tw: dead birds & blood.
Long before the current residents moved into the apartment, there had been another tenant. His name was ████ and he was ██ years old. He didn't talk to any of the other residents of the building. Perhaps the occasional greeting to the janitor, to which the janitor would respond with a curt head nod and continuing to clean the floors with his red-stained mop.
████ liked to film. He filmed many things.
One of the present residents, the son, had found one of ████'s tapes inside a hard drive. The camera, a vintage little thing, with scratches and chipped pieces, was found in its box inside his closet. The box had some letters written in English and had the camera itself and its charger. A boy had taken the drive and looked through the gallery and clicked on the very first video.
It was filmed on ██████ ██, ███
The first shot captures a window. Dusty. Water-stained. The outlook is of the sky and the parking lot. Grey. Despondent.
Then, it cuts to four random scenes:
The sunflower under the stairs. A leafless oak tree in autumn. Footprints in snow, leading up to the same tree. The graffiti on the backside of the building.
It was terribly edited and filmed on a low-quality camera. He thought that if this had been filmed on something of higher quality, it wouldn't have the same effect as it did then. The whole tape is silent, side for the background noises and wind. The boy picked up a far away scream or two in the next few shots, but he dismissed it, not wanting to put himself at risk for something to take him away.
The first video ends and he clicks on the most recent one, filmed on ███ █, ███.
Deep shadows of the hallway. A blinking exit sign. A dead bird. Blood on the bathroom floor. The janitor's red-stained mop. Running through the forest in the dark. Shattered glass. A clear, blue sky. The name ████ ██████ on a gravestone. A black thing at the edge of a shot.
The boy replays that clip again. Rewinding two times, four times, six times. The figure was still there. It was human-shaped, but not exactly human at all.
He shutdowns his computer, taking out the drive and throwing it out his window. But how unfortunate it was for him to find it once again, seconds later, hidden in plain sight. Right on top of his desk.
At night, tucked in tightly in his blankets, he realizes the reason why that was the last video on the camera, and why when he and his mother moved in, the belongings of the last resident were still there.
