Chapter 7 — Feedback
437 Words
Eli hadn’t slept in two days.
The city outside his window pulsed with an endless, low voltage hum. He pulled the blankets over the vents, unplugged every cord, sealed the clock in a drawer. Then he turned the microphone toward himself and whispered:
“Silence. Record silence.”
He pressed REC.
For twenty seconds there was nothing but the soft breath of the room. Then came a pattern of sharp ticks, like an insect caught in the wiring.
···· · ·–·· ·––– ·––· –– ·–– H E L P M E
He stared at the waveform on his screen. Each tick formed perfect intervals. It wasn’t random noise; it was communication.
Morse code. Help me.
He hit stop, then playback. The pattern repeated, but this time between each set of dots and dashes a new sound bled through — a whisper under the surface, stretched thin and metallic:
“Which one of us said that?”
He deleted the file. It reappeared. He renamed it silence.wav; a second later it renamed itself feedback.wav.
The apartment lights dimmed in rhythm with the beeps. The desk lamp flickered:
•••• · ·–·· ·––– ·––· –– ·––
H E L P M E.
He pressed his palms over his ears. The sound didn’t stop; it moved inside his head, reverberating like sonar. Every heartbeat came back as an echo slightly out of sync — as though someone was answering from a fraction of a second behind reality.
Eli whispered to the empty air, “If this is me, stop.”
The speakers hissed and obeyed. For a heartbeat, true silence filled the room.
Then his own voice replied, perfectly clear, perfectly calm:
“Help me.”
He lunged for the power switch. Nothing shut off. The red light on the recorder glowed brighter, pulsing in time with the code.
He realized the blinking wasn’t random—it was spelling again.
HELP ME.
HELP ME.
HELP ME.
He tore the batteries out. The light stayed on.
In the reflection of the dark monitor, he thought he saw a second face beside his own — not smiling, just listening. Its lips moved once, matching the rhythm of the code.
Then everything stopped.
The apartment fell utterly still. The screen displayed one last line of text before fading to black:
···· · ·–·· ·––– ·––· –– ·––
Recording complete.
- Writer
