers down the line to see if any VHS-like shapes were visible. No luck, and then I’d close it.

Bored, pull, check, nada, push. Rinse and repeat.

As I was going, the frantic boredom of it was making me pull drawers open and slam them closed harder than I should have. As I got to the bottom of one filing cabinet tower, I pulled it out so hard that I actually pulled the drawer out of the cabinet and nearly dropped it on my toe. It crashed with a loud metallic boom that nearly scared the shit out of me. It was a lot like trying to sneak in or out while your parents are asleep, everything is the loudest sound.

At once, Big Ben came rushing in to see if I was okay. Thankfully I was already Lady Liberty at this point, otherwise I might’ve been Noisemaker by the end of the night.

I was a little bashful as I tried to explain that I was fine, though it came out as a joke, saying that I was bitten by a radioactive spider and couldn’t control my super strength.

Big Ben rolled her eyes, reminded me of the time, and went to help me put the drawer back.

It was then that we were crouched over that we saw the VHS tape. It was a standard VHS tape that was placed in the back of the cabinet tower. We only barely saw it, an odd shape in the back of the tower standing upright with black and white. In a way it reminded me of the drawers in my kitchen and that sometimes some utensil would get stuck behind the drawers and I’d have to pull one completely out to get back in there. Except that this wasn’t a dish towel or a spatula.

I was more excited by the VHS tape than skeptical. I didn’t care how it got there. It felt like I had just discovered buried treasure.

The original label on it had been scratched away and a new one had been placed over it, unevenly. It read “The Greatest Hits of the 40s”.

I didn’t know exactly what that meant. Maybe it was music? Maybe it was a movie marathon? I didn’t know how much film was on the tape or how long it would be.

Big Ben and I shrugged and took the tape because we had nothing better to do and put the drawer back in place. At worst, we’d probably listen to a lot of Ella Fitzgerald. There are worse things. Maybe it was Snow White. We didn’t have that movie.

We went back. Hungry Eyes looked at us like we were crazy and half-interestedly lowered her phone. One of us rolled out the TV and tried to set up the VCR.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re going to watch the ‘Greatest Hits of the 40s’.” I said it holding up the video tape, showing it off with a mockingly celebratory shake, sort of the same motion you do when screwing in a lightbulb.

“What, is that like, porn?”

“Yeah. We’re going to watch Judy rub her Garland.” Big Ben rolled her eyes and started to rewind the tape. She checked her watch briefly and then pulled up a chair as I tried to get it all set up. I think the tape started at the beginning. Be kind, rewind and all. But I admit I didn’t check or hesitate before I just hit play. Fuzzy white lines occasionally rolled up the screen and back down like tides of foam in the ocean.

“I’ll call you back, sweetie. The girls and I are going to watch granny porn.” Hungry Eyes laughed into her phone and then gave a jokingly scandalized tone to something her boyfriend must have said. “No, I’m not going to take pictures.”

She hung up on him, still laughing as she scooted closer to the TV screen just like how our parents used to tell us would ruin our eyes.

The first ten minutes of the tape were actually not bad. It was almost disarmingly pleasant. It was an old-timey nostalgia, black screen and stuffy live introductory trumpet music that felt awkwardly imposed. Think trumpets introducing royalty or Caesar and it’s that kind of music, only for two or three seconds. I half-expected a lion to start roaring or an FBI warning.

We’d stumbled into a recording of a Bing Crosby Christmas album or something like it. Christmas songs continued and we were enraptured by the novelty of it, even though it was only September.

The tape would periodically go to other singers, but it was spliced badly with a few of the ending notes cut off as if the recording had been imprecise. I realized this wasn’t an official copy very early on.

Halfway through a Frank Sinatra song is when it started.

I’ve watched it twice now. The first time I was so dumbstruck but curious that I didn’t even know what to do or say as we watched, completely ignoring the cameras. These are my basic notes on the second viewing. They’re mostly word for word from my notes but they’re not as professional as they should be.

My notes on each segment are written in the order they appeared, but I don’t really know why they’re in the order they are.

The Sinatra song abruptly cuts off and we see a familiar site, and we (myself, Big Ben, and Hungry Eyes) know it’s familiar because it’s shots from our mall’s security cameras. We recognize the plaza instantly.

