Static

Crib Death

When I got home that day, I found my mother crumpled on the couch, crying heavily into one of the decorative pillows. I didn't even need to ask, I knew something had happened. I always knew. The only piece of the puzzle I wanted to find was who had gone this time and in what horrible way. That time, it was my infant cousin who had been born only a few short months before that day. Crib death, they called it. Whatever it was to the outside world, it tore my aunt and uncle to pieces. They were the only extended family left after that. At least until five months later, when I heard it again.
That time, it was so loud and so grating on my bones that I nearly passed out. Just an hour later, we got a call telling us that both my aunt and uncle had committed suicide. They were found in their bed, both of them had cut their wrists and held hands as they bled out on their white cotton sheets.
My mother couldn't handle it. We were the only family we had left. Just me, my brother and herself. That was it. I remember my mother being practically catatonic for weeks after that phone call. She didn't leave the house. Often, we'd find her sitting on the couch, mindlessly flipping through old family albums. Her hands would summon a mind of their own and casually toss each page aside every few seconds, she barely even glanced at them before moving forward.
Every day that went by, I tried desperately to avoid anything electronic. I even convinced Thomas to move the televisions from the living room and mother's room to the garage. While he may not have fully believed me when I first told him, he seemed to give the idea some kind of credibility then. He unplugged the radio, his digital alarm clock, and any other object that could make that sound. For a while, it seemed to work. Six years passed without another incident.
I began to believe that whatever it was had been satiated with the blood of everyone it took from us and had moved on. At 21, I finally began to rest easy. Mom had eventually come back to herself and didn't even seem to notice the absence of the electronics in the house. She took to reading again and even sewing. Thomas had moved out the year before I did into his own apartment across town. He'd promised to avoid getting a television or a radio and settled for a tablet for his entertainment. He promised to make sure to turn it off after every hour of use and leave it for a while, so it wouldn't somehow suddenly break.
I refused to move out for some time. I became so protective of my mother that I felt my leaving would somehow prompt this thing to come back for us. We three were all we had left after so many years of decapitations, electrocutions, suicides, crib deaths, murders, maulings, car accidents, surgical accidents, accidental falls, impalements, heart attacks, accidental shootings, wild dog attacks, drownings, and work-related dismemberments. I became very aware of every object around us in those final months. While the static had been silenced for a long time, I still became convinced that death was simply quietly perched on the mantle of our home, waiting for its moment to strike. Like a venomous serpent coiled and poised before its prey, I imagined its eyes on us as we moved about our daily lives.
I never did tell my mom about any of it. I didn't want to upset her more than she'd already been in the past 13 or 14 years. Losing my father had been hard enough on her, but to lose so many others after that and in the most gory, unsettling ways...To give her some hocus pocus story about a SOUND following us and killing the people we cared about would probably drive her to the breaking point. That is, if she even believed me. Or perhaps having that kind of explanation would have calmed her. I would never know.
I finally agreed to move out when she thrust college applications and apartment listings at me. She told me it made her sad to think that I was spending my life looking after her instead of living it. I couldn't help it, I agreed with her. All I wanted was to do right by her, so I agreed and found my own place a week or so after that.
Jeremy and I decided to get it together. He agreed not to bring any electronics. He never stopped believing me after finding me in that locker so many years before. Living together was a breeze. We both had steady jobs, paid our bills on time, made compromises and bought our own food (but we still shared with one another). That year, things were perfect. We even fell in love with one another after a while. We became a couple, much to the happiness of our parents who had watched us grow up together. Mom was particularly enthused about the situation. She even began talking weddings after a while. While Jeremy and I were certainly happy at the time, it had only been seven months since we began dating. However, the notion didn't seem to ward him off.