| Fiction |
WHISPERS IN THE DARK
Whispers in the dark is a weekly short story in which weird is the norm. An exercise in strangeness, the stories are never to be taken too seriously, but should never be taken too lightly. For if you lay awake long enough in the dark, you’re bound to hear a whisper sooner or later.
Snap
by Paul Milligan
He reveled in the warm, orange glow that shone on his face
and watched as his pyromaniacal masterpiece lit up the night
sky. It didn’t matter to him that all his possessions were
burning. The comics he’d collected for the past fifteen
years. The DVD collection he’d spent hundreds of dollars on.
The big flat screen television. The G5 he’d scraped and
saved to buy. All of it was engulfed in the fire and still
he smiled. Still he giggled maniacally to himself.
It didn’t take much to put him over the edge. Yeah, he’d
survived the divorce. He’d survived the death of his
parents. The loss of his job only days earlier. It had been
a bad year, but still, he’d managed to come through it okay.
Until tonight.
On his way home from watching a terrible movie he picked up
two Jumbo Jacks and a large coke. Once he got home he
discovered that the burgers had tomatoes on them, though
he’d specifically asked, more than once, for no tomatoes.
There was even a sticker on the burger wrappers that
indicated there were no tomatoes. He pulled the tomatoes off
and tossed them in the brown bag.
The first burger was disgusting anyway, the bread was soggy
and there was way too much mayo. He often wondered why the
food he enjoyed at any number of fast food restaurants would
steadily decline in quality over time. A particular item
would start off wonderful, becoming his favorite, but after
ordering it a few times, the food would become terrible. It
was as if the employees at the fast food joint were becoming
tired of making the same thing over and over and so were
putting less and less effort into it.
He threw the second burger away without even taking a bite.
Hoping to wash the bad taste out of his mouth he grabbed his
soda and took a huge gulp. He almost puked, as he tasted it.
They’d given him Sprite instead of Coke.
After the lackluster meal he popped in the copy of Daredevil
he bought the day before, but it wouldn’t stop skipping. He
pulled it out of the DVD player, used the scratch repair kit
to give it a quick buff and popped it back in. I t began
skipping again, this time worse than before. He felt his
frustration growing and yanked the DVD out of the player and
snapped it in half, cutting his hand in the process. On his
way to the bathroom to get a bandage he stubbed his toe on
the corner of the wall. He’d never wanted to hit something
so bad in his entire life.
Still, he forced himself to calm down. It was little stuff
and nothing to get so worked up over. After he washed the
cut on his hand and placed a bandage over it he sat down in
his computer chair and took a deep breath. He pushed all the
anger down and forced himself to think of something
positive. It seemed to work. He sat up straight in the black
leather chair and pushed a button to turn his computer on.
For some reason the Mac was taking longer than normal to
start up. When it finally began loading the desktop
everything froze. No error message, no spinning timer,
nothing. Just a frozen computer. He closed his eyes and
breathed heavily through his nose.
He hit the restart button on the computer and waited for it
to reboot. Maybe if he didn’t watch it this time? He closed
his eyes, leaned back in the chair and waited. After several
minutes he chanced a quick glance at the screen. Frozen
again. He was about to put his fist through the monitor but
quickly stopped himself. That’s when he noticed the flash
drive that was plugged into the USB port. No wonder the
computer kept freezing, it was trying to load off of the
little gum packet sized storage device. He laughed softly
and snatched the flash drive from the port and rebooted the
computer for a final time.
After two hours working on his computer the anger seemed to
have dissipated entirely. He was totally immersed in the
design he’d spent the past few hours creating and tweaking.
Creating something always made him feel better, always gave
him a sense of accomplishment. He put a few finishing
touches on the design and decided that it needed just one
last thing. He rolled the mouse down to the dock to open up
the Internet and that’s when it happened. The computer
locked. Only for a second, but instantly he knew what had
happened. Photoshop had just quit. The design he’d been
playing with for hours was gone. And not once had he saved
it. It was a stupid habit he’d never managed to break, not
since college. Slaving away on something, he tended to block
out everything else, even the need to save a file
occasionally.
And so it was gone. All the work, the sense of
accomplishment, all of it. He felt the anger rising again.
His face grew hotter. His head began to pound. He could feel
his fingernails digging gouges into his palms. A torrent of
foul words was building in his aching throat. Then suddenly
it was all gone. Everything had culminated into a dreadful
calm that washed over him like a cool breeze. He grabbed his
half smoked cigarette from the ashtray beside him and took a
quick drag off of it. He got up out of the chair slowly and
walked over to the garbage bin in his kitchen and, after
taking a final drag from the cigarette, let it drop into the
bin. It landed onto a wadded up bunch of paper towels next
to a pizza box.
He pulled the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, lit one
and, just as before, took a few drags before dropping it
into the bin. One cigarette after another, he continued,
lighting one, taking a drag or two, and then dropping it
carefully on top of the rest of the garbage. After a few
minutes heavy black smoke began to rise from the bin. He
stood there for a moment, watching as the smoke poured
upward and grew as the burning spread. The smoke alarm went
off with a shrill beep that hurt his ears, so he grabbed the
broom that he usually used to wave smoke away from the
detector. With a powerful thrust he smashed the device with
the wooden end of the broom and watched in fascination as
bits of plastic, large and small, fell from the ceiling.
Meanwhile, the smoking slow burn in the garbage bin had
turned into a full-fledged fire. The flames jumped from the
bin higher and higher, licking the wooden cabinets and the
plaster wall. For a minute he thought about sitting back
down in the leather computer chair and watching as the
flames spread, but something inside him, possibly the death
rattle of reason, told him to leave. So he coolly grabbed
his sneakers from beside the couch, sat down in the computer
chair and took his time putting them on and tying them up
tight. He grabbed his phone, his car keys and house keys and
began to whistle as he walked outside.
After taking a few steps from the door he stopped, chuckled
slightly under his breath and shook his head. He turned back
to the door and put the house key in the lock and turned it.
Wouldn’t want anyone barging in while he was out. He
chuckled again as he pulled the key out of the lock and
rolled his eyes, as if he was thinking he’d forget his head
were it not attached to his neck.
Pulling the cigarette pack from his pocket again, he was
relieved to find that he still had three cigarettes left. He
put one in his mouth and lit it, then sat down on the curb
to watch as his home was swallowed up by the inferno. There
was a strange sense of satisfaction watching his life
literally go up in smoke. He was free and clear. Nothing
holding him back, nothing tying him down. He thought to
himself that this was something he should have done years
ago.
He was just stamping out his second cigarette when he heard
the sirens in the distance. It was about time. He pulled the
final cigarette out of the pack and stared at it for a few
seconds before putting it in his mouth and lighting it. He
took a long satisfying pull off the cigarette and examined
it again as he let the smoke trail out from his mouth. It
was possibly the best cigarette of his life. The sirens were
getting closer now and he could see the lights, red and
blue, bouncing off the buildings all around. He sincerely
hoped that the fire trucks would arrive in time to save at
least some of the people in the rest of the apartment
complex. How unfortunate for them, he thought as he dropped
the cigarette to the ground and snuffed it out with his
shoe, that we’re all only one bad day away from losing our
minds.
The End