The Outside World

Dustin and I had been trying to watch an episode of Bleach for at least 30 minutes, but the onslaught of bass blasts from the parking lot had proven impossible to ignore. 

“I’ve had enough of this,” I said as I stood up. “I’m going to go tell them to turn their music down.”

“I’ll come with you,” Dustin said, though he didn’t get up from the couch. Maybe he thought that I was just talking.

I stood there for a moment, clenching my fists and sweating profusely. The music seemed to have stopped. 

Just when I was about to sit back down, another bass blast hit our apartment and nearly rattled the kitchen window from its frame.

I found myself flying through the front door, screaming “Shut the fuck up! It’s fucking 2:30 AM! What the fuck is wrong with you!”

I was down the stairs and halfway to my neighbor’s Mercedes before I realized that whatever I was doing was probably ill-advised. By this time, however, she had seen me and it was too late to turn back.

She actually felt the need to lock her car as I approached, which stopped me in my tracks.

“Turn your music down!”

She shut her car off, and I decided to go back inside before I embarrassed myself further. Before I could turn away, however, she danced a little jig in her premium leather driver’s seat. Another flash of pure rage overtook me, and I gave her the finger before storming back into my apartment.

Dustin had watched the whole thing from the kitchen window. He looked at me with a horrified expression on his face.

“I know,” I said quietly. “That was bad.”

“I thought you were going to smash her windshield or something.”

“Good thing I didn’t. I probably would’ve gotten arrested.”

Dustin and I were finally able to watch that episode of Bleach, but the night was utterly ruined. I was tortured by wave after wave of anxiety until 4 AM, when I finally knocked myself out with a double dose of sleeping pills.

I was terrified by even the slightest hint of conflict, and now I had started a conflict with someone that I couldn’t run away from.

I found a note taped to our door when I went out for a walk the following afternoon. I wasn’t surprised to see it. I thought about just stuffing it into my pocket and continuing on my daily walk, but the dread welling up inside me was too strong to ignore.

I stepped back inside the apartment and read the note:

I just wanted to say THANK YOU for giving me the GLORIOUS MIDDLE FINGER last night. Now I know that you are the one who called the cops on my kids when they were playing music at 8 PM (Dustin had, actually). I guess all the other neighbors are right. You boys are just shitty neighbors. I know that your (sic) very young, and that you must be very lonely. But you have to think of other people.

I was in my car because I was trying to think how I could tell my kids that their grandfather had died. And you made that harder.

Please don’t do something like that again or I will have to contact Management.

I’d only flipped her off when she’d taunted me. She seemed to have conveniently forgotten that detail. Still, I felt bad about the kids’ grandfather dying.

I was about to drop the note in the trash when the letterhead caught my eye: SUNSHINE HOME NURSING. I dropped the note in the trash and took my walk.

When I returned, I drafted a note of my own:

I’m very sorry for my actions last night. Normally, I wouldn’t have acted like that, but I’m going through a tough time myself. I won’t do anything like that again.

Sincerely,

Xander

I read over my note several times, feeling increasingly disgusted. While I had certainly embarrassed myself, I didn’t really feel like apologizing, especially after her passive-aggressive and judgemental note. I finally decided that apologizing would keep an isolated incident from turning into an ongoing issue.

After checking the parking lot to ensure that the bitch’s Merc was gone, I ran downstairs, dropped my note on her doorstep, and sprinted back upstairs before one of her kids could come out.

The self-loathing was strong in me for the rest of the day, but at least my anxiety had waned by the time I went to sleep the following morning. 

***

My downstairs neighbors seemed to get louder now that they knew they were bothering me. 

A few days after The Incident (as Dustin and I came to call it), I stood by my bedroom window and watched the neighbor girl walk their dog. She was wearing a tight crop-top and a tiny pair of jean shorts. Her golden legs were bare from the tops of her white tennis shoes to the firm flesh just below her shapely ass.

I’d parted the blinds only slightly to avoid detection, though the girl never looked up from her phone. I ogled her for maybe 30 seconds before she turned back toward the building and I quickly closed the blinds.

Though I took deep satisfaction from this petty violation, it wasn’t enough to make up for all the anxiety the girl and her family had caused me. Not nearly enough.

That night, after a few drinks, I found myself on the Sunshine Home Nursing website. I clicked on the “People” page and scanned the employee bios. My neighbor, Sherry Mitchell, was listed as the Assistant Director of Nursing Services.

Now that I knew her name, I was able to find her Facebook page, which led me to her daughter’s page, which led me to the girl’s Instagram account.

The pictures on Carina Mitchell’s Instagram page were pretty standard: high school graduation, college commencement, her dog, outings with her friends, et cetera. She was cute, but still nerdy enough to have ugly friends.

I had to scroll down a ways before I hit the jackpot: A dozen pictures of Carina at the beach. She was wearing a minuscule blue and white striped bikini that left most of her perky tits and about 97% of her tight ass exposed. She didn’t even have tan lines.

“I need to go to the beach more often,” I mumbled.

I took another sip of my whiskey.

There was only one picture that really held my attention: Carina sitting topless on a beach towel, one arm across her breasts. She held a half-empty beer in the other hand. She and whoever had taken the picture ( her boyfriend?) must have gone to one of the undeveloped beaches in the state park.

I smiled. I had just figured out how to get even with her bitch mother. Sherry would be horrified if she knew that thousands of disgusting incels were jerking off to an erotic picture of her barely legal daughter. I was going to post this picture on 4Chan and send a link to the email listed in Sherry’s employee bio. That should just about do it.

A gulp of whiskey washed away the queasiness that I’d felt since I’d opened Carina’s Instagram. I posted the picture and a link to Carina’s Insta on /b/. Though the queasiness had returned with a vengeance, I forced myself to email Sherry from my burner account.