The first video on the tape is dated August 11, 1989. The camera says it’s 3:52AM

It’s the main thoroughfare and the fountain where Nightblind had fallen in. I remember there was an awkward and unsettling realization that this was our mall. We didn’t say anything then. It was unnerving but that went away when we saw the first video segment in the queue.

– – –

It’s the plaza, and there’s the fountain.

There’s an older woman who’s on screen by the fountain. She’s a little pudgy and wearing an unfashionable grandma style one-piece swimsuit with frills of a lighter fabric at the waist. It’s the kind of swimsuit that only really looks good on a little girl or an old lady, the kind that looks part wetsuit, part ballerina tutu. She’s wearing a swimmer’s cap and goggles. She has a towel draped over her shoulders. She’s as giddy as a small child.

She coyly pokes her foot into the water of the fountain and gives a theatrical shiver like a cartoon character. The fountain isn’t more than two feet deep and I’m afraid that the woman is about to do a cannonball and break her hip or something.

Instead, she confidently steps into the water which is only up to her shins or thighs. Then, like she’s a vaudeville dancer, she shimmies through the fountain using the towel like a dancer would a feather boa, pulling it back and forth in her shimmy in a kind of flossing movement. She rhythmically kicks and splashes the water, as if it’s a musical number. And then she turns coy again, like she’s performing this routine in front of a crowd, and turns her back on the “crowd” walking back the way she came, giving rhythmic and exaggerated hip sways.

Her routine continues for over four minutes, though it doesn’t look like it’s unpracticed. Finally, the old woman takes off the towel she’s been wearing at a boa and tosses it lovingly to her adoring public (which lands in the water) before blowing a kiss and waving at absolutely no one.

With an exaggerated flop, she lets herself lean backwards and a huge splash is seen before the video cuts out.

– – –

Throughout the first video, we’d been laughing and giggling to ourselves. It was amazing to see someone having so much fun, even if it was probably considered trespassing. The three of us are still controlling our giggle fits when we check in with Radio Silence (because Big Ben reminded us it was time to do it).

We can hardly contain our laughter when we tell him to be on the lookout for an old woman in the fountain. Big Ben has to explain it’s an inside joke he wouldn’t get when the next video comes on.

These seem light-hearted and the fact that it’s our mall no longer gives us an eerie feeling; instead it’s more of a conspiratorial “this is our mall, we know where that happened!” kind of thrill.

– – –

April 4, 1995 4:23AM

We see a view from what looks like a menswear outlet. We assume it’s our mall. It doesn’t look like any of the current layout, so it’s possible it’s not a store our mall has anymore. I could be wrong. Maybe they just changed the layout. Who knows. Judging that it IS a mall, and that the first video was from our mall’s fountain, we’re assuming that it’s our mall in this one too.

For a few seconds, nothing happens. It’s a view of the changing area and some aisles of clothing. Slacks and jeans are hung up on their little metal island racks.

A man literally slides his way onto screen, but the angle is a bit awkward for seeing the next performance.

A very attractive man, probably in his mid to late thirties, comes dancing into screen in a pink-ish shirt, white socks, and tighty whities. I assume that his shirt is pink and the socks are white because the man is doing the dance from Risky Business with a golf club.

He knows the dance by heart.

– – –

We’re loudly cheering and whistling from our seats when the next video begins to play. This is gold to us.

It looks like someone’s found and spliced together footage of the funniest things that have happened in our mall after hours. It was such a good idea I wish I’d had it myself. I’ve seen some funny things I wish I could show you guys.

We try to think of who it could have been that made this tape because we clearly need to buy him or her a beer.

But as we talk to each other about who it could be, we realize we don’t know. It was before my time probably (though I didn’t know for sure with only just two clips to map out a timeline).

It was possible the person who made it was looking through old footage. A lot of our stuff was on tape before we switched over to computer-controlled things. I wondered if the person had done it while watching tapes and then made their own compilation.

And all of this was assuming that it was our mall, but the person had to have worked here or was still working here to put the tape in the filing cabinet. My mind practically did an acrobatics routine before the next video started up that left me cold.

– – –

June 28, 1994 2:08AM

The next view is a furniture outlet with all kinds of furniture in the background. It looks like the living room section of the furniture store because there are a line of chairs in view. Reclining chairs from the look of it. Really ugly fuzzy chairs or saggy leather ones.

