Sean E. Britten

I’ve always been inspired by music (I know, super original!) and music has always been a part of my writing. Way back in the days of burnt CDs, my mates and I used to put together CD mixtapes and I came up with the idea of a series of short stories based around pieces of music. Mixtape is all short stories sharing their titles with different songs and inspired, to various degrees, by their lyrics, artists, and vibe.

Currently Playing: Andy Williams – Music to Watch Girls By

With Erika, I listen to slow jazz. With Alison it’s girly, 90s pop so I can cast her in my own private music video. Opera helps me connect with Cassandra and her emotional highs and lows. My girls and my private soundtracks to their lives. All mine.

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I like to listen to slow jazz when I watch Erika. Meandering melodies that make her movements languorous and graceful. Her limbs are long and supple and they sway with that slow rhythm of the trumpets. Winding along a lonely sonic road. The howl of saxophones evoke a smokey nightclub, dark corners, intimate spaces, the tight beam of a spotlight fixed on a small stage. Her skin is so dark it gleams, she would fit right into that world. Shoulders arched, she’s as upright as a catwalk model. Her head is shaved down to a tight fuzz and that too looks prideful, defiant.

I’m across the street, holding the binoculars to my face as she stalks her living room. Every few seconds I move the eyepieces aside to scan my surroundings and make sure I’m not being observed myself but then my gaze returns to Erika’s window. When she first gets home, she paces from room to room in that prowling, unhurried way, like she can’t settle. She’ll pour a glass of wine, she’ll leaf through her books or records. She’ll cook, I could even sit here for an hour and watch her fold laundry. It’s all the same with that delicious soundtrack matched to her every movement. And it’s enough to know that I can watch her, invisible, omnipotent, without her knowing. Beside me, I’ve got my camera trained on her apartment and connected to my laptop, its lid halfway closed, just in case she does something more titillating though. So I can record it and watch it back, again and again and again. When she moves from room to room, I adjust the camera completely by feel.

For a few moments, I fixate on the points of her small, high breasts as they press, braless, against the material of her blouse. One hand traces her hip and I hope she might be about to remove her pants. But, watching from an outdoor seating area attached to the office building across the road, it’s too cold and too exposed for me to get too excited. It’s bittersweet when she moves to the blinds and draws them closed instead. I’ve been enjoying our time together but it’s time for me to move on. Carefully, I stop the camera and stow it with my laptop and binoculars in my bag. Pausing the music, I wriggle the earphones out of my ears as well.

With Alison, I listen to pop music, high energy, nineties-era, girly stuff. She’s big and blonde and busty, and maybe it’s a cliche but I can’t help but cast her in my own private music video while I watch her. She works out most nights and the driving beats accompany her as she rides the elliptical like she’s hate-fucking it. Sweat sheens her forehead and bare skin, making her clothing cling as the lyrics frame her as both sexy and empowered.

Across the railroad tracks from her apartment window, I repeat the same routine with the binoculars. It’s more secure here though, I’m less likely to be seen thanks to the trees shielding my car. I scout the locations first, finding places from which to watch. Then I test the field, waiting, watching for a few evenings in a row to see if any windows catch my eye. Often, a new location will come to nothing. There’s always something to satisfy that voyeuristic hunger but my girls have to be special. When I discover someone I want to watch again and again and again then I try to find out everything I can about them. From their addresses I can find their mail, their names, and from their names I can usually find their social media. Where they work, their likes, their dislikes, their relationships. Combined with watching them when they think they’re alone, I’m sure I know more about them than anyone else in the world. I own them, and they don’t even know I exist.

Every so often, one of the suburban trains rockets by with its windows filled with travellers. I don’t mind them so much, a hundred half-second glimpses into a hundred different lives. Sometimes there’s the thrill of a pretty face that fixes in my mind, seen by me without seeing me. I wonder if any of the travellers are also watching the windows of the buildings as they pass, and if they spot Alison in that same moment. It makes me a little jealous, a little possessive of the sight of her, when she’s mine, all mine. But they only get a heartbeat worth of her, a passing whiff, as much imagined as seen, while I can and sometimes have watched her for an hour or more without interruption.

After Alison works out, her endorphins must be running high because she likes to literally dance around the apartment in her sweaty clothes. Sometimes she records the dances for TikTok, I’ve seen them myself. With a camera of high enough quality and some video editing software, you might even be able to make me out in the very distant background. The music I’m listening to doesn’t quite match what she’s dancing to so she looks endearingly out of time. Often she’ll strip, indifferent, not trying to be sexy and all the more sexy for it because it’s private and it’s real. She never shuts the blinds. Living by the railway line, she must know that a few dozen passengers each night get a tantalising glimpse when the trains roll past. There’s a streak of the exhibitionist in her just as much as there’s the voyeur in me. So many times I’ve seen this show, I don’t even bother with the distraction of trying to record her. I’ve got recordings enough already filling a folder on the laptop marked with her name, all of them carefully dated and timestamped.

