Feed

Short Fiction

Dog Camera, 2020, Photograph, Getty Images

That Bluechew one is on, having modified its vertically formatted clips to our TV by shouldering them with thick black bars or, in the case of one woman, multiplying her image across the screen in many-headed tile mode, and Helen, on her phone, scrolling, tilts her head up from where it rests in my lap.

— We need this

she says, and shows me: this one a woman describing the miracle of her dog feeder, and like the Bluechew sirens she too has adopted a soft pornish tilt of the body and voice. This dog feeder changed her life, she tells us, and describes the feeder, its camera, which connects to an app on her phone and captures live video feed of the dog — the dog, barking, begging, degraded in pixelation — and allows her to dispense food remotely or communicate with the dog through the feeder’s two-way audio system:

— Good girl

— I love you

and I look now at Héloïse in the corner, curled up like the wet end of a mop, her bed mangy and chewed through and who, in the month since we brought her home, has already inspired talks of dog Xanax cached in peanut butter.

Helen straightens and stills.

— What?

I ask, but she’s only waiting for Face ID to autofill her credit card information.

Our show has come back on. I try to back up to where the ads ended but scrub too far, accidentally invoke the Bluechew women who reappear, now, shiny-haired incantating their chorus without rest, forever always asking only that I, and others like me, become the best men and lovers we might be.

---

It comes. We put it in the corner, where its white obelisk body obfuscates the food, dispensed at our command into the bowl at its base. On its surface the camera is round and black.

Watching the feed I am at first disturbed by the emptiness of Héloïse’s independent time and I wish for her a rich interior life as she walks from room to room staring blankly through objects or assuming complete stillness with the prolonged scrutiny of a monk, other times apparently taken by strange spirits as she barks and whines, whimpers, runs across the living room, rolls and spasms along the floor. Helen watches the feed more than me and often, if Héloïse is not pictured in the frame, calls out to the footage of our empty apartment

— Baby

— Here girl

— Héloïse

— Where are you poopie

— Come out

and, when Héloïse does not come, becomes edgy and fretful and wants to go home.

Soon Héloïse has completely isolated Helen and me from the feeding experience, no longer seeks us to beg but sits expectantly before the camera. From bed Helen might hold the phone to her face and coo at video Héloïse who, from the other room, can be heard whining both through the door and the phone in a tinny delayed duet.

— Oh my god look she’s tweaking

Helen might laugh and in the feed see Héloïse’s dark wet nose pressed to the camera or sniffing around her empty bowl, and in her eyes some endless well of wanting or in her eyes, black, nothing at all, and Helen taking screenshots waits to feed her for interminable minutes until, finally hitting the button, she allows Héloïse to feast.

I worry about the implications of this. Without scooping her food, who are we to her? And the voices that come through the feeder’s warped speaker, can she possibly ascribe them to us over the murmured endearments of the machine itself? How to communicate to her that we are her keepers, her providers: We’re the ones who scroll, who pick the food, who select a delivery window, who confirm the photo of the food placed before our door is indeed of our door and who opens this door to find the food always there? And I think I see it sometimes, in the park’s concrete dog run while the other pets bound sunnily toward their owners Héloïse wanders, lost, looking up at each person as if assessing whether or not they are hers, and it is only when, desperate, I call her name and extend a treat does she, maybe seeing something of the feeder in me, come.

---

The train’s packed. Standing, I watch the guy sitting beneath me scroll headphoneless — boob stuff, body check, CCTV footage of a woman on all fours, in a dog mask, being attacked by a real dog, hair regrowth, bullhorn, rubble, ad for ass-augmenting leggings, ad for ass-augmenting leggings, ad for ass-augmenting leggings — and as the train stalls between stations the video freezes, the woman’s legging-augmented ass arrested in time, and he navigates now to the next app, encounters at the bottom of its feed the buffering wheel so checks his email, the email loads to empty white nothing, and texts, no new texts, scrolls through an old conversation, in which he has sent a large block of text unanswered — I struggle to pull upside down more than a few lines

— its POISON what we do to ourselves we let it happen its in the drink we its in the food

— it breaks my heart to see whats happening with ur sister

— i found ur earring if u want it

and opening another conversation, wherein again unanswered, to an unsaved number he asks plaintively, simply:

— what’s up

and here a voice arrives from the train’s speakers as only muffled feedback, wordless, a dark and distorted message, our conductor possessed, and through the window black tunnel nothing, and with increasing urgency he flicks at the screen, the interrupted video now something else, now a woman’s face, rigid, lips parted mid-thought, and looking around I see only the same, all of us arrested, when with a groan and a lurch the train resumes its slow service, and we crawl into the next station, where the video loads and the woman reanimates, finally, breathlessly rushes through her delivery

— THIS IS YOUR SIGN

she implores — but he swipes up, casts her away, and she dies.

