Issue 22

Cástulo Aceves
Translated by Michael Langdon

1.

The young man studies the computer monitor as his right hand moves beneath his desk. His name is Arturo, and he is a second-semester business major. He lives alone in a building of foreign students. For the past few hours, he has been doing homework, while glancing from time to time at the webpage www.mynakedsister.com, where, every minute, an image from a hidden webcam is refreshed.

It has been two months since he discovered the site by following the labyrinth of links that is internet pornography. At first, the name of the site seemed too perverted to him, but he still kept an eye on it all afternoon. He saw only a bed in an otherwise unfurnished room. At the end of the day, he noticed movement in the room. He could make out a young woman, thin and very white, who entered with a backpack. A minute later, the girl was seen sitting on the bed, some books at her side. Seventy seconds later, the image was the same, though there was a slight change in the posture of her back. For a while, the boy amused himself wondering if the next image would be more exciting. A half hour passed. Disappointed, he was about to close the website when he saw her standing in the middle of the room. Then she was in her panties. A minute later, she was nude, a dark area of six or seven pixels between her legs. Then she was in bed. Every time the screen updated, there were subtle changes that indicated movement. He felt a growing erection. Without taking his eyes from the monitor, he undressed. He sat again in the chair and caressed himself, imagining her moans, her movements. He came.

2.

Cassandra looks out the window, across the street, at the young man in front of his computer. He seems to be masturbating. She is in her bedroom, having finished her housework for the day. It’s eight o’clock at night and it has gotten dark. Her husband will come home for dinner at nine-thirty. It’s the time of day when either her children are already finished with their homework or she is too exhausted to continue helping them with it. It’s her habit to go upstairs and shut herself in her room to watch telenovelas, read a book, knit, or simply lie in the dark and think about her life. This last activity happens very rarely, because when she reflects on the state of her life in the present, she tends to cry softly. She also cries when she watches telenovelas, reads, or knits. In the past few weeks, she has picked up the habit of staring out her window at the street.

The first time she saw the boy, it was an accident. His open blinds revealed a messy room, its lone inhabitant reading a book. She imagined that he was a student, and she immediately found him attractive. The boy got up and left her field of vision. She stood there, transfixed by that square of yellowish light. He returned wrapped in a towel. As he bent over to look for something in a drawer, he dropped the towel. She stared at his pale buttocks, his slim legs, the shadow hanging between his legs. He responded by blushing slightly, and perhaps conscious of being alone, walked around the room for a while, occasionally jumping up and down. She could have sworn that he was performing for her. After a little while, he turned out the lights, and she went downstairs to cook dinner.

3.

Toshi has lived alone for some time now. His parents think he’s a student, and they send him a monthly allowance. But the truth is that he dropped out of college months ago. The place where he lives is big enough for two. At first, he lived there alone to spare himself the inconvenience of sharing an apartment. He spends most of his time in front of his computer. When a friend advised him that he could make money renting out a room, he thought about it for a while, and since the allowance he receives is barely adequate, he gradually warmed to the idea. For a couple of weeks, young men showed up to look at the room, almost all of them students, but he found a reason to tell all of them that the room was no longer available. The truth was that he didn’t want to give up his privacy, his feeling of enclosed (but absolute) liberty.

After a month, a girl came to look at the apartment. Toshi hadn’t considered this possibility, but she didn’t seem the least bit concerned about having a male roommate. She told him that if he would lower the price, she would cook for him every now and then. “But we’ll both clean up, and you’ll clean the bathroom. And please,” she told him as if she were giving him an order, as if she were the one who was renting a room to him, “put the toilet seat back down after you pee.” The young man accepted shyly, for he had never lived with any woman other than his mother. He was even a bit titillated by the thought of a girl living in his apartment.

The first few days, he barely saw her. It was as if he were still living alone. He spent his days in his room with the door closed, and she did the same. He ran into her occasionally on his way to the bathroom, and they had dinner together a couple of times. “She’s a bad cook,” he thought. “I made a lousy deal.” Soon he got used to sharing the cleaning, to hearing her come home, sometimes bringing female friends with her. For most of the day, while she went to her classes, he stayed home alone. The same friend who had advised him to rent the room suggested that he install a camera to spy on the girl. “Just a prank,” he repeated several times until Toshi was convinced.

One morning, as soon as his roommate left the apartment, he called his friend, and together they hid a spy cam in the air conditioning vent. Shut up in his room, he waited for her to come home. That afternoon, he watched her for several hours while she rested, did homework, or changed clothes. He had shared the camera on the internet. The hardest thing was to see her at dinnertime and hide the embarrassment he felt when he thought about her naked. Later, he got used to it; he also lost interest. He was about to remove the hidden camera when his friend put him in touch with someone interested in paying him for access to the camera feed. A little while later, a website was launched on which supposedly a boy was spying on his sister.

