Viewfinder
Marc Lowe

i

On the hilltop I stand — me, alone, standing here peering through the viewfinder of this camera, observing the shapes and colors of my dreaming head. Yours is the image I see now, naked, a finger inside yourself, watching me watching you watching me, or so it appears, though certainly you aren’t aware of my presence (how could you be? I’m so far away) … But then you disappear, dragged out of sight by three boys — or perhaps I should say young men — and I have to adjust the angle of my camera to the place from which the sounds of screaming and moaning emanate. My gaze soon comes to rest upon the storefront of a small, dilapidated video shop …

ii

On the hilltop I focus — just me, refocusing the lens of my camera so that, through its viewfinder, I am able to see inside the window of the video shop where the three boys have you; they’re having you on the floor of the filthy video shop, and the owner — who is also filthy, literally, brown stains all over his filthy pink button-down top — is watching me watching you watching them, and all I can think about is how wrong this is, about how I shouldn’t be standing here doing this (do they see me? I’m so very far away), and yet I continue to do it because I simply can’t stop.

iii

But already the owner has disappeared, dragged away by the three boys, and although I can’t see him or the three young men who have taken him out of the picture, I can hear more screaming and moaning, and when the boys reappear in my viewfinder they are filthier than the owner had been, filthier than three butchers just emerged from an abattoir, covered in all manner of filth. All is shrouded in silence as I readjust my sites, zoom in on your three strapping young men, who are now inside of you inside of me inside of you inside —

iv

I am standing on this hilltop, looking through the viewfinder, watching the shapes and forms that emerge from my dreaming head. I feel your hand slip into mine from behind, feel your soft, ovular belly and breasts press against my back as I continue to observe you through the viewfinder; you who are now covered in the filth of the three young men as you emerge from the video shop/abattoir and return to your original place, a finger inside yourself, watching me watching you watching me standing atop this hill to discover that you are the one holding the camera and I the object you’re looking at through the viewfinder from so far, far away.

Marc Lowe’s fictions, hybrids, and essays can be read in various journals, including The Angler, elimae, Internet Fiction, Mindfire Renewed, Opium Magazine, Pindeldyboz, Pinstripe Fedora, Sein und Werden, and Thieves Jargon. Lowe holds a Master’s degree in Japanese literature, is an editor for the online multimedia journal Mad Hatters’ Review, and is working on a novel. Visit his website at www.malo23.com for more information.