I glance at the woman next to him. She’s watching me, so I look down. I feel her continued attention and look again. Now, intent, she points at my pocket. I hear it, the whining. Obediently I retrieve my phone from my pocket and find it opened on the feeder app, Héloïse whimpering and watching me with her murky inscrutable eyes and I wonder for how long she has been crying into the dark of my pocket, and had she heard the train’s low wail, the reticent murmurs of my rustling fabric, delivered to her through the feeder’s speaker like messages from a cruel god. In the length between stations her image freezes but the sound continues.

---

At home Héloïse lies prone before the feeder, which still has food in it. I smell it first: a doleful puddle in the walkway, diarrhea, and upon entering the apartment find the second spot by her bed. I crouch at her side. Her body moves with heavy breaths. She looks animatronic. She looks like a puppet. I pet her raggedy fur and remember liking the shelter’s post, thinking she looked like some busted beloved stuffed animal run too many times though the wash. She turns her head back toward me and I see myself in the watery glass of her eye and I look so old all of a sudden, like a stranger, like I’m playing pretend, leaned over her, petting her, and whose dog is this? — mine, now, and it’s my job only to feed her, and when she dies it will be permanently recorded on the chronology of my life, and until then I have to do everything I can to keep her from dying and there’s no covenant demanding she love me.

— I love you!

from the speaker. Helen’s distorted voice.

— Shit. Helen? Can you see me?

I lean forward as if bending to eat from the bowl. I stare into the camera.

— Hi girlie girlie. You’re so pretty baby.

Héloïse sniffs toward the camera enchanted.

— Yes poopie.

— Helen?

— Hi.

— How’s dinner? Keni? Can you see me?

— She’s in the bathroom.

— Héloïse had, like, diarrhea.

— Héloïse!! Did you shart yourself stinky?

Héloïse, quivering, draws closer.

— So should I take her to the vet or something?

Héloïse tilts her head. I lean forward. I listen. The feeder, unspeaking.

— Helen?

I peer into the camera and see only myself, dark and fisheyed.

— Helen?

Héloïse pushes her body toward the feeder, nuzzles between my arms, and I can feel her heart beating rapidly against my chest, and I think of Helen choked dropped dead at the table, Helen anaphylactic having ingested trace tree nuts, Helen still there, silent, watching us clamor for her voice and taking screenshots.

---

Per my phone I boil white rice and chicken. Héloïse has retreated to her earlier despondency, sprawled before the feeder and turned away from the world. While the chicken boils I clean her diarrhea. Of course she does not know this.

— Here’s some yummy chicken

I say, placing the new bowl beside the feeder, and I wonder if Helen hears me.

I turn on the TV and scroll. This one a man filming himself with a newborn baby, in the hospital and still scrubbed. Text over the video reads

— When y’all ask me if Bluechew really works

I search their faces for visual echoes, the man and the baby. I monitor for changes in Héloïse’s demeanor. She moves through intervals of great darkness and sudden rapture in which she sits up and cries to the feeder, sniffs it, and still will not eat. I look at my phone. I wait for Helen to text me. I idle on our messages. Héloïse whines desperately. I look into her eyes and wonder if she wants to tell me something, if this is the expression of a dog about to have diarrhea on the floor. I put the leash on and carry her down the stairs. In the street’s artificial light she pisses gracelessly onto the cigarette butts, looks up at me and I understand that she has at least identified one of my functions, shuttling her meekly from container to container. Back inside Héloïse returns to the feeder and I return to my couch hole, stare at the black TV. I check Helen’s location, the restaurant, I open our texts and type

— ETA home? No rush jw

delete that, write,

— she still won’t eat but no more diarrhea (fingers crossed emoji)

delete that too, scroll to our early texts just to read them, the careful flirtation we would never employ now, the attentive punctuation, the cadence of the emojis, a borrowed voice like a dream journal written in the half fog of sleep only to be reread and forgotten in daylight.