4.

Erin is alone in a café. She’s angry, and she’s contemplating ways of getting revenge. Just yesterday, she was in her bed, naked, masturbating. She thinks about how many people have seen her through the cameras that she discovered hidden in her room. Just thinking of how much time she has lived there, almost six months now, exploited by a pervert who makes money off of her life, infuriates her. When she decided to inquire about the room that a young man was renting near the university, she didn’t think there would be a problem. She has several brothers, she reasoned at the time, and she is used to the company of men. Besides, though he was a little older than she was, the boy seemed inoffensive. Her life during these months has been peaceful. She has no boyfriend; she studies, goes out on the weekends, travels from time to time.

The day before, Erin had showered and then stretched out on the bed to masturbate. She remembers that she was even a little excited by the fact that a man was on the other side of the apartment, a man who didn’t know what she was doing. She slept for a little while and woke up hungry. She put on some sheer pajamas; she liked to see the blushing face of her roommate, who made badly concealed attempts to tear his eyes away from her breasts or her bottom. She left her room and knocked on the boy’s door. When no one responded, she thought that he had gone out. Turning the doorknob, she realized that the door was unlocked—unlike every other time she had tried to open it. Erin had noticed that he had a kind of phobia about entering the room he was renting her, and that he didn’t let her come into his room either.

She spent a little while looking at his disorganized books and DVDs. She saw his computer running and figured he was downloading something from the internet. She noticed a second computer—confirmation for her that the boy was a nerd—and walked over to it. This second machine was bigger; it had a large, flat monitor that had been switched off, and a lot of cables. Erin turned on the screen, revealing an image divided into four parts. She recognized her room from different angles: her bed, her furniture, her underwear thrown on the floor. Shocked and not knowing what else to do, she turned everything off and left the room, locking the door behind her. She grabbed some clothes from her closet and tried, without success, not to turn around and look for the cameras. After dressing in the bathroom with the lights turned off, Erin called a friend and asked if she could spend the night at her house. She hasn’t returned to the apartment since then.

5.

Omar focuses the digital camera, zooms in as far as possible, and takes the photo. His wife is cheating on him. He is watching her through the window of his study, which is next to their bedroom. Through the lens, he can perfectly make out her face. In Omar’s opinion, the boy she is mounting is insignificant, too thin. He can’t recall the last time he saw that expression of lust on his wife’s face. He tries to think of what he’ll say to her when she comes home, how he’ll manage the situation.

He looks at the camera and reviews the great quantity of photos. Usually, he uses it to photograph the female students who live in the building across the street when one of them accidentally leaves the curtains open. He has taken pictures of them wearing pajamas, studying, exercising. Once he was lucky enough to catch one of them changing clothes. He even has a folder of photos of a blonde having sex with a boy, like his wife is doing now. When the photos are good—sharp—he uploads them to a webpage for voyeurs, where he uses the handle “the Stag.”

Today, he came home early, the first time he has done so in quite a while. He focuses on his wife, who has changed position and is now being penetrated from behind by the boy. In this position, she looks even fatter, and the boy looks even skinnier. His wife has gained weight in the past few years, but that’s not why they have drifted apart, he reasons. It’s the silences when they are together, the unbridgeable rift that is present when they touch each other. “I miss her,” he says in a whisper. He still doesn’t know what he’ll say to her, only that nothing will ever be the same again.

6.

Arturo is sitting in front of his computer with his pants down. Cassandra is surreptitiously watching him from the window in her room on the other side of the street. The boy looks astonished at what is happening on the webcam. For the first time, the girl isn’t alone. He doesn’t remember having seen her come home with boyfriends or lovers. But now he can see a young man on his screen. The girl hugs the young man in the first image; sixty seconds later, they are in bed. He seems to notice that the boy is looking toward the camera.

Toshi is aware of the cameras. He feels embarrassed and at the same time tremendously excited. The night before he was surprised that his roommate didn’t let him know she would be spending the night out. A few minutes ago, he saw her arrive and shut herself in her room. Right away, he ran to his computer to spy on her, hoping that she would change clothes or masturbate. He was surprised to see Erin undress and then leave her room. He was even more surprised when he heard her knock at his door. He was trembling when he opened his door, trying to hide the fact that he already knew she was naked. He was defenseless before her assault of kisses, her requests that they make love in her room. He allowed himself to be taken.