There’s a very large man who looks too big for the chair he’s in. It’s a leathery-looking armchair, the kind your grandfather would have that your grandmother would wrap in plastic.

At first, the video looks like maybe it’s glitching but as it continues, we see the man is shaking in the chair. As it continues to shake, we realize it’s a vibrating arm chair.

The man is butt naked in the chair as he looks in a mirror, though I’m not sure where the full length mirror came from.

– – –

We’re quieter now. We don’t really know what we’re seeing. It’s weird.

We pass the few minutes of the armchair dude in stunned silence.

– – –

October 1, 1987 1:40AM

A young man – maybe a teenager – with a punk spiked mohawk is in the women’s clothing section as evidenced by the mannequins in assorted dresses or jackets and skirts though the jackets look like they have large shoulderpads and some look very warm. It kind of looks like they were dressed in the style of the movie Heathers.

They look like something a secretary would wear.

The punk is soulfully doing a slowdance with what looks to be a woman in a knee-length evening dress and a scarf tied wrong her neck. She’s wearing a wide-brimmed black hat with a lace bow. It looks weirdly out of fashion to me.

The dancing continues but the woman’s not moving – she’s being moved. And it was then that we realized that the punk was slow dancing with one of the mannequins.

The slowdance continues with the punk speaking inaudibly to the mannequin. After two minutes or so, he starts to pull the mannequin’s dress up and slip his hand up what would be the mannequin’s backside under her dress to fondle her. Or, fondle IT, I mean.

A bright light contrasts the video footage as it shines in from off screen but is getting closer and the punk seems stunned by it. He stops the slowdance abruptly and begins to run. A security guard comes into focus.

The punk launches the mannequin at the security guard and she sails through the air like a pool noodle. The punk is looking backwards as he runs and doesn’t notice the glass store window display until he crashes through it, upsetting three additional mannequins in casual fall-winter wear, staged to look like they were talking to each other.

The security guard chases after the punk until they both disappear up the top right of the screen.

– – –

Hungry Eyes can only give an uncomfortable sharp yelp of laughter when the punk breaks through the glass. We’re really not sure what to think or feel.

– – –

October 17, 1999 3:16AM

An old woman – I’m not sure if it’s the bathing suit woman since she had been in the cap and goggles and since it’s a ten year gap, but the build is similar – is in a pizza place. The woman is chubby and has permed light hair, maybe blonde or white, but you can’t tell from the video, just that it’s not dark hair.

She comes into frame from the side. The camera view is such that it’s facing out to where the line of customers would be, so the woman is coming in from the back of the storage area.

She’s carrying a wooden purse that looks like someone made a purse out of someone’s Venetian window blinds. The woman is carrying a large bag of shredded cheese and a few large onions with the onion paper still on them.

The woman sits at a plastic booth table and is now facing the camera. She opens the bag of cheese and begins to shovel handfuls of it in her mouth, though some is clearly falling from her hand and her mouth and falling onto the floor and table. She continues to eat shredded cheese right out of the package for a full eight and a half minutes.

As she eats, she leisurely swings her legs back and forth like a child. She looks over to her left and then places her purse on the table. Something seems to be leaking from her purse through the slats of the wood, but she doesn’t seem to notice, though it looks thick and goopy as it drips.

She grabs the salt shaker and the Parmesan cheese shaker. She places the cheese shaker into her purse. She takes one of her onions and gingerly sprinkles it with salt.

She then puts the salt shaker in her purse too. And then she bites into the onion like it’s an apple, paper and all. It takes her another two minutes to eat an onion. I know this because I was trying my best not to watch her eat the onion so I stared at the time stamp.

The woman then places her face on the table and begins licking the cheese she had missed off the table like a child licking their plate clean.

She takes another onion, pulls out the salt shaker from her purse to sprinkle it and then puts it back in her purse, and then pulls out a handful of shredded cheese and piles it on the onion. She continues to put piles of cheese on the onion until you can’t see the onion anymore.

And then the woman puts her arms behind her back and puts her face into the pile, chewing. She plays a game with herself of trying to eat the onion with no hands.

She eats cheese and tries to get her mouth around the onion, making a mess of cheese and onion paper everywhere until she get the onion in her mouth and gloats as if she’s bobbing for apples and has just caught one.

