The camera focuses on the woman, tall and tanned. Seagulls complain in the background. She lets down her curly black hair and runs shaking fingers through it, looking eager to be free of the tight nest. The footage is grainy, but her voice lifts into the moving images as she struggles with her hair, above the wind. She wears black jeans, a loose tank-top. Her nose-ring glints in the streetlight above, her dark tattoos visible even against the grain and the depth of the night.
“Today was rough. Today was hard.”
A man’s voice, behind the camera, asks “How do you think it went?”
She lifts a hand to her forehead, releasing the tension and dragging it through her hair. “No way to tell. I’ve been through enough of these things to know that I know absolutely nothing. There are five other people in that room listening to what I have to say, and none of them, even after I say it, know the truth. Not for sure.” “How many does this make?”
“This is my third.”
“Has it gotten any easier?”
“You know that it hasn’t.”
He muffles the camera microphone–“I know that, but they don’t. This isn’t for me.”
She wipes her mouth with one hand, the other hand through her hair again. She squares her shoulders.
“It has not gotten any easier.”
“How do you think tomorrow will go?”
“I’m tired.” She throws her hair back into the prison of the elastic. “I’m done for the day. Cameras off.” She grabs a large bag on the very edge of the film.
He leaned closer to the screen. This was the sixth instance of footage he had managed to find, scrounging the depths of the internet. He had finally traced its source, and now was digging through the archives of a terribly designed website to find more. There was no more.
He ran his hand through his own hair, smirking as he realized he was mimicking her own gesture of frustration. She was already getting to him, then.
He stood up, stretching his lean arms above his head, with a long inhale for good measure. He had come home every night this week, after a long day at the office, to search the internet for her. Nothing was producing results. The closest he had come to finding her was this blog, old and disused. The last post, the footage he had just watched, was uploaded six months ago. It might be pointless.
He went to bed that night and slept terribly.
Sarah Farnham 