Caught

Miss Hanna’s porch light came on at 9:48. The Ring camera blinked once before the feed steadied. I knew she’d already brushed her teeth, fed her cat, and took her book to her room. Late enough to be in bed but not yet asleep. She always checked the door herself. People lived all around on this quiet street, but she was diligent.

The first time I hit the bell, the sound barely carried past the hedges. Her hallway light came on in a thin gold line under the door. She leaned close to the camera and said hello in that voice she used in the library when kids whispered too loud. The lens caught her eye, reflecting the street like a black marble. For a second she didn’t blink. Just stared into the camera, the way people do when they sense someone on the other side. She saw no one. She opened the door, looked right, then left, her robe catching the light like water. The porch was wide with steps and banisters, surrounded by hedges. She shut the door soft but I could still hear it.

I waited. Gave her enough time to climb back into bed, adjust the blanket, sigh once. Then I hit it again. Louder. Longer. The phone I’d propped in the flowerpot caught both runs, the porch light flicker, the robe, the confusion. I laughed before I watched it.

The video played while I walked home. Her face warped by the confusion. The night looked stretched, edges bent like a funhouse mirror. My breath clouded the screen. I slowed the clip and watched her door close twice, her shadow fold itself up behind it.

When I reached my house, I opened Discord and dropped the file into the channel. Keyhole_Challenge_01. I typed librarian jumpscare lol and added a string of emojis that didn’t mean anything.

The Discord chat lit up before I’d even brushed my teeth.

“Bro,” Brayden wrote, “you see fear in her eyes?”

Maverick sent a string of skull emojis, then, “Caught her in 4K, man.”

Adrian asked how I got the angle like he wanted to know but didn’t want to sound impressed.

Asher finally dropped in, said, “She’s gonna know it was you.”

I laughed and typed, “Nah. She thinks it’s ghosts or something. Worked perfect.”

I watched the typing bubbles blink out, then started again.

“Alright,” I wrote, “new rule. We make it a thing. The Keyhole Challenge.”

Brayden sent, “What, like ding-dong ditch season?”

“Nah,” I said. “Like art. You film it, post it. Whole town’ll freak.”

Adrian replied, “Bro, we’ll get caught.”

“Not if you dress right,” I told them. “Hoodies, masks, black gloves. Cover your face. Don’t wear your normal shoes. Look like you’re going to a protest. No one knows who’s who.”

Maverick wrote, “That’s kinda hard.”

“Exactly,” I said. “That’s the point.”

The chat went quiet for a beat, the cursor blinking like it was waiting for someone to say yes first.

I added one more line before the chat went dark.

“Whoever can stand still the longest without ditching wins this round.”

Brayden dropped a laughing emoji. Adrian didn’t say anything. Maverick typed, “Bet.” The thread froze there, like the moment before a light changes.

The next day Brayden uploaded his own.

I recognized the house right away as the Gibsons. They lived a couple blocks over, the kind of old that made everything move slow. It was a safe choice. The doorbell sound lagged behind the video like an echo, and Mr. Gibson took almost two minutes to reach the porch.

Brayden had done it right. Dark hoodie, hat pulled low, gloves. I typed in the chat, See? Dress clean, move steady, no one can tell who you are.

After that, the rest started posting. Adrian’s clip came next, then Asher’s, then Maverick’s. Each one a little longer, bolder, like they were testing how close they could stand before running.

That night, I overheard my mom in the kitchen talking to my dad. She said the town Facebook chat was blowing up about the ding-dong ditches. The Ring cameras had caught a few, but no one recognized the person.

They all thought it was the same guy.

I decided I would win the round.

Miss Hanna’s light was on again, soft and yellow through the blinds. I told myself I’d stay until she opened the door. I had the ski mask this time, gloves, sleeves pulled over my wrists, shoes wiped clean. No prints, no face, no name. The phone waited behind her porch rail.

I hit the bell and stood there. Her voice came through the speaker, flat and close. “Hello?”

I didn’t move. She said it again, a little sharper. “Who’s out there?”

The porch light flickered when she opened the door. She looked straight at me, eyes wide enough to make the night feel smaller. Neither of us spoke. I could hear her breathing. I could hear mine. Then I grabbed the phone and ran like hell.

By the time I reached my street, my pulse was hammering in my throat. The video caught it all, the stillness, her voice, the moment she saw me. It looked unreal.

I uploaded it.

Brayden wrote, “You’re insane.”

Maverick said, “Jesus, man, she opened the door.”

Adrian asked if I was trying to get arrested.

