The Record.

People say there are two sides to every story, but that’s lazy. There’s truth, and the version people tell to look better. I started a record: notes, recordings. When this blows over, I’ll have proof: I stayed fair. The record remembers better than I do.

I met Clara last fall at Ryan Keller’s birthday. My roommate was dating her best friend, which made me his accomplice for the night. Loud apartment, sticky counters, music that never reached the chorus. I was ready to leave when she appeared; blonde hair, red heels that didn’t match her dress, devil-red, impossible to ignore. She laughed at something I said, a sound rooting any sane man in place.

We were never anything, but one night we almost made sense. I thought I’d found someone who could look at my wounds without pity, and I told her things I shouldn’t have. It ended.

Her friends hovered like carrion birds. They wouldn’t let it go. Neither would the record.

“You’re certain about fairness,” my therapist says.

“Someone has to be. Without it, everything collapses into feeling, and feelings betray.”

She wrote one letter—P. Progress, maybe. Paranoia. I prefer precision. The record demands it.

Item 1
West Hollywood
Friday, 12:53 a.m.
Obscene gesture
Notes: Clara and friends at bar, beneath red strobe. Raised middle finger. Hostile. Target: me.
The bass pounded like a migraine. Clara and her friends were at the bar, guzzling tequila like it was their calling. I wasn’t looking at them; we don’t stare. My eyes flicked over once, enough to see a hand rise like a flare, folding every finger but one. A less disciplined man would have demanded an apology. But I let it pass. The next morning, the story had grown three heads. She told people I’d been “staring at them all night.” So I logged truth after truth the moment the lies spread. The record dislikes omissions.
Therapy note: “What else did you notice?” she asked.
“Nothing. We only saw the finger.”
“From the far side of the room,” she noted, scribbling.
“It was like a beacon.”
She underlined something, claimed I’d said we.

Item 2
House party on Hiroway
Saturday, 1:11 a.m. (or 1:17 a.m.? The record disagrees. The record corrects me.)
Physical assault
Notes: Narrow hallway, poor ventilation, bodies pressed as in a can of sardines. Victim (me): 6’3”, 200 lbs. Aggressor: approx. 5’6”, 115 lbs.
I paused in the doorway to text my roommate how Clara and her entourage had ambushed me at yet another function when she barreled into me. “Sorry!” she threw back over her shoulder. Physics would say it couldn’t have knocked me over; intention would. Her apology buzzed in my ear longer than it should have. Played back, rewound, warped. I took to the record like a moth to a flame.

“Could it be you were in her way?” my therapist probed.

“Everyone was,” I snapped. “It’s not the same.” She circled something. Maybe the P again. P for pedant. The record remembers.

Item 3
Mitt Street, Ring camera
Saturday, 8:38 p.m.
Verbal harassment
Notes: Clara and friend. Laughing. Message:“Fuck you. I hope you see this.”
They came home past midnight, neon with alcohol, all elbow and giggle, and our doorbell blinked to life. The Ring app added it automatically to my folder. The record keeps itself. I watched them step onto the porch from the grainy footage, the mat spelling WELCOME. They laughed, leaned close. She stared straight into the lens, her smile a knife. The record saw it. I watched it back. That’s what it comes down to: I see / We see / We remember.
Therapy note:
She tilted her head. “That’s it? Ten seconds?”
“It lasts longer if you know how to watch.”
“It’s looping.”
“The feed runs whether I press play or not.”
She looked at the paused frame, Clara’s face warped in the fisheye. “There’s a line between recording and shaping,” she said. “Do you still see it?”
“I see truth.”

Items 4, 5, 6…
Everywhere. Incessant. Collapse of evidence into witness.

Her message projected across every surface, even the backs of my eyelids. Her mouth would unhinge at the jaw like a boa. Her words devolved nightly, spilling from still lips: You’ll never stop. You think this is truth? You are the record now. My therapist might call it “obsession,” but I was verifying. We were verifying. The record keeps me.

Interim Entry
Internal. Fragmented.
Witness = evidence. Evidence = witness. Continuation requires erasure of duplicates.

I went outside. Two in the morning, the world pulsing red in time with each taunting wink of the doorbell. The letters of the welcome mat had rearranged into a taunting demand: WATCH ME. The phone weighed down my back pocket, already open to the feed. The archive was running.

The little black camera iris opened until it filled the whole door. I leaned closer and saw not my reflection, but a thousand versions of myself stacked like cards, each gripping the hammer tighter.

“I see you,” I told it. But it was my voice that answered, the warped playback whispering through the delay, through my jeans: No. We see you.

I swung. The glass spiderwebbed; the light stayed on. Sparks crawled across my knuckles as the house convulsed, laughing through its vents. The shards whispered, endless mouths hissing: erase the witness.

The hammer was in my hand. The hammer was in my head. Precision demanded removal. Fairness demanded clarity. The record kept running.

Final Entry
Mitt Street, front porch
Termination
Witness = me. Me = record. Record = fair.
Neighbors reported a noise, dull and wet, then a silence so thick it pressed the air flat across the street. The doorbell lay in ruins, hammer beside it. At the bottom of the steps, eyes caved, was the man who’d sworn he was keeping the record. The Ring footage, when recovered, showed one file: a man fogging the lens, whispering one word, over and over: “Fair.”

Liliana Megharief is an aspiring editor and writer. She’s a senior studying Economics and pursuing a master’s in Literary Editing and Publishing at USC. In her free time, she’s usually devouring books, staging ballet pieces, or pretending she doesn’t have another essay due.