The First of a Narrative in Five Parts by C. Nicholas WalkerMICHAEL BENNETT WAS on his way home from work when the third message came to him. It came just has the others had, blaring its way across the speakers, rattling his mind. He reached with a quick hand—almost forgetting he was still on the road—and spun the volume, letting the raspy, pounding sound of the man’s voice fill his ears. He paid close attention, gripping the wheel so tight that his knuckles painted over with a dull white color, and prepared his mental pen and paper. Michael wanted to be sure that this time, for once, he would remember everything that voice said. That this time, he would listen...
***
The first time Michael heard the ad, he was sitting on the john listening to a Beatles marathon playing on the radio in the other room. That was two days ago, but the memory was wet and fresh on his mind. “Fixing A Hole” had just cut off from a station that had promised there would be no commercials for sixty minutes—a sixty minutes that was only, as yet, forty-five minutes through—and for a short second there was a noise on the other end that sounded like an old record player momentarily skipping over the tip of the disk, hissing for a split second before finding its place again with the music. It also sounded, Mike later realized when he heard it the second and third time, like someone tapping the tip of a microphone before testing. That deep, hard sound that drums all of the amplifiers in the room with a resounding thud and makes children cover their ears.
After the hissing microphone thud there was a hole which consisted of several seconds of pure, foamy nothingness, followed by a noise that sounded like someone dropping a piece of metal in the bathtub. The hole and drop resonated for a few moments before a voice crept up into existence through the speakers:
Have you been hearing voices? Seeing things out the corner of your eye, only to find there is nothing there? Paranoid about the world around you? Thousands of people have these same feelings everyday, but here at Bio-Tech, we are implementing new age research in the hopes of finding ways for you to placate these immense social fears. We are currently accepting applicants and volunteers for research trials now, which include cash incentive and government-funded supervision. If you are interested, call toll free at 1-888-555-1145 or visit our prestigious offices in the Wilson Historical Building, City of Hapsburg. This is a limited-time offer, so call or visit now. And remember...at Bio-Tech, we understand you.
After the voice dissipated away, Michael heard three distinct clicking noises—hot and tight—that sounded off like a slow Morse code into the radio speakers. The old record sound jumped back into place, hopped for less than a second, then steadied out into the sounds of “A Day in the Life” and the timed strumming of guitar strings in the distance.
Although it certainly shouldn’t have, the moment rattled Mike’s mind as he sat on the warm porcelain throne on the other side of the kitchen wall. His apartment was small and cluttered. Open magazines were spread out on the tables and desks. A small, ever-growing stack of books had begun to manifest itself on the bathroom floor only an arms length from the toilet. He sat there, trying to block out the sound of John Lennon singing quietly in the distance, and think about what the ad had said.
Have I been hearing voices, eh? he thought to himself, proud so say that he hadn’t.
Or had he? There was always that moment when he walked down the street and heard a whisper say his name. He would turn around and face the world with eyes wide open, but no one was there. And then there were times when he strolled through the isles of a bookstore—some large, some small—and heard the breath of his own name once again, or simply a sound that may have or must have been a word, and he would turn quick, trying to catch something that he later convinced himself was not there, could not be there, Mikey.
He tried to snap his thoughts away from the voices and into something else. “Seeing things out the corner of your eye, only to find there is nothing there?” so the announcement had asked him. “Paranoid about the world around you?”
Well of course he was. Who wasn’t? He had never taken the time to try and figure out just what it was, or whether it was anything at all, but Michael knew somewhere in that frightened part of his chest that whatever it was, it was not good. He had read somewhere that people can have panic attacks—you start breathing heavy and your heart starts pounding away like a jackhammer—and never even know what it was they were scared of. Maybe that’s what it was, Michael thought. Maybe it was just some off the wall electrode in his brain that went haywire for a couple of seconds at a time (and sometimes a couple of minutes...or hours) before it went away into a brisk calming of the body and mind. People get scared all the time, right Mikey? You’re not the only one. Can’t be.
But even then, sitting there on a slick, greasy toilet in the bathroom listening to the random, fantastically loud crescendo of an orchestra playing to Mr. Lennon’s dissipating voice, Michael knew there was something else to it. Something else he was overlooking or, maybe, trying to ignore. Something else entirely.
***
Michael Bennett couldn’t quite remember the first time he saw the man in the red jogging suit; by now all of it had become one collective blob of images he regretfully charged back through while he laid in his bed at night, trying to think his way to sleep. Michael had seen him several times before, maybe even dozens of times, trotting heavy along the sidewalks of his cheap cul-de-sac.
He was balding and out of shape, more or less like a buttery stack of pancakes underneath that glitteringly bright suit. Sweat stains marked the armpits, chest, and a large place that ran the length of his back between the shoulder blades. He scuttled along what seemed to be a different course every time Michael saw him, which was not everyday—the man seemed to have no scheduling to when he would jog, only a sheer spur of the moment adventure that Michael never could learn to predict.
Nevertheless, when Michael did see him slowly panting his way across the cement walkways near the house, it was a very ethereal sight, and when he turned his head to get a better look—whether it was out of the bathroom window or the windshield of his car—the man was perfectly and completely indescribable, as if he had never existed in the first place. All Michael remembered was the image of the jogging suit, red like melted roses, trekking its way down the sidewalk, along the dead-end roundabout and back the way it had come, panting but, at the same time, seeming not to breathe at all.
(If you'd like to see the rest of the story, leave your e-mail address in a comment and I'll be glad to oblige. Thanks for reading.)
