Watch Me Close by Alex Juffer

There’s a very small woman who lives in my ductwork. I’ve seen her bright pinprick eyes between the vent panels tracking me as I do Youtube yoga in my living room.

I pretend I don’t see her. For her sake, or mine. I can’t decide. Otherwise, it’s just me and an orange cat named Rufus–left behind by my nomadic cousin–and Rufus can’t be bothered to acknowledge anyone, including myself.

The new routine makes me realize how much I like being watched. My past lovers were never observant, and we’d oftentimes cut our eyes to the side because we were reflections of a comparable ugliness, of a settling that couldn’t be admitted. The suppression made the sex volcanic but the aftermath a shuffle of grunts and self-deprecation.

Over time, I became insistent with eye contact, which drove a few women away. Not that me and this small woman are lovers. But it does feel intimate, sharing the space.

When my fire alarm beeps because she’s stolen the batteries, I leave curled up notes in the empty space for her. How long have you lived here? Do you get lonely?

The responses come in tight cursive.

As far back as I can remember.

I’ve been alone for so long I don’t know what lonely would feel like.

I clean the vents for her, dusting thoroughly. At an adult education woodworking class, I fashion her a small bed and leave it on the water softener in the basement.

She sings late at night. I press my ear to the bedroom wall and listen. She’s got a terrible voice, but it amazes me that someone so small can cast out such great vibrations. If she hears me rise to use the restroom she stops, suddenly.

I offer her miniature portions of my own meal, crostini bruschetta or a single oyster with three drops of lemon juice and a half dash of tabasco. If she doesn’t like the recipe she sighs loudly. It hurts my feelings, but she’s the only person in my life who’s completely honest with me.

When I get called back into the office five days a week, I end up missing her presence more than I anticipated. All of my coworkers’ chit chat builds to nothing and their gazes are awash in screens. My boss passes my cubicle a dozen times a day so I keep an email draft up, writing nonsense, until the nonsense turns into a fairy tale where I live in the vents too.

There’s no recipient, and I never hit send.

When I come home one day, I follow a thin dribble of blood from the open vent I forgot to relatch after my cleaning to the bathtub where Rufus has deposited the small woman’s limp body.

She’d sewn herself a dress out of old flanneled curtains. I cradle her in my lap, fussing with her hair and slipping her shoes back on, but her limbs flop about in my shaky fingers and I make everything worse.

A cry catches in my throat and I sit on the toilet until the dampness on the back of my neck cools and dries. It feels like a sin to see her for the first time like this, so I move her into a cigar box and line it with velvet. She’s so light that the box doesn’t change weight. I bury her in the backyard, deep enough that she’ll outlast the house.

I can’t stand to keep Rufus around after that. I open the front door and he struts right out.

At night, I have nightmares of the scene that happened while I was at work, at the thought that any action I take to bind love just pushes it away.

Months later, I overcook a steak, burning it as I watch the couple next door share long, leisurely kisses in the alley. I wait, and part of me wants to be caught, to be yelled at for peeping. To have their erotic desires flare angry and be directed at me.

They never look my way. The smoke detector doesn’t activate despite the char in the air, so I pluck it off the ceiling to install new batteries. There’s a new note lodged in it that I never thought to check. I unfurl it.

I don’t mind if you watch me too.

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ALEX JUFFER — Alex lives in a small town in Minnesota with his wife, son, two dogs, and a family of attic squirrels. He’s won competitions, been a Wigleaf Top 50, and has publications in Epoch, Passages North, Monkey Bicycle, Vestal Review, X-R-A-Y, The Los Angeles Review and more. 

Art by JACE REYES — Jace is an illustrator, oil painter, and craftsman based in Seattle, WA. His work aims to capture the beauty of the mundane – the overlooked scenes, and interactions that color everyone’s days Jace has works with nonprofits and other community-based organizations, creating portraits, infographics, coloring pages, and other illustrations that promote events, simplify complex systems, and help increase engagement. His illustrations have been featured by DESC, Seattle Gay News, Real Change News, and the University of Washington Queer Resource Center. You can find more of his work at https://www.jaceofalltrades.art/ or on his Instagram account, @jaceofalltrades.art.