A Visitor

by Jason Ross

Static blared intensely on the Panasonic widescreen, hanging from the wall as Jake stared inquisitively, his right thumb fumbling with his plain red t-shirt. He grabbed the remote and changed channels, but the static followed, and he gave a sigh looking over to his roommate Hayes, with continued exasperation. The men, both in their early twenties, were on shared house arrest after breaking into a home down the street from their run-down apartment complex.

Television was the only thing they had to wear down the seven months left, out of a fifteen-month sentence, until their freedom returned. Had it not been their first felony offense, nor for overflowed prisons, the two would have found themselves in a far more precarious situation. Jake tried to turn the volume down on the TV but to no avail. The numbers on the screen went down—20,19,16,11…. finally to zero. Yet, the buzzing noise seemed to, in fact, grow louder.

“I wonder…” Hayes trailed off looking at the equally disconcerted Jake and furrowing his brows in confusion. He was thinking of the death that inadvertently occurred after the two made it through the house’s kitchen window and sounded a security alarm. Albert Branson, the owner, and widower, had been in his mid-eighties and woke up to the noise in panic. While on his way to grab an old snub nose, kept in his nightstand drawer, he felt an intense pain that shot violently through the left side of his body and sent him shaking onto the ground. A heart attack. The two young burglars heard the noise and, rather than fleeing immediately, grew some type of confidence wrapped in curiosity.

“Christ!” Jake had mumbled as he saw the old man ailing on the ground, begging for assistance from the two with his eyes. It’s possible they could’ve saved his life, and Jake was bending down to try to do something before he felt Hayes’ hand grip his shoulder and pull him back.

“No” his roommate had told him, malice in his eyes. “Let him be, we’ll be able to grab more valuables. Besides, it’ll take cops at least twenty minutes to get here. Bastards are never in a hurry to come out Eastside” So, they let Albert die in quiet terror and looted his home. Hayes had been right and the cops showed up well after they acquired the goods. The problem was, in their stupidity, prints were all over the scene, and the two men got apprehended a couple days later. It was determined that their actions did lead to Albert’s death. However, because they did not actually physically hurt him—in addition to his age, murder charges were thrown out.

A face seemed to appear in the television static, as they stared, still inside their drabby studio apartment, on the worn black and grey couch Hayes’ mom gave them. Their carpet needed replacement, and cabinet doors in the kitchen partially hung down and often wouldn’t close all the way. It wasn’t the place to be, but it was the place they had.
“Are you seeing this, man?” Jake said, frightened, pressing all the buttons on the remote and continued, “What the hell is wrong with this TV?!”

Noise continued to blare, and the remote once more did nothing. No turning the volume up or down, shutting off the screen; anything at all. A scream that sounded like a fusion of static and human echoed into the room from the continually buzzing TV. A picture fell down off the wall, and the other lights flickered, with the one over the kitchen area bursting onto the floor. Prior to that, the men had tensed more on the couch, but the unexpected sound made them jump in terror.

“Shit!” cried Hayes, falling into a drying cola stain on the carpet beneath him.

“We..ha-ve..r..oom here!..” the television spoke, or rather the thing within spoke, its haunting static voice distorting like some antenna pulling broken signals back from beyond. The face continued to move around the screen, and more light bulbs exploded until the room was now only lit up by the TV. A hand reached, seeming through, as if the black and white droning screen stretched out along with it towards Hayes. Jake passed out from fear, but not before getting one last look at the distorted, flowing face of Albert Branson, his hollowed, blurring eyes staring back, with nothing but a void within.

What felt like hours passed, yet only roughly twenty-five minutes elapsed. Jake sat up and saw the dead Hayes lying next to him, flashlights from paramedics and police flickering around the otherwise dark apartment. The TV was off. The memories were there; right? The men’s electronic leg bracelets had powered off around the same time the lights exploded, signaling the police to investigate. “I’m not crazy.” Jake quietly thought to himself aloud. ‘Why am I alive?’ He deliberated whether the spirit if that’s what the hell it had been, was real or not. Maybe it was his attempted kindness, thwarted by peer pressure, that spared him if it was not a figment of his imagination. His thoughts continued to race. One of the paramedics assumed out loud, though to be confirmed through an autopsy, that the cause of death was a heart attack. Jake stared blankly at the television, and could almost hear the static still buzzing, despite the lack of movement on the screen. Jake now wished it had taken him beyond too, rather than leaving him in the fear of what he witnessed—real or not. While he never did break the law again, the memories of Hayes’ frozen, terrified look, dead and warped, haunted his memories. His best friend and sanity were lost and never again would a television have a place in his home.

© RossJ781.com June 4th, 2023