Rocco's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Rocco wanted one thing from life: to sit in his own house and watch the whole town without leaving his chair. Tonight he finally could. He nailed the last screen to the wall of his front room. Twelve monitors, wired together, glowing blue in the dark. Every hidden camera he planted across town would feed straight to this wall. He wiped his bald head and grinned. His beard itched from three days of work. The house was warm and quiet. Outside, the night was cold and black. Rocco dropped into his chair and flipped the master switch. The wall lit up. Cameras from all over town blinked awake. He saw the motel lobby, where a clerk in a pink uniform stood behind the counter. Her smile never moved. She blinked once, slow, like she felt his eyes on her. Rocco leaned closer. Another screen showed the cemetery at night. A broad man in a white apron walked between the graves, dragging a measuring tape. He knelt, measured a plot, then measured it again. Rocco laughed under his breath. He was seeing everything. Every corner of town, live, from his own front room. Then a screen near the bottom flickered. A hospital hallway. A blond nurse pushed an empty cart past the camera. She stopped. She turned and looked straight up into the lens. "You shouldn't be watching this," she said. Rocco froze. The camera had no speaker. It could not carry sound. But her voice came through his wall, clear and close. He stood up. On another screen, the motel clerk was looking up too. On the cemetery feed, the mortician had stopped measuring. He stared into his camera, tape hanging from his fist. One by one, every face on the wall turned toward Rocco. Twelve screens. Twelve stares. A fist pounded his front door. Rocco jumped. "Turn it off." He knew that voice. He crossed the room and opened the door. A scruffy man stood on his porch, gray hair wild, a sandwich board strapped to his chest. Warnings covered it in black scrawl. Rocco had seen him shouting on street corners for years. Nobody listened. His disasters always came true. "Theo," Rocco said. "How do you know my address?" "Doesn't matter." Theo pointed past him at the glowing wall. "Those cameras don't just look out. They look back. You built twelve open doors. Something's on the other side of every one." Rocco turned. The screens were dark now. Every feed had gone black. Then, in each black square, two small points of light opened. Eyes. Watching him from inside his own wall. "I built this to see the town," Rocco said. His voice cracked. "Not for the town to see me." "Too late." Theo stepped inside and shut the cold out. "You gave it a way in. Now you have to find a way to shut every screen before they finish coming through."