Through the Keyhole

The story begins, as all treacherously good disasters do, with procrastination.

The challenge prompt is open on one screen: Write a story that begins with someone peering through a keyhole or modern equivalent. I've been staring at the prompt long enough that the words have utterly lost meaning. Keyhole. Key. Hole. Holey key. Holey moly. ... My brain is stuck in a buffering loop.

There's a mug of coffee beside me that has turned to the color of regret. The cursor is judging me, blinking at me like a cat wondering why their human is broken. Somewhere in the apartment, my fridge is humming in solidarity with my brain-dead state.

"Fine, I'll write your damn voyeur story," I mutter, and open my webcam app. In an age of streaming, what could be more of a modern keyhole than that?

The little green light pops on, letting me know it's more awake than I am and eager to perform.

I stare at my own face. Pale. Kind of greasy. Tired. The kind of person who could probably commit to a week-long true crime binge as long as there's a healthy supply of yarn and Doritos without changing out of their crusty, cheese-dusty shirt. I balk at my reflection.

"This is tragic," I say. "You're supposed to look like a mysterious literary genius, not a raccoon with Wi-Fi and a bad wig."

My reflection doesn't laugh.

I frown. "Rude."

It blinks a beat late. Just slightly. Like playing a video game that has annoyingly persistent lag.

That's new.

I wave a hand in front of the camera. Reflection waves back, perfectly in sync. I tilt my head left; it tilts right. Normal. I lean closer, and suddenly I'm extremely aware of how badly I need a pore strip as I stare at my nose overtaking the screen.

Yikes.

"You're losing it, girl," I mutter to myself. It's true, but I like to think that it's in that quirky, manageable, I'm such a creative kind of way. I close the webcam tab. The green light stays on.

I click out of everything. The glow persists.

"Google, you out here spying on me?"

Silence. I think even the fridge stopped humming.

I hover over the light with my thumb. The glow seems to pulse like a breath, slow and steady.

My laptop fan kicks on, and my reflection reappears in the black screen. I pause; I look older. Maybe five, six years. Enough to notice; same face, same eyes, but just a little softer. Forgot to touch up my roots, too. Looks like I've given up on optimism and eyeliner altogether.

She looks like she's reading something.

I watch her mouth move and realize she's saying the first line that I just wrote: The story begins, as all treacherously good disasters do, with procrastination.

"Oh, that's just creepy. What the hell?"

Older Me looks up.

I snap the laptop shut.

After a minute, I carefully open the laptop again. She's still there, mid-sentence, eyes flicking across invisible text.

I type: Who are you?

She looks up, smiles without any humor, and types the same thing back to me.

I laugh, a forced, nervous sound. "Ha Ha Ha. Real funny. Lagging FaceTime from hell."

She gives me an exasperated look, then mouths, Keep writing.

My stomach drops like an anvil in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

I scroll back up. The document has new lines written, lines that I didn't write. They're good. Too good. Disturbingly good. Things I've never said out loud about why I write; about needing to be seen, even if it means ripping my heart out and bleeding for strangers who will forget about me after two scrolls and a TikTok notification.

I delete a paragraph. The reflection winces.

I type another: The writer watches herself watching. The page eats her line by line.

Older Me dissolves into tears.

"Okay, I'm officially over and done with this bit," I say. "This isn't funny anymore."

The cursor starts crawling across the screen: You started it.

I shove back from my desk, diving for the power cord and ripping it out of the wall.

Screen goes black.

Green light stays on.

I sit frozen, staring at the screen. It feels like the air has weight, like the whole room is holding its breath.

From the dark screen, a faint image flickers. I lean forward; it's my outline, standing in the doorway behind me. Except... I'm still sitting on the floor.

I turn around. Empty doorway.

When I look back, she's closer to the camera. The light from the screen catches only half her face, but it's enough to recognize my own dark, bruised circles under my eyes, showing off complete and utter exhaustion.

She mouths, almost begging, Keep going.

I carefully pull my chair back to my desk, tentatively sit in it, and stare at the document. A deep breath later, and my hands are moving faster than I can think. Words spill out: a story about a writer who looks through her screen and sees the end of her own story. A story that starts with someone peering through a keyhole, the modern kind that glows and records.

The document autocorrects my typos before I can finish making them. The cursor races ahead, writing faster than I'm physically capable of.

She thought she was writing fiction, but fiction was just the window.

I whisper, "Stop."

It types, You can't.

I try closing the laptop again, harder this time. A small noise escapes it, like a sigh between the fan and hinge.

When I open it again, the reflection has changed. The screen shows a livestream of my desk, at this exact moment. The camera is peeking from somewhere behind me. The viewfinder shifts slightly, like the person with the camera had to adjust in their seat.

I reach up and cover my webcam. The image doesn't change.

A voice comes through my laptop speakers; it's mine, but warped and layered, like a bad recording being played into an echoing cathedral.

"You wanted a story about looking," it says. "You just didn't think about who was looking back."

The screen fills with text, auto-generating line after line:

She hit publish. She hit publish. She hit publish. She hit publish.

I reach for the power button, remembering a moment later that the laptop with the faulty battery wasn't even plugged in.

"You can't unsee it now," the voice says. "You can only finish it."

I type without meaning to: The story begins, as all treacherously good disasters do, with procrastination.

The light blinks off.

My reflection is gone.

In its place, I see the challenge submission form. The title field is already filled out: Through the Keyhole. The cursor blinks at me.

For a long time, I stare. Then I click Publish.

The laptop fan exhales.

The green light comes back on.

And somewhere, just past the glass, someone leans forward to watch.