Asher said he’d seen a squad car drive past her place.

I typed, “Worth it.” Then I watched the typing bubbles appear and vanish like they were scared of me.

I told them the next round started now. Everyone had twenty-four hours to steal as many Amazon packages as they could. It only counted if the house had a Ring doorbell and they had to upload their own footage.

Adrian pushed back first. He said it was theft, said it crossed a line. I told him he’d already crossed one. He only uploaded one box anyway, and I knew he hadn’t kept it. He’d thrown it over the backyard fence of that house, probably felt holy about it. I didn’t call him out.

Brayden won, or thought he did, stealing three packages.

I’d taken six. Didn’t upload them all. Didn’t need to. Someone had to stay mysterious.

Besides, I’d seen every Ring flash red. I knew I was on every feed. My silhouette would be a rumor by morning. My theater would play itself on the town’s Facebook.

Maverick asked, “So what now? More packages or we done?”

I watched the cursor blink and wrote the rules clear. For the rest of the week every mailbox we tag with spray paint was worth one point and every mailbox we smashed in with a bat was worth five. Each of us had to record our own footage from a house with a Ring camera, and we had the week to see how much damage we could score.

They answered with short lines, the way boys make deals. I could feel them lean in. I knew I had them hooked.

My mother drove me to the diner on Maple. She hummed the radio like she always did. I watched the houses slide by through the window and counted the mailboxes we had made into marks. Two houses we had already posted. Seeing the mailboxes in person made it different. The painted streaks looked small and stupid in the world but they meant something to us.

That night I walked out and took my own mailbox off its post. I left the wood and screws piled in the grass and did not upload the footage. I didn’t need to. It kept suspicion thin and kept me pleased in a way I couldn’t reach or quiet.

***

Miss Hanna was at the circulation desk when I walked into the library. Her hair was tied back, her mouth set in a soft line. She looked the same as she had through the camera. When her eyes found mine, I didn’t look away.

She smiled, asked if I needed a book. I told her I was just looking. She nodded and went back to stamping due dates. The motion was steady and easy to predict.

I watched her hands and thought about how small she looked behind that desk. Thought about how close I was now, how she’d stood on the other side of a door I’d already touched. The memory of her voice through the speaker replayed in my head.

I thought of her age like a fact you can set beside other facts. Mid-twenties, thin, a bare hand where a ring could sit, a desk without photographs, an empty parking lot after school. That smallness made her an easy target. I told myself I might go back, just to see if she would open the door for me again.

I opened the chat and posted the new challenge like it was a playbill.

“Tag front doors with paint, or windows if the door has glass,” I wrote. “Try to get a word up before you ditch.”

Brayden asked what kind of words he should use. Adrian typed nothing at first, then asked for an example. Asher dropped a shrug emoji.

I answered like I was teaching a trick. “Think horror movies. Think names that look wrong in the day. Redrum works. Or die, bitch!”

They read it and the dots blinked across the room, the way things wait before someone says yes.

A few minutes later Asher sent a short line. “I’m out.”

I asked what he meant, but the message just sat there.

“Out of what?” I wrote. “You started this with us.”

No reply.

Brayden said, “He’s just scared.” Maverick sent a laughing emoji. Adrian asked if something happened.

I typed, “Come on, Ash. One more round. Then quit if you want.”

The dots flickered, then disappeared. His name stayed in the sidebar, gray and still. I stared at it for a while, waiting for it to light up again, but it never did.

Adrian typed after a long pause. “I’ll do it, but I’m using window paint instead of spray. It washes off.”

Brayden replied with a laughing face, called him soft.

Maverick said, “As long as it shows up on camera, who cares.”

I didn’t answer right away. In my head I called them both pussies, Adrian for playing it safe, Asher for quitting. Still, paint was paint. The cameras would see it, the town would post it, and every clip would land exactly where I wanted it, looping through the feed like a signal nobody could stop.

I typed back, Do what you gotta do.

Then I planned. Our street had been small work, each clip a notch in a town that already talked. If this was going to mean anything it needed a bigger screen. Chapel Ridge was fancier, farther, houses with lights and cameras and people who paid for privacy that looked the same on a feed. I would hit every house I saw that had a doorbell camera. Make it read like someone lived inside and woke up wrong.

I kept my backpack light so I could ditch quickly.

I sat still until the house went quiet. My parents’ TV went low, the pipes settled, and the air in the hall stopped moving. Then I got up, pulled on my shoes, and slipped out the back door. The air outside felt cold in my chest.

I stopped at the first house on the corner of Chapel Ridge and sprayed the word cunt across the white door. It looked wrong against the clean surface, which made it right.

