Baked Scribe Flashback : Dropped Call
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The answering machine was blinking when he walked through the door. He pressed a finger to the button, and listened as he tapped his keys against his leg. There was no voice on the message, but he could hear sound, feedback like wind, but muffled. Somebody had likely dialed him from their pocket, no way to know how long the message would go on like this. He was reaching out again, this time for the delete button, when there was a burst of static from the speaker followed by the sound, muffled in the background, of a child laughing. The message returned to silence and Roland frowned. Had to be stray cellular transmissions getting mixed up.
He let it run for another ten seconds or so before the sound of the child came through again, hysterical giggling at some joke unheard, something private which he had been left out of. He took a step back away from the machine as the sound cut off and was replaced by a high pitched ringing. He clamped his hands over his ears, dropping the keys in the process until the sound cut out, and after what felt like several minutes, a mono-toned voice came through the speakers, crystal clear and spoke only one word.
“Goodbye.”
There was a clatter of plastic on the other end, like a drunk, trying, and failing to hang up, when there was finally a click, followed by the beep signaling the end of the message. Roland stepped forward and pressed play again but despite the fact that the machine still indicated that there something there to be reviewed, the machine merely beeped, indicating a cleared memory.
Roland shrugged it off and started for the kitchen, noting the complete stillness of the house around him. The only times he recalled it being this quiet was during power outages. Still, the clock on the oven was correct and the fridge was on as he took the cold beer from the shelf. He reached for the remote and, just as his fingers brushed against the plastic, the television clicked on, displaying static. Roland frowned first at the screen and then at the remote, muting the volume and changing the channels, finding nothing. He pointed the remote and pressed the power button, but it remained on. Batteries had to be dead. He reached for the set itself to press the power button, but still nothing happened. He smacked an open palm against the side of the TV several times and pressed the button again. It stayed on.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered as he felt around behind the coffee maker for the extension cord, shaking it until the loosely fit plug from the television dropped out, and the screen went dark. He shook his head as he headed for the basement, hoping that the older model television was the source of the problem, instead of the cable being out altogether. As he got to the bottom of the stairs and started turning towards the couch, he heard a sound coming from behind the door that led out to the garage. He could hear and identify it, even through the heavy-duty security door.
It was the sound of static.
Roland threw open the door to the garage and was greeted by silence. He picked up a shovel that leaned against the door frame and began circling around the area, looking for anything out of order, anything that he could use to take out the frustrations of the day. After several laps, he was satisfied that nothing was waiting to jump out at him so he returned to the house, double checking the deadbolt before heading for the couch. If there was no signal from the satellite and he couldn’t access the DVR, at least there were the movies down here he could settle for. He twisted the top off the bottle and dropped into the sofa. Picking up the remote, he wasn’t surprised to see static on this screen as well. He pressed the button to access the Blu-ray player and call up one of the hundred or so discs that were inside.
The screen went blank for a micro-second before the Blu-ray menu came up and, as he started to scroll through his options, an image tugged at the back of his mind, something he had seen, but not immediately acknowledged. It had been a reflection in the screen just before the menu came up. Something behind him. Roland pointed the remote and turned off the television.
There was a woman standing on the stairs behind him.
Roland leapt off of the sofa and spun around, the bottle flying from his now limp fingers where it hit hit the floor, fountaining beer all over the carpet. He barely noticed as he looked around.
The room was empty.
But he had seen her. There was no doubting his memory of what had just happened. He had distinctly seen her standing there, looking over his shoulder and staring at him in the reflection. Still, no one else was in the room. Other than the cat, which was now cowering in the corner under the office table, he was alone.
The air in the room had taken on a heavy, burnt smell, as if something electrical was overheating. Before he could check the fuse box, a sudden wave of dizziness made him stagger. The room began to spin as he tried to stay on his feet and the contents of his stomach began racing back up his throat for a repeat appearance. Footsteps raced down the stairs along with the shrieking laughter of children playing. People he couldn’t see pushed past him, knocking him from side to side. The house itself began to shake and he was knocked off his feet. He landed on his back, and after a second, was lifted up off the floor and dropped again. He felt a sharp blow to the back of his head and then darkness.
When he came to, he was being dragged by the heels, pulled up his own stairs by an unseen force. He struggled and screamed as tiny incisions cut their way across his arms, hands, neck and face, as if from a hundred miniature scalpels. The invisible hands gripping his feet relaxed suddenly, and he slid backwards, down the stairs, the repeated blows giving a staccato like sound to his screaming. Stars exploded in front of him as his head struck the tile and again, the world went black.
He woke up to the sound of screams, all around him.
The sound was neither male nor female, but rather a bizarre, modulated, androgynous combination of both, as if souls themselves were screaming out for relief. He clamped his hands over his ears but it was pointless. The sound was coming from the inside of his own head. The volume rose, becoming more animalistic in its fury and rage. He smacked himself, hoping the sudden pain would bring him back to his senses, but even the ringing in his ears wasn’t enough to overcome the cacophony of suffering, howling in his head.
Roland staggered to his feet and ran for the garage. He bounced off the door before getting his fingers around the knob and twisted, pain flaring up from the cuts on his hands and he stumbled through the door. Somehow, he managed to trip over the snowblower, into the control panel, and the overhead door rumbled to life. He jumped to his feet and made his way towards the street.
There was little noise outside, even for early evening as he sprinted away from his house. The neighborhood was quiet enough that he should have heard the moving truck. He was so occupied, though, that he didn’t even register the sight of the truck’s grill until it caught him in the chest, spinning him, while taking a substantial amount of flesh and muscle with it.
He was lying on his side in the street, looking up at his house. His legs were either gone completely or merely beyond his ability to be aware of. There was no pain, but he was struggling to get breath past the blood that bubbled up, into his throat. He could see the windows of his dining room looking down over him and in his last few moments, he saw the woman again, staring passively out at him. They made eye contact. As his eyes started to droop, he felt the sensation of sleep overtaking him. Before he slipped into night, he heard the quiet voice in his head, speaking to him out from the void. One word only.
“Goodbye.”
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