chair. My hand darted out, grasping for the wall and I violently jerked the plug to the power-strip surge protector out of the socket. Without knowing why, I was suddenly terrified of my computer. I pulled the plug to kill it and the story written by some stranger, but it didn’t work.
The cord lay on the floor but the screen was the same, set to my menu bar. And then the screen changed. The mouse arrow moved slowly across the blank monitor—moved by an unseen force. I looked without thinking at the mouse sitting on the Grateful Dead pad beside the key board but it lay perfectly still. Yet the arrow continued until it arrived where I knew it was headed, paused a moment, then clicked on the big blue W for my word program. The screen fluttered, the way a road seems to flutter when the sun has been baking it all day and then a blank page appeared. A little black rectangle was blinking in the left upper corner. It was calling to me.
Come on and sit down. Let’s go again.
I ran from the room—all the way out of my fucking house, out the back door and onto the beach. Barefoot, which wasn’t weird where I live but in my boxers, not unheard of in my neighborhood but a little out of the ordinary. I didn’t give a shit. I just wanted to be as far away from the computer as possible and the creature who owned it. You should know, at this point I knew Chad was dead. Knew it in the calm way you know the sun will come up again tomorrow. Afraid of what his death meant, I am ashamed to admit feeling no remorse for my role in it, whatever the hell that was.
I sat on the beach for a long time. It started getting hot out and the glaring late morning sun reflecting off the water made me wish for my sunglasses. I don’t smoke but I would have smoked then. I needed something and really wanted a drink. But the drink was made less appealing by my haunting hope that this was all some sort of alcohol-induced hallucination.
Sitting on the hot sand, my knees hugged tightly to my chest, pulse still pounding in my temples, I could hear the phone ringing in my house through the open door. No fucking way I was going in there at that moment. It would ring and ring and then stop, then my cell-phone would chirp a while and stop, then my phone would start again. My mind groped desperately for any explanation that would make the terrible fear, the churning in my stomach, disappear. Sitting there, I slowly rationalized my way to a truce with my nagging terror. No more gin, I had decided. Time to clean my ass up and get back to work. That would keep this nightmare from recurring…right?
If only.
As I headed into the kitchen from my deck the cell phone chirped again and I looked at the caller ID. Jason Drake, the husband of one of Barb’s coworkers and probably the only one from that crowd I ever really liked. Jason was an ER doc at the big hospital in Tampa and his wife was gorgeous, but a lot like Barb.
Unlike me I suppose, Jason had done a good job at remaining content with his decision to trade a deep relationship for nightly access to her tight body. He and I would often hang out, off by ourselves, when the accounting gang would get together. He was a good guy. I flipped open my phone.
“Hello?”
“Hey guy. Where have you been? I’ve been trying to catch you for over an hour.” The heaviness in his voice bothered me. Something was definitely wrong and of course, I knew what it was.
“Out running,” I lied. “What’s up?”
“It’s Chad, man. Did you hear?” his voice was tense.
I felt my stomach flip and my heart renewed its pounding. I reached a trembling hand out towards the blue bottle of Sapphire on the counter, then thought better of it and pushed it away. I closed my eyes and steadied myself on the counter.
“No, what happened?”
There was a long pause. Then he spoke calmly, as if putting on his doctor hat.
“It’s bad, man. Hit by a car. He is really fucked up.”
“Dead?” I asked, trembling.
“Not yet, but
The cord lay on the floor but the screen was the same, set to my menu bar. And then the screen changed. The mouse arrow moved slowly across the blank monitor—moved by an unseen force. I looked without thinking at the mouse sitting on the Grateful Dead pad beside the key board but it lay perfectly still. Yet the arrow continued until it arrived where I knew it was headed, paused a moment, then clicked on the big blue W for my word program. The screen fluttered, the way a road seems to flutter when the sun has been baking it all day and then a blank page appeared. A little black rectangle was blinking in the left upper corner. It was calling to me.
Come on and sit down. Let’s go again.
I ran from the room—all the way out of my fucking house, out the back door and onto the beach. Barefoot, which wasn’t weird where I live but in my boxers, not unheard of in my neighborhood but a little out of the ordinary. I didn’t give a shit. I just wanted to be as far away from the computer as possible and the creature who owned it. You should know, at this point I knew Chad was dead. Knew it in the calm way you know the sun will come up again tomorrow. Afraid of what his death meant, I am ashamed to admit feeling no remorse for my role in it, whatever the hell that was.
I sat on the beach for a long time. It started getting hot out and the glaring late morning sun reflecting off the water made me wish for my sunglasses. I don’t smoke but I would have smoked then. I needed something and really wanted a drink. But the drink was made less appealing by my haunting hope that this was all some sort of alcohol-induced hallucination.
Sitting on the hot sand, my knees hugged tightly to my chest, pulse still pounding in my temples, I could hear the phone ringing in my house through the open door. No fucking way I was going in there at that moment. It would ring and ring and then stop, then my cell-phone would chirp a while and stop, then my phone would start again. My mind groped desperately for any explanation that would make the terrible fear, the churning in my stomach, disappear. Sitting there, I slowly rationalized my way to a truce with my nagging terror. No more gin, I had decided. Time to clean my ass up and get back to work. That would keep this nightmare from recurring…right?
If only.
As I headed into the kitchen from my deck the cell phone chirped again and I looked at the caller ID. Jason Drake, the husband of one of Barb’s coworkers and probably the only one from that crowd I ever really liked. Jason was an ER doc at the big hospital in Tampa and his wife was gorgeous, but a lot like Barb.
Unlike me I suppose, Jason had done a good job at remaining content with his decision to trade a deep relationship for nightly access to her tight body. He and I would often hang out, off by ourselves, when the accounting gang would get together. He was a good guy. I flipped open my phone.
“Hello?”
“Hey guy. Where have you been? I’ve been trying to catch you for over an hour.” The heaviness in his voice bothered me. Something was definitely wrong and of course, I knew what it was.
“Out running,” I lied. “What’s up?”
“It’s Chad, man. Did you hear?” his voice was tense.
I felt my stomach flip and my heart renewed its pounding. I reached a trembling hand out towards the blue bottle of Sapphire on the counter, then thought better of it and pushed it away. I closed my eyes and steadied myself on the counter.
“No, what happened?”
There was a long pause. Then he spoke calmly, as if putting on his doctor hat.
“It’s bad, man. Hit by a car. He is really fucked up.”
“Dead?” I asked, trembling.
“Not yet, but
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