As the girl passes her tongue over his cock, Toshi closes his eyes. She stops for a second and gets something out of her backpack. When she starts to tie him to the bed, the boy agrees to go along with the game. Suddenly he feels a tremendous pain as she punches his testicles. When he opens his eyes, he sees Erin getting dressed. He tries to free himself, but it’s impossible. She removes a bottle of hair-removal wax and some implements from her backpack. As Toshi’s anger grows, she applies the wax between his legs. She puts down a strip of paper and casually pulls it back up. He screams from pain and frustration.

On his computer screen, Arturo sees the girl leave the room. Suddenly he sees nothing but static. He pushes a button and switches to a camera that shows the room from another angle. Nothing. A few seconds later, the website stops working. In Toshi’s room, Erin jerks the cables from the computer and throws them out the window. She does the same with her roommate’s DVDs, his flat-screen monitor, his electronic devices, and his clothes. While she’s packing her suitcase, she spits in Toshi’s face. The last thing she does before leaving the apartment is call the police, briefly explaining to them what they’ll find in the apartment.

7.

Arturo returns to his room after classes. He looks out the window and sees only darkness in the house across the street. He misses Cassandra. He smiles thinking of her large, soft breasts, her tremendous ass, the way she let herself be carried away by lust. Their encounters had turned into rituals. Darkness would fall, and at around eight o’clock, if he wanted to see her, he would open his blinds. If she were in her room with the lights turned on, it was a signal that she too was interested. He would undress while she watched, then lie down and wait, leaving the door unlocked. She would appear a little while later.

On one occasion, Cassandra confessed that she had been watching him for weeks. “I felt such tenderness watching you undress in front of that thing,” she said, pointing with her index finger at the computer. She also told him that one day she had seen him leave home more dressed up than usual. Arturo remembered that day because he had wanted to go to a bar. He was feeling somewhat sad because of the disappearance of the website he had used to spy on the girl. When he was drunk, he thought about going home to try to see her one last time. He felt a passionate desire to have met her.

Arturo has a blurry memory of arriving at the door of his building at around one in the morning, making a great effort just to remain on his feet. He allowed himself to fall on the stairs, and curling his body into an oval, he fell asleep. His neighbor was watching him. That night, her husband, Omar, had told her that he would have to work until the wee hours of the morning. She was used to these excuses. She had remained at her window, telling herself that she was waiting for her husband, although in fact she was hoping to see the boy across the street. When she saw the boy sprawled out on the steps of his building, she threw on a robe and went out to the street. She woke him up and helped him walk, practically carrying him. She was surprised by how light the young man was. She asked him which floor and which apartment. When they got to the door, Arturo took a key out of his pocket and gave it to Cassandra. She opened the door just in time for the boy to run to the bathroom and throw up.

From inside, the apartment seemed much smaller than she had imagined. Arturo left the bathroom, and, ignoring Cassandra, began to undress. He lay down naked and dizzy. Cassandra approached his cock, at that moment soft and diminished, and began to kiss it, to nibble on it. It took them only a few minutes to make love. He remembered almost nothing of that night. All the images, all the incidents, were diffuse. His first clear memory was of seeing her naked in front of him. She told him her name and pointed out her room across the street. The next day, Arturo had to look out his window and respond to her greeting to be sure that he hadn’t dreamed their encounter.

8.

Still caught up in his memories of Cassandra, Arturo sits down at his computer. Images don’t excite him anymore. The site that spied on the girl is still down. It has been a week since he saw his neighbor for the last time, as she left his room—silently like always. That night, he thought he saw her crying in her room across the street. He looks at several different pornographic sites, eventually winding up on a voyeuristic site on which people share their photos. He is surprised to see himself. At first, he thinks his imagination is playing tricks on him. He fixes his gaze and concentrates on the image. A series of photographs show him with Cassandra. More than 5,000 people have already viewed this page. The user who uploaded the photos, someone called the Stag, has also provided this description: “My wife, the whore.”

His face reddens as he thinks of his friends who like to visit this kind of website. For a moment, he has trouble catching his breath. He thinks of many things, but nothing concrete. Tears form in his eyes. He goes to the window and he can see, on the other side of the street, a man in Cassandra’s room. He’s sure that it’s her husband. The man is holding a camera and looking at him intently. Arturo remains silent, looking at the other man in the distance. He feels tremendously alone.

Omar looks at him standing there, and he feels hatred but also some sadness. He turns around and looks at his camera. The divorce is in process. He thinks of his children, of his wife. He raises the camera and begins to take photos of the boy, his face, his empty expression. The man feels alone, desperately alone.