Endorphins still running, I watch Alison move to the bedroom to please herself. This, too, I’ve seen before but I wrestle with the decision whether to get the camera or not. I know from experience though that she’s too quick to make it worthwhile. Wrestling with my jeans, I free myself instead. My vantage doesn’t give me a great view of her on the bed. I’ve considered the possibility of finding another or sneaking a camera into her room somehow. But thanks to a mirror on her closet door I can get glances, strokes of movement, suggestions of flesh. It’s enough to make sure we both finish at the same time. She retreats to the bathroom where I can’t see her. I use some tissues to clean up and move on.

It’s not all about sex though. When I watch Cassandra, Cassie, I listen to opera. She’s slim and pale with dark brown hair, and rarely leaves her pyjamas and robe. From the parking garage across the alley, I can see straight down into her basement apartment. Sometimes, I’ve stood in the alley itself, right outside her window, in the dark. But objectively you might say she’s the least interesting of my girls. She cries a lot or spends hours scrolling on her phone. Sometimes she drinks until she’s insensate. If I wanted to do more than watch, I could walk right in and lay my hands on her.

It’s the dizzying highs and churning lows of the opera that plugs me into her emotional state. I can watch her do nothing for a couple of hours or more, travelling the same emotional landscapes. I find myself weeping alongside her. She’s not as titillating as Alison or Erika but I know her on another level, more than she knows herself.

Up until now, I’ve listened to long and delicate piano pieces when I visit Rebecca. The tinkling notes would carry her from room to room, light and airy on her feet. Thin with dark red hair, she flitted like a fairy as she watered her plants and played with her cats. But tonight it’s death metal. A wall of noise, thrashing guitars and primal screams give me what I need. I watch from my car in the park across the street, only occasionally raising the binoculars to my face, and feel the rage seep into my pores.

When I first found Rebecca, she was recovering from a bad breakup. I listened to sad love songs with her instead and, like with Cassie, we wept together. But night after night I watched her recover. I knew her pain and I knew her strength and her joy. I knew her better than anyone. But then she found herself a new boyfriend. I was forced to watch the two of them interact, getting to know one another. I know that she doesn’t know me but it still feels like a betrayal. I want to forgive her but I can’t. They’re my girls. Mine.

I know her routines. Rebecca doesn’t like to cook, she orders food more nights than not. She flits around the apartment as music screams in my ears. When I see the delivery driver approaching on the yellow bike, I quickly step out of the car and cross the road. They pull up on the sidewalk. I stop at the stairs to meet them, slipping out only one of the earbuds.

“Order for Rebecca?” I ask, holding out my hand.

The delivery guy gives it to me without any problems and drives away. Turning back to the building, I hit the buzzer for her apartment and wait until she lets me in. An automatic light flickers in the entryway. Up a single flight of stairs, I arrive at her front door.

This will be the first time we’ve been face to face. Wedging the second earbud back into my ear, my world becomes noise. I knock on the door and she shouts something, maybe to leave the food. I knock again. Shifting, I use the bag to hide the knife in my hand.

The door cracks open. Her face fills the gap, radiant, sprayed with freckles.

“Hi? You could just leave-,”

I barrel forward, forcing the door. Her smile turns to terror and confusion. When I drop the paper bag, she sees the knife and starts screaming. The music drowns it all out, making her mouth a silent circle. But she sees me watching. Finally, she sees me.

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Sean: God, I finally managed to write a short one. And it’s not even that short. I think this might be the shortest one I’ve written all year and, well, I’m most of the way through stories up until the end of the year and they’re sure as hell not getting any shorter. I think one of them will be conversely the longest one of the year instead. I’m trying!

Some inspiration from Tom Jones – Delilah in this one as well. I had a Best of Tom Jones CD from my mum’s collection back when I was a kid with my first discman and I used to listen to it all the time. That song is a fucking nightmare but definitely floated through my head toward the beginning of the year when I was brainstorming songs to turn into short stories for Mixtape.

Now, you might say, “Hey, Sean, everything alright with you in the romance department? You had kind of a tragic love story last month, and then followed that up with what sounded a little like a couple in a potentially toxic relationship, and then it was sort of another tragic love story and a character defined by crushing loneliness and alienation. And then there’s whatever this is, everything okay there, buddy?”

To which I would say, yeah, everything’s great! My wife and I, as I’ve mentioned, are expecting our first kid in November and everything has been looking really positive! Very excited about it although I will admit, very, very busy and a little distracted. Sometimes, the stories just work out that way. If it helps, I wanted to keep some more straightforward horror fun for the month of October, with Halloween and all, so that’s what’s coming up in the next couple of stories! Just look at the next track coming up on this Mixtape, nothing too terrible could happen there, right?

Next Track: Werner Thomas – The Chicken Dance