#17: Early Birds
My Fourth/Fifth Place Finish in the Wicked Writing Competition!
This week’s post is special. I’m posting it early. It’s a horror story right in time for Halloween. Most importantly….
It tied for fourth/fifth place in the first ever Macabre Monday writing competition, Wicked Writing!!
I am so thrilled to have placed so highly in such a cool competition, and I’m even more excited to finally share the story here.
Fair warning before we begin, this is a horror story. I know I’ve been posting some extra creepy stuff for spooky season lately, but this one goes further. You’ve been warned.
Alright. Accolades received, warnings broadcast, competition embargo lifted. Time to unleash hell.
The silence was excruciating. The sun had failed in its efforts to claw over the horizon, and the dim gray morning light just barely revealed the undulating underbelly of cloud cover overhead. Fifty commuters stood waiting on a platform under menacing skies, all doing their best to ignore each other. A sharp whip of cold autumn air blew about a scattering of freshly fallen leaves as the lot glued themselves to their screens, each either beginning the arduous process of checking off the infinite items of their daily to-do list, or distracting themselves from the weight of it. The early bird gets the worm.
Blaine had forgotten his headphones. Some of his fellow travelers preferred addictive mobile games or cheap paperbacks as their daily escapes, but his motion sickness prevented partaking in such pastimes. Instead, Blaine relied on audio to rip his mind away from the inescapable drudgery of his life. He typically spent his mornings grinding through hours upon hours of podcasts, comforted by the familiar voices of the hosts though rarely absorbing the substance of their words. It didn’t matter what they said, only that they were there. Today he was alone.
A familiar low-grade panic slowly began to well up in his chest as the train approached. For the first time in an age, his ears were defenseless against the piercing shriek of metal on metal as the brakes pleaded with the wheels to please, please stop. The wheels complied reluctantly, but not without first putting the brakes in their place. The cruelty shocked him.
It’s just a train, he told himself. Trains are loud. You do this every day. Get a grip.
Blaine boarded the car and found a seat amongst his muted companions. The silence followed. The morning gloom prevented any potential view through the tinted, scratched-up window. Ancient fluorescent tubes bathed the rows of cracked polyurethane seating in a stuttering, unnatural light. He peered into the next car as the engine pulled them forward. The curvature of the track created an optical illusion as they thundered along, making it appear that the car ahead of them twisted and jolted wildly while he remained still. It almost appeared like the forward car stretched and contracted as they poured through the turns. It gave him the impression that this train was infinite, traveling on a never-ending schedule. It collected passengers long before he was born, and it would be dispatching them long after he died. A cold knot tightened in his stomach.
As the fear in his heart began to crest, he recognized a tall young woman with mousy brown hair and gold tipped glasses sitting a few rows ahead of him. She was a regular. The two often happened to sit near each other solely due to the dimensions of the platform. They had never spoken a word to each other and never would, but Blaine took small comfort in seeing a familiar face. A part of him believed she felt similarly on ominous days. The knot loosened, slightly. The ride passed without incident as it always did, though Blaine continued to scan the crowd.
Departing the train always brought fresh spikes of anxiety as it required joining a sea of strangers in a mutually accepted but individually unpredictable dance. Yield. Step forward. Mind the gap. Move quickly. Do not jostle. Do not stop. Today, he was struck by the persistence of the silence as hundreds - if not thousands - of commuters performed this dance wordlessly. Most had the same style of noise canceling earbuds that he preferred nestled in their ears, blissfully unaware of the eerie quiet. Those that did not gave no indication of being bothered.
Can’t they hear it? Why can’t they hear it?
Grinding his teeth, he pushed forward. The silence enveloped him like the shadow of a vulture, waiting. It followed him off of the platform. Through the station. Across the thoroughfare. Block after block, the silence stalked Blaine as he struggled to reach the safety of his cubicle. Finally reaching the foot of the skyscraper that housed his current project, he all but sprinted through the revolving door, desperately seeking refuge.
“Good morning Blaine!” The silence shattered.
Blaine stood wild-eyed and disheveled before the friendly security guard that manned the front desk every other day. Blaine had forgotten his name. Light, inoffensive music played softly through the speakers of the marbled lobby. Art-deco fixtures spoke to the prosperity of the original builder and the sensibilities of the current management.
