Static - A Horror Story

It was a cold night, the kind where, unless you looked real hard, the Michigan countryside could have been frozen in time, frozen like the realist dream of some painter of old. The hills spelled out the coming winter with their greens transitioning to browns, to the colour of repose, of death. Across the mottled plains lay just a few specks of light, the homes of those brave souls living far enough from the cities to see the stars. One such home, nestled snugly inside a picket fence-line, bore the shimmering colours of red and gold, and greens, flashing from one to next in the main story windows. These colours bore forth the story of the movie Evan had just clicked on using the game controller now-remote.

His parents away for the evening, the house felt even colder and more artificial than usual. Evan had always felt a bit disconnected from this place, even though he had lived there his entire life. He spent many hours in front of the TV, hoping that the oasis of light and sound it projected would somehow insulate him from the reality living outside. The true and striking cold. The deep blacks of the night sky. The harsh words of children. The stirring tales of broken hearts. He wanted to live in this falsehood forever. Because to disregard pain meant to embrace happiness, in front of this screen.
 
The image flickered.  A few flecks of static crept across the face of the main actor in the romance flick, just as he was about to give the kiss of true love to his daring counterpart. Evan felt uneasy. The static, creeping across his face, was ruining the illusion he wanted for this lazy night. Why couldn’t he spend one more hour in the bliss of forgetting. He felt like the actor, looking for love, finding only static on every channel. He switched to a different movie, this one a comedy. The Pixar teddy bear, in its childlike bearings, was walking toward a grocery store. Evan had seen this one many times; it always made him smile. As he watched, and the teddy bear was about to push the lever on carousel horse in front of the store, a line of white noise crept across its furry arm. Interfered with the fun. Broke, once again, the illusion of childhood sending forth colour and noise to blot out Evan’s worry.
 
What was going on? This had never happened before. The images on his movies had always been crisp and believable. He had always swam in their lies so faultlessly. He switched again, this time to a horror movie. Static ruined the tension. He switched to a documentary, and static ate away at the lion eating away at her prey. A cartoon. Static disintegrated the transformation scene of the main character. A game show. Static fell across the survey questions.

Frustrated, Evan got up from his futon, and drug his feet into the kitchen. The cold harshened, and he hugged his sweater even closer to him, like the arms of a loved one. He wished it could have been. He wished he could be losing himself inside the bright and flawless eyes of his perfect mate, just like the screen of a television. Those lover’s eyes would the pool of warmth he could swim in, could be an endless sun so that he would never have to pull so close into his winter clothes again.
 
He was daydreaming. Not watching where he was going, filled with the image of his perfect man, he had stumbled across the kitchen toward where the cupboard should have been. Popcorn would make this cold a bit more bearable. Maybe it would even be enough of a distraction so that he could overlook the static. Static? Am I hearing static? He thought to himself, still in a half daze, dreaming of the man that would take him to warmth.

He lifted his arm, and his head, out of that mirage, to reach for the cupboard door, and he ran into something soft and warm… and still. His eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the dark, but he was certain of the shape of it… certain it was….

He jumped backward, alarmed, and let out a yell. There was a man standing there, looking sullenly into the empty cabinet. The man, tall, had dark, medium length hair that fell in half ringlets around his head. As Evan tried to catch his breath, tried to think calmly about calling the police, trying to fight him, trying to run, the man slowly craned his head around, still in the half dark of the kitchen, and stared. Not even at him, really. This man was staring into Evan. He was the image of pale beauty, he was a specimen from the land of dreams, he was everything Evan had just been hoping for. The smile that crept onto the man’s face was one of a sweet innocence, was a beckoning one. The man’s close-fitting shirt and jeans showed that he had some physique, some strength with which to fuel the heat of the embrace Evan was now, illogically, unwaveringly, moving to give him.

His heart was beating so fast, he was in a trance, he was swept into this by the night, his hands and arms were thrown forward, his eyes softened by the thought of an ally in this cold… And then he heard it. The static, creeping into, filling his ears. And then gone. And the man was still there in all of his quiet beauty. Smiling. Inviting.
 
