Documentary-Grade Paranoia
The notebook's spine splits like a broken jaw, pages fanning out, a paper autopsy of three months' surveillance. Blue ink hemorrhages through college-ruled paper, each word a burst capillary, each sentence a small death. Her fingernails don't exist anymore. Just raw meat where keratin should be, cuticles weeping clear fluid that tastes like pennies and madness when she sucks them to stop the sting.
Tuesday, 8:13 p.m. - Mrs. Carlton. Two trash bags. Black. Hefty brand. The twist-ties always double-knotted.
Her eye socket bruises against the peephole's brass rim, purple flesh married to metal, cornea drying, blood vessels mapping tiny explosions across her sclera. The hallway throbs like exposed nerve. Beige carpet breathing, fluorescent tubes dying in stuttered morse code. She writes without looking, pen gouging through three sheets at once, carving evidence into pulp. The paper shreds. Her hand keeps moving.
Kevin - 4C. Shower #1: 6:00 a.m. (fourteen minutes, twelve seconds). Shower #2: 8:30 p.m. (fourteen minutes, thirty-one seconds). Uses Irish Spring. I can smell it through the vents.
Crack.
Her neck pops. Three days hunched at this door. The apartment reeks: burnt coffee, unwashed skin, the metallic tang of paranoia sweating through pores. Three monitors burn her retinas. Killer Instinct, episode 47, frozen on a close-up: The Suburban Strangler's hands. Manicured. Clean.
She knows those hands. They look like Kevin's.
The pipes scream. Kevin's shower. Right on time. The water hits the tub in a specific pattern—thud-thud-splash—that she's memorized like a heartbeat. She counts: shampoo (forty-five seconds), first rinse (twenty seconds), body wash (two minutes, fifteen seconds). The squeak when he turns to rinse his back.
Who showers twice a day?
Who needs that much washing?
Blood. Blood needs that much washing.
Miguel's dog clicks past, nails on hardwood, four-four time, metronomic. That dog bit a child once. Mildred saw it happen. Miguel just smiled, pulled the animal away, whispered something in Spanish that sounded like a prayer or a threat. The child's mother never reported it. Too scared. Smart woman.
Miguel - 4B. Dog walks: 7:15 p.m. sharp. Returns: 7:42. Twenty-seven minutes. Where do they go for twenty-seven minutes?
Her hand cramps. Tendons screaming. Sixty-three pages now. She's mapped their entire ecosystem. This building breathes with routine, exhales patterns that only she can decode. Mrs. Carlton's Tuesday trash. Kevin's bilateral bathing. Miguel's clockwork walks. The couple in 2A who fight every Friday at 11:30 p.m., plates breaking, silence, then rhythmic thumping against the shared wall.
Make-up sex or murder. Both sound the same through drywall.
BANG.
Upstairs. Mrs. Carlton's unit. 2:14 a.m. Too loud for dropped dentures. Too wet for fallen books. Mildred's pulse hammers Morse code against her throat: S.O.S. S.O.S. S.O.S.
She presses her ear to the ceiling. Dragging sounds. Heavy. Dead weight heavy. She knows because episode 31 taught her: corpses sound different than furniture. Lower frequency. Meatier.
Morning comes like a fever breaking. Kevin's in the hallway, hair still wet from shower number one, whistling. Always Beethoven's Ninth. The Ode to Joy. Serial killers love irony.
"Coffee?" His teeth are too white. Veneers maybe. Or bleached. Bleach. Good for teeth. Better for crime scenes.
Her stomach floods with acid. "Sure."
Kevin orders black. No sugar. No cream. No humanity. He leans forward. She can see her reflection in his pupils.
"You look tired, Mildred."
"I haven't been sleeping."
"Thin walls?" That smile. "I hear you walking around at night. Writing."
Ice water in her veins. "How do you—"
"I hear everything." He sips. Swallows. Adam's apple bobbing like a snake digesting. "Every. Thing."
She runs. Literally. Knocks over her chair. Spills his coffee. His laughter follows her out. Not angry, not surprised. Delighted.
Three days later: silence upstairs.
No Tuesday trash. No 2 a.m. footsteps. No Mrs. Carlton. The super mumbles something about Portland, about family, about emergencies. But Mildred knows. The building knows. The walls are holding their breath.
The smell starts Thursday. Sweet rot. Like lilies decomposing in honey.
Kevin stops his evening shower.
Just mornings now.
Why?
Because the job is done. Because the evidence is washed. Because—
She picks his lock with a bobby pin and pure adrenaline. Thirty seconds. She's practiced on her own door until her fingers bled. The apartment opens like a wound.
Coffee grounds. Lysol. Underneath: copper and corruption.