— Helen?

I say to the feeder, noncommittal. I look up how long it’s okay to leave chicken and rice out. Everything elicits destruction and death. I pack them in a tupperware and put it in the fridge, open a beer, do the dishes, hear the door and Helen’s keys drop in the bowl. I meet her as she slips off her shoes. She’s drunk and happy, and we kiss, and she talks to me in a baby voice and kisses my cheeks, calls to Héloïse who does not come.

— It reeks in here

she says, and

— Did you make chicken?

— She wouldn’t eat it. It’s in the fridge.

She kisses me again, says

— I’m starving, is that gross?

and in the kitchen takes out the tupperware and douses it in hot sauce, sticks it in the microwave, goes

— That place was so stupid. No food. I hate Keni sometimes.

— It was just you two?

— And this guy. He was so weird though.

— Like they were together?

— No they’re friends or something. It was so stupid.

The microwave beeps and she retrieves the chicken, stirs it quickly and eats standing, releases the hot air off the chewed food through her open mouth, asks

— What did you eat?

and I realize I haven’t. She holds up the fork, I go to her and eat from it. When the tupperware is empty she scoops her finger through the hot sauce and chicken juice and licks it.

On the couch she kisses my neck and presses her hand to my stomach, beneath my shirt. Her hands are cold. She feels my dick through my pants, probing for hardness.

— Sorry

I say.

— For what?

she says, and kisses my cheek, and calls to Héloïse who turns her head briefly before snuggling back into herself beneath the feeder, and Helen opens the app to find her blissfully framed in the camera, takes a screenshot, disperses it adequately and falls asleep on my chest.

---

I’m at work when the notification pings. Motion detected. I take my phone to the bathroom and open the feeder app. The living room is empty. I scan for visually apparent diarrhea. I wait for the jumpscare of some masked intruder or my own pixelated evil twin assuming my domestic life in my absence. I bend and check the stall for feet. I call, quietly. I think I hear her — a faint whimper, or a whine. She does not come. Something moves, by the couch. Cut off I see only Helen’s arm, hanging off the couch, the slope of a shoulder, the camera too low to capture anything else. The angle’s weird, she’s lying down, and it’s her, the sound, and as her hand flexes and stretches out she conjures a low moan, a growl, I can barely place it as hers, and she’s panting. Helen, I say. The hand stills. It reaches and retreats. I enter the stall, lock the door, and sit, bend again to check for feet, listen for the door, hold her breathing close to my ear. I undo my belt, her hand reaches for nothing.

---

When I get home she’s peeling garlic at the counter. She smiles. Me:

— You came home at lunch?

Her:

— Checking my location? Obsessed.

— No, well. You know.

— What?

Is it a game? She wants me to say it? Me:

— I liked watching you. It was really sexy.

She puts the garlic down, doesn’t look at me. Her:

— What are you talking about.

— You know. On the couch. Right? I mean, I didn’t — like, I couldn’t really — but you knew, right? You knew. I mean, you heard me. Right?

She looks at the garlic. She picks up the skins, crinkling delicately in her palm, and tosses them. I reach toward her and she nudges away, is at the door and grabbing her keys, says

— I need a walk.

I turn to Héloïse, in her bed, kicking her foot in the throes of an anxious dream, ask

— Does she need to go out?

— Can you?

she says, and adds

—Later?

Helen’s looking at her phone, one hand on the door.

— Um, sure. Look, I mean, I’m sorry. I thought you knew.

— It’s whatever. I’ll text you

she says, and leaves.

When I walk toward our room I smell it and look down, and there it is, perfectly placed in the doorway like a sick green reflecting pool.