She crunches right through it and it falls with a huge bite mark in it, and rolls off the table.

The woman puts her left hand on the table to steady herself, reaches down with her right hand and pulls the onion off the floor and takes another bite of it.

– – –

It was then that Hungry Eyes looks uncomfortable and more than a little nauseous.

She offers a weak excuse that she needs to check in with the guards again and leaves the room.

Big Ben and I don’t stop her.

We share an odd but knowing look, that we’re going to continue to watch this even though we can stop at any time.

We really don’t have anything better to do. And we’re curious to see what’s going to happen next.

– – –

July 4, 1999 2:58AM

We both recognize the young man from before, partly because we can see his face, but also because he’s still dressed like Risky Business with the golf club.

Obviously, some time has passed, but Risky Business is doing his routine again.

This time, he’s doing it in front of two people. Another man, this one in a suit, and a woman who’s rail thin and dressed provocatively with high heel boots and a cocktail dress.

The woman turns to look over her shoulder a few times as if she’s expecting trouble, but when she does you can clearly see she’s an older woman, maybe in her early forties or mid fifties. She looks a little wrinkly.

The man in the suit doesn’t turn away so I don’t know what he looks like except that he has dark hair.

When Risky Business is done his routine he comes up to the man in the suit like a puppy. The man in the suit kisses Risky Business and that seems to really excite the woman in the cocktail dress because she looks like she’s adjusting herself, but when it doesn’t stop you can tell she’s masturbating.

Suit then tears open Risky Business’s shirt and it’s then we see Risky Business is trussed up in intricate BDSM rope designs.

Suit must say something because Risky Business kneels in his tighty whities and ripped shirt. Suit must be saying something because Risky Business has his eyes on the man and seems to be saying the same thing over and over.

Risky Business kowtows, hands Suit the golf club, and starts to kiss Suit’s shoes.

– – –

August 18, 1990 3:36AM

A young girl who looks like a teenager is nervously looking around a sporting goods store. She couldn’t look more guilty if she tried.

She grabs what looks like a coil of something and unwraps it. It’s a plastic jump rope.

The girl sits down in the middle of the floor, crosses her legs Indian style, unrolls the jump rope, and begins to chew on it from the middle, gnawing on it like a rodent.

An almost orgasmic expression of relief floods her face as she chews it like a cow chewing cud.

At one point she throws it down and is shaking. She looks like she’s crying because she keeps wiping her face.

She wipes her face with the palms of her hands, picks up the rope and continues to chew it.

– – –

January 31, 2002 11:18PM

A janitor in coveralls is mopping the main foyer of a movie theater. There are still some people around here and there that walk through the screen, but the janitor seems to be alone for most of it.

He’s middle aged and skinny except for a noticeable paunch like a beer belly. He looks… greasy and his hair is a comb-over. He continues to mop and smiles, gestures, and says something to someone who is off-screen. He seems to be saying something and laughs inaudibly, but after a few seconds, he is back to mopping.

There’s a comically large bladder buster plastic cup that must be the largest size cup for soda sitting on the counter of the movie theater. No one else is around or working the counter, so you can assume either the theater is closed or this particular counter is not accepting customers. There’s a popcorn machine in the back so it’s probably by the concessions stand.

The janitor pauses mopping to drink from the plastic cup and continues.

After almost a full twenty minutes, the man takes a long swig from his cup and then takes it off-screen. The man comes back shaking the cup. I assume he’s filled it with ice.

He places the cup on the ground, and, after making sure no one’s looking, he takes the lid off, gives some dunking plunger-type movement to the mop in the water bucket, lifts it from the bucket while it’s dripping, and then lets the dirty mop water fill the cup. Some of it drips onto the already wet floor. He continues this a few times but I had to fast forward it the second time because it was making me feel ill.

The first time I watched it, I had my hands over my eyes and would steal a glance from in between my fingers from time to time to see if it was over.

I think I remember he drank from the cup again when he was done but I didn’t want to watch it again so I didn’t make a note of it.

– – –

February 15, 1994 12:20AM

A woman is holding a baby and is talking to someone in a shoe store.