“Good, uh, good morning.”
“Mondays right?”
“Yeah, for sure, Mondays. Have a good one.”
Blaine quickly swiped his badge to escape the awkward interaction and hurried into the service elevator, swiping again to access the otherwise closed-off thirteenth floor. Most buildings in this part of the city used the thirteenth as a “penthouse” to store plumbing and mechanical equipment. The old superstitions made it a tough floor to rent out, but Blaine’s employer had no such qualms. Cheap office space was a rare commodity and their workforce was replaceable. Why not jam four desks behind a boiler and call it a workspace?
Blaine drummed his fingers against the side of his leg as he ascended. Soft beeps counted his way to the thirteenth floor. Finally, the elevator doors slid open to reveal a narrow hallway with a low ceiling and exposed ductwork. Sterile white industrial lighting illuminated his path, and the HVAC system buzzed and clanked loudly, but predictably. He followed the hallway to an unlocked door, opened it, and found his gray cubicle exactly as he had left it the week before.
Closing the door quieted the ductwork to a comforting hum. Blaine exhaled.
Discount incandescent bulbs threw a soft yellow haze across the room, and on overcast days like today the meager sunlight that could peak through the small, ovular window offered no competition. The walls were “landlord white,” and the rolling chairs had been scattered about the room by the cleaning crew over the weekend. The room was small, of course, but his colleagues would not arrive for another two hours. Arriving early freed him of smalltalk, allowing Blaine to mindlessly click away uninterrupted. He felt no fear in this disconnected state. He would have preferred the parasocial company of a podcast host, but after being exposed for so long, hunted by the circling silence, the white noise of the machinery felt like a warm blanket on a cold morning. He pulled his chair into place, booted up his dusty PC, allowed his troubling thoughts to recede, and settled into the monotony.
Until the building shuddered.
The muffled sound of breaking glass reached the room, seemingly coming from the opposite side of the building. It was a sound he should not have been able to hear in his isolated area, and Blaine knew it. Screams followed. A terror unlike anything his mind had ever concocted coursed through his veins as he struggled to understand what was happening.
A shadow passed across the window, killing the pale remnants of natural light that had fought so hard to reach this forgotten place. The cheap lights flickered and the hum of the vents ceased. The screams cut short, and the silence returned for a brief, blissful moment.
A massive crunch of shattering glass and twisting I-beams hurtled up from beneath him. The giant, black iris of an inhuman eye appeared in the window, staring at him. He stared back, frozen. The eye receded, and for half a breath Blaine foolishly believed he might be safe.
The air itself roared as a massive, razor-sharp bill pierced through the room like a jackhammer, ripping the drywall away and showering it onto the street below. Steel beams bent like tinfoil, cowering as the force of the blue-tinged beak drilled into Blaine’s would-be sanctum. Exposed to the elements at thirteen stories, biting winds tore into his flesh and his muscles seized. The cacophony crescendoed as the final chunk of wall peeled away to reveal a colossal, red-plumed bird. Its sedan-sized talons easily gripped through the side of the building, glass, steel, and plaster be damned. Perched across from Blaine, it gazed at him with the expectant look of a tavern patron who has just been served their supper. This was the end.
I guess the silence wasn’t so bad.
A burst of laughter escaped his mouth at the unbidden thought, and he quickly covered his mouth in surprise. The massive fowl cocked its plumed head. He chortled again. The predator’s eyes narrowed. Blaine tried to suppress his hysterics as the beak parted. Grinning stupidly but unable to look away, Blaine watched as a barbed spear slowly began to protrude from the gaping maw. The beak continued to widen, revealing the spear to be the point of a fleshy, pale, wriggling tongue. The beast’s eyes appeared to roll back in its head, as if in ecstasy. The tentacle-like tongue slithered towards him in rippling waves. Blaine attempted to flee, but the calamity had blocked the door. He tripped over chairs, clambered over desks, and pressed himself as flat as he possibly could against the remaining wall. The serpentine tongue advanced. There was no escape.
It wrapped around him in one whip-like motion, and the hunter shrieked in earsplitting triumph. As the harpoon took aim at his heart and the tongue began to retract towards the abyss, Blaine had one final, irrepressible thought.
What does a guy have to do to get some peace and quiet around here?
He died laughing.