When I was done, I sat back in my chair and stared at my inbox, which was full of porn and gambling promos. I don’t know how long I sat there. Maybe fifteen minutes. Finally, I closed my laptop and stood.

“You gotta be ruthless sometimes, bro,” I said to myself.

I raised my glass, forgetting that I had just emptied it. I cursed myself for not having the foresight to bring the bottle into my room. Now I had to sneak to the kitchen, grab the bottle, and sneak back to my room without alerting Dustin.

Not that he would’ve stopped me. I don’t think that he would’ve even said anything. I just didn’t want there to be any witnesses.

As luck would have it, I was able to grab my bottle and sneak back to my room just before Dustin came out for a glass of water. I prayed that he wouldn’t notice the missing whiskey.

He knocked on my door and I jumped slightly.

“Hey, bro, you want to hang out and watch some sports highlights? Arsenal actually won a match for once.”

I looked at the bottle of Jack Daniels in my hand.

“Um… maybe we can watch the highlights tomorrow? I don’t feel so well tonight.”

“Oh, okay. I hope you feel better.”

“Thanks.”

He shuffled back to his room. I started drinking straight from the bottle, and the night quickly faded to black.

***

I didn’t regain consciousness until mid-morning. Even then, I was in sort of a fugue state, somewhere between drunk and hungover.

Maybe I had only imagined posting that picture on 4Chan. I worked up the strength to get out of bed and shuffle to my desk. I flipped open my laptop and found my burner account’s inbox. No emails from Sherry Mitchell. Maybe I had just been looking for a free trial to some porn site.

I checked the “Sent” folder and saw that the most recent message was titled “Concerning Picture of Carina.”

“Fuuuuuuck.” 

I slowly leaned forward until my forehead was resting on the space bar. Maybe the picture had been overlooked for the furry porn and hentai that /b/tards seemed to prefer to real girls.

I clicked on the link in the body of that email and rubbed my forehead vigorously as the page loaded. I figured that I could live with myself as long as (almost) no one had seen the picture.

My post had received 36 image replies and over 100 text replies. I started to skim through the thread and slammed my laptop shut almost immediately. Someone had hacked Carina and posted dozens of stolen nudes.

I cradled my head in my hands and groaned.

“Oh, fuck.”

I picked up my head. Maybe I could alert the mods and get the pictures taken down. After all, 4Chan supposedly had rules against posting stolen nudes.

I forced myself to flip open my laptop again and scan the thread for an admission of guilt from the hacker. That probably would’ve been enough to get a mod to take down the pictures. Instead, I found a link to a Russian revenge porn site that now featured Carina’s nudes on the front page. Another anon—or maybe it was the hacker themselves—bragged about sending Carina a DM with a link to the revenge porn site.

I stared blankly at the screen for a while.

A few minutes later, I heard Dustin come out of his room and I again slammed the laptop shut, though there was no way that he could’ve known what I’d done.

When had I become the sort of person who would do something like this? At what point had I stopped believing in basic human decency? It was just too much to take.

I shuffled back to my bed and crawled under the covers.

There was no way that this had actually happened. It wasn’t the sort of thing that I would do. I had some dark thoughts from time to time, but I didn’t actually hurt people.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to clear my mind. As always, failing to do so only lead to my anxiety spinning out of control. I had no energy to fight it, so I simply gave in.

I had ruined someone’s life. I deserved to have an anxiety attack.

My illness, however, seemed to be toying with me. I began to calm soon after resigning myself to defeat. I even enjoyed a brief respite before the vortex left by my receding anxiety sucked me down into a shallow, feverish sleep..

Swallowed in a tar-black lake of viscous acid. Grotesque purple jags of pain that are almost beautiful. Ultrasonic pulse of pure terror. Silent scream. Blast-beats on my eardrums.

“…you alright? Xander?”

Thank fuck for Dustin.

I opened my eyes and groaned in pain. It felt like a nail had been driven into my forehead.

“Xander, are you okay, bro? You’re tossing and turning and making weird noises.”

“Uh, yeah. I’m alright. Bad dream.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He padded away. The door to his room squeaked open and closed.

My sheets were soaked with sweat, and my comforter had ended up on the floor. I was cold.

***

I spent the next two weeks trying to forget what I’d done. Though this proved impossible, my transgression weighed on me a little less heavily with each passing day. I felt guilty, sure, but I mostly felt relieved to have averted another breakdown.

I did notice that Carina’s brother was walking their dog, while his sister was nowhere to be seen. I told myself that this was nothing more than a coincidence. She had probably gone on a trip or something. Maybe she had moved into university housing.

When I finally saw Carina again, she looked like death. She was shuffling alongside her brother, who held her limp arm in one hand and the dog’s leash in the other. Even from my second-story window, I could see that her skin was ashen. Her brother said something to her and she mumbled a reply without looking up. A passing breeze blew a lock of her unkempt hair into her face, and when she brushed it back I saw a thick bandage around her wrist.

I stumbled away from my window and fell hard on my ass.

“Uhhh, uhhh, uhhh,” I said. My ears were ringing, and I felt like I was going to pass out.

I sat on the floor for a while with my head in my hands. I kept thinking of the bottle of whiskey in the kitchen, but I didn’t want to drink it. I wanted to pour it out.

How could I ever atone for what I’d done? Confessing and begging forgiveness seemed the obvious answer, but that wouldn’t undo what’d happened. If anything, Carina would feel worse knowing that the man who’d ruined her life lived directly overhead. I would essentially be asking for her permission to feel better about myself.

There was nothing I could do to make this right. Again, I pictured myself pouring out that bottle of whiskey. I realized that there was only one thing I could do. I had to burn Carina’s pain into my memory so that I never did anything like this again.