Evan was burning with the desire to enter his embrace. He took another step forward, looking into his eyes. Static. Static burst across the man’s face, and the sweet smile fizzled quickly into the most horrid snarling countenance that Evan had ever seen, teeth sharp as canine razors laying over lips now putrescent and dripping, eyes red and hollow set back in the sockets of a dark and spoiling skull. Fizzled back, and the beautiful, sex-filled, luscious face reappeared. Fizzled, and death, and the snarling smile crawling up the side of his hollow face, producing rows of jagged teeth. Fizzle, and beauty. Fizzle, and the corpse’s tongue was slithering out of the hole where a cheek should have been, glistening with black blood. It still stood there, menacing and then brilliant, dead and then alive, red flaming coals of eyes giving way to clear and spotless blue. Still stood there staring. Then, slowly, it lifted one arm to beckon to Evan, one arm fizzling with static between slender moon-made skin and the rotten flesh of hell. Choked up, horrified, feeling sick at what he could have been holding right now, Evan ran out of the kitchen, not thinking, just fleeing, ran to the door and opened it, and stepped into the plains of cold and leaves and pumpkins which he… no. There were none of those things here.

There were only long waving lines of tall grass. The savannah sun was beating down upon Evan’s head as he moved a bit farther into the fields. Foreign birds dotted the sky, which was flashing between a warm blue and a cold gray, sputtering with static, filling his whole mind with static. The wind was static as it blew through the rushes. The ground was a static that flowed under his feet, the vegetation shimmering between tropical flowers and dead earth. What was going on here?

A new static filled his ears. This… no, this wasn’t static. It was a low growl. It was coming from right behind him. He spun around quickly, to see the grass waving unnaturally, to see the glint of sun across two sharp-as-knives eyes. The static ripped through the grass, which gave way to both night and sun, which, in its layers, uncovered the claws and slender body of a huge cat, a beast of prey, a house of destruction, its fangs for killing, its tail whipping in excitement. It leapt forward and with claw outstretched went for Evan’s throat. He was slammed back and down into the ground, he was under such a weight as he had never known. The claws were stuck firmly into his chest, deep under his skin. He thought he could hear his heart beating. He knew it to be, instead, the ragged putrid breath of the beast, now craning its head to the sky, now releasing a blood-curdling scream of victory as it pressed down more firmly into Evan’s tender skin. He squirmed, he yelled, and screamed, and cried, he tried everything he could do, to roll away, to tear away, and just as his strength was failing and the beast raised his other claw for the killing blow, a wave of static ran across the hillside, ran through the feline monstrosity, and broke its hold on Evan, shimmering like the endless blue sky above, its weight fading just enough that he could escape its grasp. He pounded his feet into the ground like hammers on anvils, praying for the door of his house, to be back in that place cold yet inviting.
 
He was there, he opened the door, never remembering it to be so light, his fear and anxiety giving him the strength of desperation.  As he slammed the door shut, a thud on the other side followed by a scream of bestial fury told Evan that he must have been mere inches away from death in his scramble back.
 
He couldn’t go back to the kitchen. He couldn’t go outside. He ran back to where it all started. The family room, with its television still blaring static, noise, breaching reality, giving him such a headache that he thought his skull would split. He didn’t know what to do. Waves of static were pouring from the screen, the walls were moving under the weight of illusion. The line of teddy bears lined up on the shelf to one side was starting to move robotically under the weight of the static. The mirrors were filled with faces too mangled to call human. The couch’s legs were flickering between wood and jointed, crawling, insect legs, its cushions becoming  a pool of snickering maggots. All Evan could do was give up, or… try. Try to beat this. Try to cut off the source of this nightmare. He hoisted the heavy reading lamp up and poised it to strike at the television, even as it flickered between shaft and python, even as its fanged head spit and struck at Evan’s legs. He hoisted it higher, over his head, and brought it crashing down into the white noise, the rectangle of light. It cracked, and let burst an intense wave of light and noise, a roaring like the abyss of hell itself had been blown open. It through Evan back into the wall and, as the light from the now destroyed television faded, so too did his consciousness…

“Evan! Evan! Wake up, honey, we’re home.” The voice sounded so far away, but got closer every second, with every vibration of the dark, of the hand gently nudging his shoulder. “Evan!” He opened his eyes, and he was greeted by the gentle gaze of his mother, shopping bags in one hand, and her other lightly set upon him. “You must have fallen asleep! Look, your movie has been long since over.” She gestured toward the television, stuck on a screen of steady white noise. Evan turned off the television immediately. “Sorry, Mom, yeah, I must be tired. I’m going to bed.”

He mounted the stairs, passed his dad and said good night to him, too. Brushed his teeth. Washed his face. Stared at himself in the mirror for a moment. Ran his hand along his clean skin. Brought his gaze, tiredly, toward his own eyes. Looked at their gentle and exhausted irises, looked at the fine details of their pigment, rushing out from his pupils like so many fine flowers. Looked into the darkness of his pupils. Looked closer, and closer, stirring in them, so tired. A flicker of white static ran quickly across their depths.