The woman is in her mid thirties, average weight, and is holding a baby in her arms. As she speaks, she’s trying to soothe the fussy baby, periodically patting the baby or doing a bumpy rocking motion.

The conversation seems to be quite intense. Twice the woman holds up her index finger, pushes it forward, pulls it back, pushes it forward, pulls it back. She’s aggressively arguing her point, and it makes the baby fuss and whine more. Her rocking becomes more and more aggressive.

The woman is now in tears and does the finger motion again, gesticulating with her free arm. The woman is now seething with anger and the baby is full-on crying after minutes of arguing with the person (I assume it’s a person but I never see anyone else so who knows, for her sake I hope there was a person).

It seems to be a one-sided fight.

The camera angle isn’t clear, but the woman puts her baby down on a counter next to some shoe displays and then really goes in on this other person.

She’s wailing hysterically now, screaming, pointing behind her emphatically while looking straight ahead.

In a split second, the woman’s expression tightens until her all her facial features meet in the middle of her face. She snarls and winds her hand back and then brings the full force of a slap to bear on whoever she’s speaking to.

When she slaps whoever it is, she instantly recoils, afraid for some reason. Her reaction of fright is so severe she stumbles backwards, breaking into a sprint.

She tumbles over a chair in the shoe store but keeps running.

Nothing follows her. The baby continues to scream from where the woman left it.

– – –

November 10, 1998 12:03AM

A man, though you can’t really see who they are or what they look like except that they have dark hair, is standing outside of a clothing store.

He’s up against the display of a store window, where the mannequins are displayed behind the glass. The mannequins are modeling underwear so it might be a Victoria’s Secret.

The man’s pants and underwear are pooled at his ankles and he is pushed up against the glass.

He kisses and licks at the glass. Twice, he slams his palm on the window glass streaking it downwards slowly. I swear I can hear the glass squealing in my head when his hand slides down.

– – –

June 7, 1997 5:08AM

For no apparent reason, a woman with long dark frizzy hair runs through the main thoroughfare barefoot holding a mannequin and a CAUTION WET FLOOR sign in her arms.

She jumps off one landing and onto the other, clearing the stairs completely. Her landing is shaky and she knocks herself off balance, and then tumbles down the next set of stairs, ass over teakettle.

The mannequin’s head dislodges and rolls down first with the woman following after. The video cuts out before she makes it to the bottom of the landing.

– – –

March 29, 2001 2:11AM

In the electronics store, a large woman in curlers and a tacky polka dot dress with a frilled hem is throwing boxes of some kind of electronics around. One looks like a box with an older radio/stereo with the huge antenna folded in (the picture of what it should be is on the front of the box). It goes flying and bits of black plastic pour out of the box when it impacts.

There’s broken glass or plastic around her, and a boombox, the kind people used to hold over their shoulders, near her that may or may not be broken too.

She continues on her tirade, until three security guards (or possibly police) come in to apprehend her.

The woman kicks and spits at the guards/officers until she pushes free of them, only to trip face first in front of the camera view over the boombox.

When the woman sits up, you can see she’s cut her lip and is bleeding. She starts to scream in panic and you see that she’s lost her two front teeth.

The guards/police scramble to restrain her.

– – – December 22, 2004 4:55AM

A fat man (presumably a man) dressed as Santa Claus has three little people dressed as elves around him, and by little people I mean actual little people as in people with dwarfism.

They all appear to be noticeably drunk because they are swaying and unable to walk very well.

They’re in an eyewear outlet of some kind. There are spinning towers of glasses that one elf is spinning as fast as he can get it to spin.

Drunk As Fuck Santa has put on an ill-fitting pair of sunglasses and does the hand gesture for “Rock On!” with both hands directly at the camera. His fake beard is starting to fall off. At this angle you can tell that his pants are wet.

While the elves try on glasses, a newcomer enters the frame.

A skinny old woman, dressed as Mrs. Claus in a (presumably) red skirt with white fuzzy lining on the bottom hem seems out and is very agitated. She may not be exactly drunk, since she isn’t staggering, but the antics of Drunk As Fuck Santa and the elves with glasses don’t seem to affect her.

She’s drawn to the posters on the wall. They’re happy smiling fake people with glasses on as if to say, “Look how great we look in our new glasses ha ha ha!”