After that I didn’t think about it much. The next house got worse. I started using homophobic slurs, the kind that stick out in headlines and make people whisper when they think no one can hear. I didn’t know why I went that direction except that it would make people talk. These were rich, conservative streets. They cared about image more than truth. The uglier the words, the louder they’d speak. I wanted their feeds to fill with it, neighbors arguing over what kind of monster lived close enough to spell like that.

I cut through side streets, keeping my hood up, switching blocks so no one could piece a pattern together. When I hit my neighborhood again, I passed Amelia’s place. The porch light was on. Their stupid little dog pushed through the flap on the back door and started yapping at nothing. I’d seen Amelia and her little sister Sam walking it around the neighborhood many times.

I watched it a minute, then unlatched the metal gate. It froze when it saw me, tail twitching. I called it quiet, the way you call something small that doesn’t know better. It came easy, trusting. I walked it toward the front, right into the ring of light from their doorbell camera.

I looked straight into the lens and let the dog sit beside me. Didn’t pet it, didn’t touch it at all. I just wanted it in frame. Then I turned and ran.

I don’t know what happened to it after. Maybe they found it. Maybe they didn’t. All I could think about was hearing Amelia tomorrow, talking about it like it was the saddest thing that ever happened, and how I’d have to keep from laughing.

I posted the Chapel Ridge clips first, then the dog video. The chat lit up fast.

Adrian was the first to say it. He called it animal cruelty, said I had gone too far. Brayden told him to chill. Maverick said it was messed up but impressive. Asher came back for one line, said he was done, and left again.

Their names stayed gray after that. No typing bubbles, no replies.

I sat there watching the uploads loop. They wanted to feel big until it got real. They wanted the story, not the work. I told myself they were just background anyway, extras in something I had already made my own.

At lunch I heard Amelia before I saw her. She was sitting with two girls from her math class, voice tight, eyes red. She said their dog was gone. Her mom had checked the Ring footage and told her it was the same guy from the ding-dong ditches.

Her dad was convinced it was some unhoused man, said the town was getting rougher, said the shelters were overflowing and people like that were everywhere now. The girls nodded like it was gospel.

I knew that was not what her dad said. What he really said was that all the homeless drug addicts were making the town go to shit, because I had heard my own father say it the same way a hundred times.

That’s what a proud, conservative, safe town says. It can’t be one of their own.

It made me laugh under my breath. They all still thought it was one guy, some grown man wandering the suburbs. It felt good to know I was still a ghost, that nobody ever looked twice at a kid.

I decided I would go back that night. I packed the spare battery into the camera and slid the ski mask into my pocket like it belonged there. I planned where to set the phone so it would catch the whole porch and the crack of the door. I would kick until the frame loosened, push the door open with my shoulder, step into the light, and hold her until she looked wrong in front of me. Then I would run and watch the clip slow.

I wanted the time between the first shout and the headlights. I wanted to know how long she would stand there before someone came. She was twenty-something, alone, already jumpy. That made the experiment cleaner.

I walked up Miss Hanna’s street with the camera ready, the lens already recording. The porch light came on the same way it always did. I set the phone in the flowerpot, stepped back to test the angle, and pulled my leg up to kick.

The sound hit before I moved. A single crack that tore through the air and pushed me forward. The pain came fast and clean, bright in the back of my head, and then there was nothing holding me upright. The porch came up to meet me.

When I opened my eyes again, I was watching it. My body was folded against the steps, the ski mask bent sideways, one arm twisted under. Across the street stood Brett, her neighbor, the man who mowed his lawn twice a week and waved at kids on bikes. He had been keeping watch on her house since the last break-ins. He was the one holding the rifle.

Miss Hanna ran out screaming, the sound catching on every house around her. She ran into Brett’s yard and into his arms. He dropped the rifle and held her while she kept saying his name.

The Ring camera had caught all of it. My body. The shot. Her scream. The man who fired. Later the police would pull the ski mask off and her face would change again, realizing it was once of her students, caught from every angle.

The feed would be watched by officers. Go to their evidence folders, their training reels, their courtrooms. My death would stay on their screens, running long after everyone else stopped watching.

If my parents decided to go to court, the lawyers would play it again, frame by frame. They would stop the video right before the moment I hit the porch and look away while the rest kept playing. If Miss Hanna decided to go that way, hers would show the same thing but with her face still in the frame, the scream still running.

I would live in that file forever, an image the cameras made permanent, a story everyone would talk about but none of them would ever stop watching.