The Rotary

A short story.

Introduction

I wrote this story back when I thought I would try my hand at writing something scary. The best I got was something slightly reminiscent of “the tell tale heart” by Edgar Allen Poe. I say slightly because I would never assume to compare my work to such great literature. All I wish to say by making the comparison is that it’s not really scary, more psychological thriller than anything else. Truth be told, scary isn’t really my thing, but I hope you will enjoy the story none-the-less.

A glowing recommendation, I know.

The Story

He never did like house flies. They made him wait, the suspense of it all grating on his nerves before he’d thrash his fly swatter at thin air, realize he was alone, and start the whole process over again.

The new buzzing started that way, making him flinch out of reflex and thrust his hand out to his side where the swatter usually sat, as an ex-soldier reaches for their rifle at any alarm.

The flies were more prevalent in Colorado than New York, where he dearly wished he was but couldn’t return. He was left to swat at flies and work his awful job at Foot Locker pretending he wasn’t who he knew himself to be.

The buzzing was a constant reminder. If he tried really hard, he could sometimes imagine the brick ranch house was his apartment in the bustling city. If he tried desperately, he could sometimes hear the sirens and traffic and noise that he’d come to love. But then, a fly would buzz, and he could hear it. He was not in New York, because in New York, the chatter his neighbors made through the paper-thin walls was loud enough by itself to cover such country noises.

An hour went by, then two, and as he made his third cup of morning coffee, the buzzing was as present as if his phone alarm were constantly ringing him out of bed.

That was days ago. Now the house was in disarray. His clothes were strewn across the couch and tables. Plates were thrown to the floor and old kitchen cupboard doors hung off of their fragile hinges. The couch was gutted, with stuffing strewn as if his dog Milo hadn’t been left behind when he was forced to leave. The throw pillows were stripped of their coverings and thrown toward the windowsill where plants sat unsteadily in the remains of shattered pots. The buzzing persisted.

His feet took the stairs two at a time up onto the second floor. The bed was broken. The mattress sliced in a line down the middle. The springs jutted out at the most infuriating angles as he passed, and the buzzing only got louder. The curtains were ripped off the walls with their rods still attached, and the carpet was splotched with red from when he’d cut himself on a broken mirror.

He paced the hallway back and forth, switching direction whenever the buzzing stopped and started. It would stop and start, stop and start, so that he could make three paces between each interval. His foot was always a couple inches from the ground on his fourth step when the buzzing cut him off. Buzz. Silence. Buzz. Silence. He would pace three times and try a fourth step, always hoping, always praying, that maybe this stretch of silence would last.

He paced, staring at the small hatch on the ceiling. The third and final floor of the house. It got louder the longer he stared. His steps faltered as he reached up towards the string that hung on the end of the trap door. Sometimes he had dreams that he was hung from that string, suspended in this hallway with no one to find him or care he was gone.

At least they wouldn’t find him. With him gone, their job would be done. His fingers clutched the rope and pulled. The trap door fell open with a clang, an unraveling ladder, with a puff of air. It was cool, like a grave. He climbed the rungs with sweaty hands and pale cheeks, eventually coming to a musty attic graveyard. The ringing was loudest here.

The ceiling wasn’t tall enough to stand so he was forced to crawl like a dog. Like Milo. Across the dusty wood flooring of the attic. Toward a box. It was one of the many boxes that had been left when he moved in, the officers said that having a cluttered attic would make it more believable. He wasn’t sure if criminals had time to rifle through people’s attics. If they wanted him they would break down the door instead. They knew his face anyway. Maybe the attic would be convenient for them. Maybe they’d hide his body here.

Eventually he got to the stale old box with slightly open flaps and water stains on the side. As he opened it there were four old phones. Three landlines and a rotary ringing in tandem.

His hand went for the single rotary with its sickly green tint, and the landlines shut off into an abyss of blessed quiet as its handle left the receiver. But he couldn’t revel for long before there was a voice. Deep and resonant, one he knew well. As the memory of the ringing faded, he found himself wishing for it in place of those two words he’d learned to fear.

“Found you.”

He didn’t have time to wonder how the phone was working after sitting in an old attic for who knew how long. The boxes at his sides were suddenly ankle weights chaining him down. The boxes on the far ends of the room, stacked precariously so he could just barely see the light from the windows, were bars. The boxes around the trap-door were walls keeping him captive as he knew they were too.

He ran, as he always did. Milo would have been excited. He would have wagged his tail, knowing that fear meant another adventure. Rick knew the truth, and the truth was that no one was safe, not he or Milo, not his family so many miles away. How he wished he could take back that trial, kept his mouth shut.

Now his life was nothing but noise. It was waiting for criminals to be caught, waiting for the news reports to die down, waiting, waiting, waiting. Waiting for it all to end. But as he made his way toward the front door, duffle bag in hand, he looked back into his new, old, wrecked, and soon to be put back together, Colorado living room.

He was the same, and that was how he knew the next house would be the same too, and the next, and the next, blurring together in an endless memory of decadent color and sadness. But the buzzing would always remain, because as much as he tried to fight it, it was the buzzing that told him when to leave.