---

On our block Héloïse stops in front of the deli. The cat eyes her behind the door. She whines and pulls on her leash and without my resistance I know would rail stupidly against the glass. I drag her away, wait to pass Helen, coming home with a plastic bag of takeout for both of us, or bending to hold and kiss Héloïse’s face, slipping the leash from my hand into her own. I check her location. She turned it off. Her contact photo hangs suspended in a vast gray flatland, has crossed the veil into a realm unreachable by the little blue searchlight of my being. I call her, get voicemail. At every curb I wait for Héloïse to go and she only sniffs at the tires of parked cars and stops on the sidewalk, attracts the affected admiration of passersby and chews on garbage I have to then pull from her teeth. I call her again.

I’ve seen her masturbate before. Times I try to go down on her it usually ends like this anyway, her saying she’s too in her head, and

— Maybe we can just watch each other?

and if it’s so private to her why would she do it on the couch, knowing the camera’s there? Is she into this, all of it, had she staged an elaborate scheme to feel objectified at my voyeurism and turned on by her own objectification, and now, her anger, her leaving, are still the fulfilment of some desire: am I being good?

I think back to the recording, her hand, her hand, the sound, the moan — and hadn’t it been someone else’s voice — something darker, deeper — and a shadow? We sit at the couch all the time and the app never sends a notification. Motion detected. Héloïse’s absence from the feed could only mean sequestration to our bedroom, these days any time I open my phone she’s there staring at the camera, and why else would she have had diarrhea in our room if not shut in there. I imagine him: interested in it, monolithic in the corner, crouching in front of the camera before Helen could steer him away. It was the guy from dinner. She didn’t even like Keni, why stay for so long?

— Come by tomorrow

— My partner’s in the office tomorrow

— Come by at lunch

Does he know about me at all? Keni was never in the bathroom, it was him, returning to the table, when she abruptly cut off at the camera. Keni was never there at all. Helen hates conflict, this is exactly what she would do, I’ve pictured it. Because she’s always saying stuff like this

— If we were to break up and I’m not saying we are but you know

— I love you of course oh my god but sometimes and I don’t mean this bad but I guess I feel stuck or like trapped

— I don’t know if I am, or if I feel like, the best version of myself

— Don’t you get bored, don’t you feel bored, or boring, or frozen, like all the time is going by and nothing happens, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it

and when I ask what this different version of herself looks like, or does with her time, she doesn’t know

— I don’t know

she says

— But I’ll know it

— Like, like

and Héloïse, uneating and loose-bowelled Héloïse, we’ve been walking for half an hour and she still hasn’t gone.

At home I put Héloïse in our room. I lie on the couch and hang my hand from its side. Check my phone, no notification, I move and writhe. I open the app and look at the camera, try to recreate the circumstances of the video, hang my hand how I saw hers, she was on her back then, here, no here, and him, there, probably, above her, had to be, and I navigate to the billing plan page, click on storage. When we first got the app there was an option to opt in to a data plan which saved the videos privately within the app. We didn’t get it. I see it now, a monthly payment, totally secure, it says, to save those precious moments, and for our own peace of mind.

If I buy it now Helen might be notified. And I have no way of knowing if this could restore the lapsed videos anyway. I try to look this up, read reviews by a spurned customer having purchased storage to the premium tier whose videos, believed to be saved, suddenly disappeared from existence — is there any way to recover this footage? Where did the videos go? And I find next the brand’s separate line of 360 degree pet cameras, advanced technology to track movement and alert owners to escalations in noise, aberrations in behavior. Some cameras might dispense treats when prompted as if from a thrown hand. Gifs of sample footage fill the reviews, a faceless owner seen sometimes in the background walking through a kitchen or hallway like a captured spirit, suddenly displaced and cast back to repeat the sequence as the gif loops.

I read about the camera’s other offerings. One feature, billed against separation anxiety, activates when it detects more than two instances of barking in the same 15-second period. The device then plays a series of noises intended to calm or distract the dog — regulating music, assuaging messages recorded by the owner, six second clips of whistles, tinkling metal, or crinkling plastic bags. I think of some of Helen’s most depressive weeks, back when we first moved in, how she couldn’t go to sleep without her phone on her pillow playing videos of this woman trailing feathers along another woman’s inner ear or massaging viscous creams into her hair or trying on crunchy gloves. I think of my mom who said she used to get sad too until she had me and my brother and then she didn’t have any time. Héloïse cries at the door, her dark nose and white fluff pressed up to the crack. In the kitchen the pitiful fridge, the cabinets, the still life of Helen’s discarded garlic, I scroll dourly to the pits of Doordash, I open a can of tuna and stick a fork in it, sit against the wall by our bedroom door, hold my finger to Héloïse’s sniffing nose. I open the door and she appears in the space. I scarf the tuna in seconds. I offer her the can to lick, and then my hand. Her discipline is persistent and practiced. I nudge my fingers up under her lips and bare her teeth.

