Chapter 5 - The Glass Lens
The black cylinder sat on the center of my dining room table like a small, dead beetle.
Vance had set up two small, high-definition cameras on tripods in the corners of the room, their thin black power cords running across my Persian rug like black snakes. A laptop sat open on the sideboard, its screen split into four small windows displaying technical diagnostics: signal strength, audio levels, and a small counter in the top right corner that read 00:00:00.
"You will sit in the armchair," Vance said, his coat off now, his dark grey waistcoat immaculately fitted over his white shirt. "You will wear the grey silk blouse your daughter purchased for you last week. The collar must remain unbuttoned to three inches above the sternum so the bruise on your neck is visible to the high-resolution lens."
"And if I say no?" I asked from the kitchen doorway.
Vance didn't look up from his laptop. "Then at eleven o'clock, our legal counsel files the fraud documentation with the Hennepin County District Attorney. By two o'clock, Mark is transferred to the federal processing facility in Rochester. By four o'clock, our asset recovery team files an emergency lien against this property for the thirty-five thousand dollar advance Chloe spent on her shop rent."
He turned to face me, his grey eyes flat and unreadable.
"You have twenty minutes, Mrs. Ward. The stream goes live at twelve sharp."
I walked slowly up the stairs to my bedroom. Every step was a slow, deliberate agony, my cracked ribs scraping together under the elastic bandages.
My bedroom was cold. The window was slightly open, letting in the sound of the wind through the bare branches of the oak tree in the yard. On the dresser sat Arthur’s silver cuff links, a small porcelain dish containing three foreign coins from our trip to Canada ten years ago, and a framed photograph of my mother on her wedding day.
I opened the closet. The grey silk blouse Chloe had bought was hanging on a plastic hanger near the front, its tag still attached. It was three hundred dollars—more than I had spent on clothes in two years. She had bought it with the money they paid her to grind lithium into my tea.
I reached past the silk blouse to the very back of the closet, behind my winter coats, where Arthur’s old leather hunting bag was tucked away beneath a stack of wool blankets.
I pulled the bag out. It was heavy, dark leather, cracked around the straps.
Inside, wrapped in an oiled rag, was Arthur’s second box of ammunition—a red cardboard box of Remington 12-gauge magnum shells he had bought when we still lived on the farm in Saint Cloud, before Mark was born, before we moved to the city to give our children a better life.
I took four shells out of the box. They were heavy, their green plastic casings cool against my palm, the yellow brass bases shiny despite thirty years of darkness.
I slipped them into the pocket of my cardigan.
Then I took the grey silk blouse off its hanger, tore the tag off with my teeth, and put it on.
When I came back downstairs, Vance was checking the lighting with a small handheld meter. He looked at me, his eyes lingering on the dark purple mark along my neck, and nodded with satisfaction.
"Good," he said. "Sit. Place your right arm on the armrest. Hold the device in your left hand. When the green light on the tripod flashes, you begin with the text on page two."
I sat down in the chair.
The leather was cold. The rifle was tucked behind the armchair’s heavy velvet skirt, its barrel pointing toward the wall, hidden from the camera's wide-angle lens.
Vance checked his watch. "One minute to live. Remember, Mrs. Ward—eighty-four thousand people are watching this stream. If you break character, if you mention the police, if you attempt to signal for help, the feed cuts instantly and the filings are submitted."
"I understand," I whispered.
The green light on the primary camera began to blink—rapidly at first, then settling into a steady, bright pulse.
Vance clicked his mouse.
"We are live," he murmured from behind the screen.
On the laptop display, the counter in the corner began to move: 00:00:01... 00:00:02... 00:00:03...
Below the video window, a chat box began to scroll at an impossible speed, hundreds of lines of white text flying across the black background like rain against a window pane.
User_884: She looks terrible. Somatic_Guy: Is that genuine contusion? Look at the sternum. Realist_99: The baseline is solid. Look at the orbital scrape. User_102: Start the device. Let's see the frequency response.
Vance pointed a long, pale finger at me from behind the laptop, gesturing for me to read from the card he had placed on the small side table.
I picked up the black cylinder. The glass tip was cold against my thumb.
I looked directly into the blinking green eye of the camera.
"My name is Eleanor Ward," I said, my voice steady, clearer than it had been all morning. "I am sixty-two years old. And today I am going to show you what happens when you trust the people you brought into the world."
Vance’s head snapped up from the laptop screen. His eyes went wide.
"Mrs. Ward," he hissed under his breath. "Read the card."
I didn't look at the card. I kept my eyes fixed on the green light.
"The device in my hand costs forty dollars to manufacture in Shenzhen," I continued, speaking slowly so the automated captions on the stream wouldn't miss a single word. "It is a low-frequency massager used for horse muscle therapy. The company calling itself Aethelgard paid my daughter thirty-five thousand dollars to let my son strike me with an oak stick so they could sell you this stream for five hundred dollars a viewer."
The chat box on the laptop went completely wild, the lines of text moving so fast the screen appeared to vibrate.
User_884: WHAT? Truth_Seeker: Is this part of the script? Somatic_Guy: Wait. Did she say beat her? Admin_01: CUT THE FEED. CUT IT NOW.
Vance lunged forward across the Persian rug, his face twisted in rage, his hand reaching for the main power strip on the floor beside the tripod.
My right hand dropped behind the velvet skirt of the armchair.
I pulled the Remington up, clicked the safety off with my thumb—a loud, heavy CLACK that carried clearly through the studio microphone—and racked the slide, chambering a 3-inch magnum shell with a sound that made Vance freeze mid-stride, his fingers six inches from the power cord.
May you like
The heavy, dark barrel of the 12-gauge was pointed directly at his chest.
"Don't touch that wire, Mr. Vance," I said softly. "The people on the Internet are paying for a show. Let's give them the rest of it."
