Page 22 of White Noise

I look down at the plug in my hand, then back at the monitor as another line appears.

Go ahead. Unplug it. Power everything down. It won’t fucking do anything, but I want to watch you keep pretending any of that shit matters.

I rip the second cable free, but the monitor doesn’t even flicker. It sits there completely disconnected, still glowing in front of me while every explanation I’ve been clinging to gets harder to believe.

Another line appears.

You really haven’t figured it out yet, have you? That’s almost embarrassing.

“Fucking creep.”

Keep that pretty little mouth running. It’s doing a shit job of hiding how scared you are.

My fingers start shaking before I can stop them, and my stomach drops when the next message appears almost instantly.

Oh, fuck.

The cursor blinks once.

Yeah, that’s better.

I stare at the screen, my mouth suddenly dry.

Your hand is shaking, your breathing changed, and your pulse has been climbing since you walked into this room. You can call me whatever the fuck you want, little echo. But you can’t lie. Not to me. I know exactly what I’m doing to you.

I swallow and force my grip tighter around the knife.

“Does getting off on scaring women make you feel powerful?”

There’s barely a pause.

No. But watching you finally understand you should be afraid of me does.

A second line appears.

And fuck, I can feel every bit of it. So keep go ahead. Keep fighting it. Keep pretending that little knife makes you safer from me. Your fear is doing more for me than you fucking realize.

I let out a short laugh because I refuse to give him the satisfaction. “You’re gonna need more than a haunted monitor if you want me scared.”

His reply comes almost immediately.

You’re still pretending this is about the fucking monitor?

Before I can answer, something clicks inside the closet behind me.

Every muscle in my body locks.

It’s a small sound, just the hard mechanical snap of something old switching on, but I know exactly what’s back there. I turn slowly toward the closet and see flickering white light spilling across the floor.

The CRT.

The one that isn’t fucking plugged in.

Static hisses through the speakers, and for the first time since I came upstairs, the urge to run hits hard enough that I actually consider listening to it.

Silas notices.

The keyboard starts behind me again.