---

The next morning I’m standing on the rush hour train, Héloïse tucked into the tote on my shoulder, her face behind me poking out of the bag in my blindspot. She hasn’t eaten, pooped, peed, anything since last night, when I took her out she blinked numbly through the storefronts and went rigid, eventually had to be airlifted and carried home. Passengers smile endlessly at some point six inches to my left. I feel their smiles on the back of my neck. I imagine Helen opening the feeder app to an empty apartment, Helen calling out into her phone and begging Héloïse to come. I open our texts — eta home? no rush — at least turn your location back on im just worried — helen?? hello??? — and add now: checking in. The text stalls between the stations, loads slowly, is marked as unsent. I try to resend and it turns green. I imagine it delivering twice, three times, my echoes, my chants. Sorry on the train if texts are sending weird. Send. btw this is really immature and selfish at least let me know you’re ok. I try to delete that one while it idles inert in mid-delivery purgatory, red exclamation mark, text not sent, goes through, out of order, green. hey I’m just worried if this is like last time — if I need to get in touch with someone — call me — when I’m off train like 15 min — I forgive you idc how long it was going on or whatever or who he was just proof of life please — pic of Héloïse looking very cute from last night — doesn’t send — emphasize Call me — question mark if I need to get in touch with someone — Helen I’m sorry and I love you, and I’m here whenever you’re ready to talk. I’m not mad. I miss you. The train stops between stations. The engine falls quiet. My texts roll their boulders toward delivery. btw, I type, Héloïse got pretty sick again last night and I’m at the vet with her right now they think it might be best to put her down if you want to come say bye, my thumb hovers over the send button, I read the text, I read it again, I watch it load, load, load. I look up, through the window, and in the black find the reflected specter of the girl behind me with her phone lifted, angled beneath her face, taking pictures of Héloïse on my shoulder. Then her phone points down. And I look down at my own phone, in my hand, open to our texts, and I look at the girl’s reflection, and she’s taking pictures of my phone, the texts, all green, and what if it’s not the service, what if Helen blocked my number, and where do the texts go then? And I see myself in vertical format, on this girl’s phone, the video, zooming in, imagine the post, as I scroll, type, send, unsend, Héloïse quivering over my shoulder and her sad eyes a kind of divine collage, her prophetic blank stare, all of her restraint and refusal an allegation against my character, and the camera zooming in on this look, and Helen meeting it, the video, on her feed, and swiping, casting me into the chasm, or else multiplying my image, dispersing it, degrading it, the collabs she could make, the ads, and I think of Héloïse and me both of us left behind, needing to eat until we die, and I turn to face the girl, who does not look up, first, and I say, Delete that, and she glances at me, confused, plucks out one earbud waiting for me to repeat myself, Delete that, I say again, whatever you took, the pictures, the video, and she blushes and says Sorry, your dog, he’s so cute, and I say She, and I say, I saw you, taking photos of my phone, delete them, and she’s like What? and I’m like Bullshit, delete them, the videos, please, whatever, I saw you in the reflection, and she glances at the window, and her face is red and still, she ignores me totally, looks down, her phone at her side, evaluates the packed car, Hello? I say. What the fuck? and someone else eyes me and I know that look, like I’m a pit unleashed in the street and they aren’t sure how to proceed, and they consider the girl, the train silent and fixed, Please, I say, just show me your phone, and I move toward her, barely, but the train jolts and she stumbles forward, rides the momentum to push now through the other passengers, and when the train finally pulls into the next station she darts out the far door and through the window I see her appear in the next car, head for an empty space in the crosscurrent of bodies, and as she pulls out her phone she eyes me briefly through the glass before looking back down.

Sophie Paquette is a writer from Indiana based in New York City. Recent work can be found in Expat Press and The Whitney Review of New Writing.