She screams, shaking her head, and puts her hands over her ears but everyone else ignores her, and Drunk As Fuck Santa continues to mug for the camera, grabbing his crotch and sticking out his tongue.

Mrs. Claus hugs herself, dropping to the floor, and rocking herself back and forth.

One of the elves throws up, and another elf (the one who had been spinning the glasses tower) points and laughs.

A female elf moves to hug Mrs. Claus and pet her wig (which is falling off) while Drunk As Fuck Santa drops his pants to moon the camera.

– – –

I was sickened but still very curious. Big Ben was getting more and more agitated though.

“It’s almost three. We should call in to Radio Silence.”

I was about to respond but the tape hadn’t finished playing yet. We were frozen by our own morbid and masochistic desire to see what else the tape had in store.

– – –

July 28, (the present year) 2:46AM

There was someone sitting in a chair in a smaller room, the TV was on and something was playing. I recognized it as being the Knife Channel. And I thought I recognized the room.

The Knife Channel was our go-to for something so interesting but so bizarre, to see people that excited about knives and swords. It was fascinating.

Someone else walked into the room. It took a moment, but I was startled when I realized that it was me. And this was our TV room.

I realized that that someone was Big Ben sleeping in the chair with the TV on. I know that because I lived it. The girl in the chair – Big Ben – was slumped over, arms crossed with her head laying on top of them.

She was reading a book at the time and had fallen asleep.

The girl who just walked in – me – walked over to Big Ben and shook her gently. Big Ben woke up and I apparently said something smart with a sarcastic tone the way my eyebrows knit together and turned up, mockingly sympathetic.

Big Ben rolled her eyes and said something smart back.

I remember I had said, “Hard at work?”

And Big Ben had said, “Me and what dick?”

I think I rolled my eyes at the dirty joke and I don’t remember exactly what I said after that, probably something about it being Hungry Eyes’ turn to go on break. And then I left the room.

I saw Big Ben’s face morph into a grotesque exaggerated face with her lips curled and moving mockingly as she made a “mouth” with her hand and did the international sign for “blah blah blah” to an empty room.

Big Ben stood up and stretched, apparently very deeply because she clutched her side for a moment. After another stretch she took the book she had been reading and picked it up. I remember that book because it was mine and I had let Big Ben borrow it.

Big Ben seemed to have a thought and then cautiously tiptoed to the door, opened it, and looked around outside before shutting the door again.

Then, unaware of the camera angle, she began to pick her nose.

Not just pick her nose. Big Ben was practically digging for gold.

I watched in abject horror and slight fascination as I saw the Big Ben on screen open up the book and smear her boogers on a random page. With an impish look on her face, she closed the book, licked her booger-digging finger, and wiped her spit and booger covered finger on her pants.

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I don’t know if it was the surreal and frightening feeling of being watched, or that I had witnessed video evidence of Big Ben being disgusting but she immediately got up and ran out of the mall. I was so dumbfounded I didn’t even know what to say or how I could stop her. Before I realized what had happened or that the video was over, Big Ben was gone.

I never saw Big Ben again after that.

Radio Silence and Hungry Eyes said they helped clear out her desk and return her things to her. She didn’t want to see me again, I surmised. As egregious as that was, it wasn’t run away and never return bad, was it?

I think it had more to do with someone had been watching her. Us.

And I can’t say I blame her for that. But I think the mystery of who and why still fascinates me. There hadn’t been any other videos on the tape though.

I remember that when it was done, I dumbly rewound the video and put it back where I found it. I’m quite sure I would show up on camera that night, taking the tape from the filing cabinet tower and putting it back. I guess whoever made the video knows I watched it, assuming they’re still here.

For the next few weeks I found myself thinking about the tape and what it meant. Had they watched it since? Did I know them? As weird as it was, it was the most interesting night of my life.

I also had a thought.

I’ve worked this job for a long time and I have seen some strange and funny things. I know where the 40s tape guy (or girl) keeps their stash. Maybe I should show them some of my favorite stories? “Greatest Hits of the 50s”? I have no way of knowing if the person who made the tape in the first place would see it and watch it, but maybe someone else will find the tape and watch it?

I have so man stories… It might be hard to choose, and I’d need to go through the old videos and see if I can remember when things happened. I could always start with Nightblind falling into the fountain and go from there?

Credit: S. Alphonse