The stain spreads from the kitchen. Faint pink on beige carpet, still damp, still fresh. She drops. Knees grinding fiber. Fingers testing moisture. The smell hits harder down here. Meat. Old meat. Sweet meat.
"Looking for evidence?"
Kevin. Doorway. Tea cup steaming. She didn't hear him. Didn't hear anything but her own heart trying to claw out of her chest.
"The stain—"
"Cranberry juice." He steps closer. The air thickens. "But you don't believe that."
Her eyes find the wall. Her lungs forget how to work.
Newspaper clippings. Framed. Pristine.
TRUE CRIME DOCUMENTARY FANATIC FOUND DEAD IN HER APARTMENT
Her face. That corporate headshot. Smiling. Dead. The date: November 19th. Next Tuesday.
"That's not—" The words dissolve.
More headlines swim into focus:
WOMAN'S PARANOID DELUSIONS LEAD TO TRAGIC END
OBSESSED WITH MURDER: THE MILDRED FILES
DOCUMENTARY-GRADE PARANOIA: WHEN WATCHING BECOMES SICKNESS
All dated next week. Next month. Next year.
"It's not paranoia," Kevin whispers, breath hot on her neck, "if it's true."
CRACK.
The teacup explodes. Ceramic shrapnel. Boiling water. But Kevin doesn't flinch. His smile stretches—then stops.
"Look at the screen, Mildred."
She turns. The monitors on her desk, all three, show the same image. Not Killer Instinct. Not episode 47.
Her.
Mildred, on screen, strangling Mrs. Carlton with a twist-tie. Tuesday, 8:13 p.m. The timestamp burns in the corner.
"No." The word comes out wet. "That's not—"
Next monitor: Mildred in Miguel's apartment. The dog cowering. Miguel on the floor, throat opened like a second mouth. Her hands red to the wrists.
"Episode 63," Kevin says. "We've been documenting you for three months."
The newspaper clippings on his wall shift focus. Not predictions. Archives.
LOCAL WOMAN KILLS FIVE IN APARTMENT BUILDING Date: Six months ago.
THE PATTERN KILLER: HOW MILDRED TORRENCE TURNED ROUTINE INTO MURDER Date: Five months ago.
KILLER INSTINCT SEASON 9: THE MILDRED FILES Date: Last week.
She looks at her hands. Clean. But underneath the nails, something dark. Something that won't wash out. Something that needs two showers a day to almost forget.
"You signed the release," Kevin continues. Camera in his hand now. Red light blinking. Recording. "Post-conviction. Said you wanted to understand what you'd done. Said watching yourself might help."
The notebook in her hands. She flips through. Not her handwriting. Her handwriting mirrored. Backward. Like reading through glass. Like watching from the other side.
"We gave you this apartment. Identical building. Hired actors. Mrs. Carlton's upstairs right now. The real one's been dead for seven months. You killed her with a hammer. Tuesdays, you said. Always Tuesdays."
Bang.
Footsteps above. Mrs. Carlton, not Mrs. Carlton, walking. Acting. Playing dead.
"The showers," Mildred whispers. "Your showers—"
"Makeup. Blood packs. Reset between scenes." Kevin sets down the camera. "But you started remembering wrong. Started thinking you were watching the show instead of being in it. The producers thought it was fascinating. Killer studying herself so hard she forgets she's the killer."
She runs to the bathroom. Mirror. Her face. Older. Eyes that have seen things. Done things. In the reflection, behind her, cameras. Everywhere. In the walls. In the ceiling. Little red eyes watching watching watching.
"Episode 64 airs Tuesday," Kevin says from the doorway. "The one where you realize. This one. Right now. The ratings will be incredible."
She smashes the mirror. Seven years bad luck. Glass in her palm. Blood, real blood, dripping. It smells familiar.
"There's one more thing," Kevin says.
She turns. He's not holding a camera anymore. He's holding a knife. A real one.
"I'm not an actor."
The smile returns. Genuine this time.
"Mrs. Carlton wasn't the only one who died on a Tuesday. The real documentary crew, they've been gone for weeks. I've been filming my own show. About you. About me. About what happens when you put two killers in a box and shake."
She laughs. Can't help it. The sound tears through her throat like broken glass.
"Episode 65," she says, blood bubbling between her teeth. "The crossover episode."
Kevin nods. Steps closer. The knife catches fluorescent light.
"The one where we find out what happens when paranoia meets paranoia."
She grabs a shard of mirror. Hefts it like truth.
"Action," they say together.
The cameras roll. Always have been. Always will be.
Somewhere, an audience watches. Participation and observation collapsed into one hemorrhaging moment. The apartment breathes. The walls pulse. Everything is performance. Everything is real.
Everything is perfectly, impossibly normal.