Doorbell Footage by Elijah Rah

I still remember the way she begged me to open the door on my doorbell footage even as I deliberately shoved her name out of my mind when she appeared on the news a day later. It was easy to forget her name - simple text on an article as opposed to the anguished voice of that little girl’s calls for help that I can’t scrape out of my mind. In one frame she looks like a ghost. I know it’s not because she was a ghost. I know it’s just the quality of the doorbell camera. She was still alive then and I had the opportunity to keep her alive.

That ghostly frame haunts me. Sometimes I feel it haunts me more than the audio because of some supernatural element and I tell myself that guilt should swallow me if I’m a good person, not the fear of the paranormal. Then I tell myself that worrying about being a good or bad person is worthless because a good person would have opened the door.

I told the police I thought it was a trap when I sent them the footage and that’s why I didn’t open the door. I got away with not helping the little girl. There’s nothing to save her now and prison would only make my suffering worse. Hurting myself will happen in the machinations of my mind but hurting myself intentionally and in ways I can stop myself from doing is of no use. Penance is self-aggrandizement. It’s not the mark of a good person but a person guilty with the knowledge they aren’t good so they take a glorified view of their supposed wickedness.

I don’t suppose I can call myself a wicked man. I don’t suppose I can call myself anything special. Perhaps people tell themselves they are awful because to be awful is to be special in some sense or so they believe. They believe that it is easier to see the nails sticking out when they stick out far rather than when they stay near to the board they are nailed to but the truth is that by nature of averages most people who think themselves wicked or awful or simply average. I want to think that this dwelling on my inaction can cause a change in me but it won’t - it’s just making me suffer.