Book of Horror Stories

Deep Breath

Frank woke up sweating again, five minutes before his alarm went off. He couldnt remember much about the dream, just some green grass and maybe a half wall of reinforced concrete. There were no noticeable aspects of the dream that led reasonably to his feeling of terror, but every time he had that dream he felt an extreme urge to jump up and start running for his life. He couldnt remember any antagonist or story to the dream, just fear.

At any rate, he had work to prepare for. The bedside alarm startled him with its harsh sleep-dismantling beeps. He turned it off and jumped up to get in the shower.

He usually skipped breakfast, but his shower today was fast: he was already quite awake from his nightmare. Going to the stove, he decided to scramble some eggs with curry powder and fire sauce packets hed absconded with from Taco Bell. He briefly contemplated adding mushrooms to the eggs but decided not to. The thought of mushrooms did trigger something in his head though. He remembered seeing small, clustered mushrooms in his dream, dispersed through the grass. Maybe they were the source of emotion in his dream? He dismissed the thought, absently waving his hand to shoo it away. Poison mushrooms arent that scary. He watched the albumen turning white around the yolk, and began scrambling the eggs to fold the spices and sauce in.

After eating, Franks day really began.

He saw the first one while locking his door. There was a shadow from the porch light that he didnt notice until it moved. Frank whipped his head around to where the man would be standing to cast the shadow, but saw nothing. The shadow on the ground was gone, too. He quickly looked around for the man who had escaped his notice. The street was clear and well-lit by streetlamps. The crisp November morning kept all but the most dedicated joggers indoors. In short, no one was out or could have gotten away without notice. Thus, after only two seconds of searching, Frank dismissed the oddity as a trick of the light and walked to his car.

His car started easily, but the radio was much too loud. When Frank went to turn it off, he was momentarily stunned. The radio wasnt on. The voices continued talking; Frank heard the proper radio static and his binaural sense told him the voices came from the speakers. They were speaking clear, unaccented English about something. Some basic part of Franks brain knew this was highly improbable and refused to decode the speech and let Frank play along with this absurdity. The voices started to fade, hushing and sounding vaguely startled like theyd discovered an eavesdropper. This whole time, all Frank could manage was to stare; slack jawed, uncomprehending about what had just happened to him. Eventually he decided he must simply be incredibly tired and hallucinating because of that. His brain subconsciously urged him to get on with his day and stop wasting gas, so he started driving along the road, slipping out of the confusion as he went.

By the time he reached work, hed mostly forgotten the incidents of the morning. He wrote them off unthinkingly.

Frank stepped into his office building and walked over to his cubicle. Something seemed a little weird about the room to Frank, but he couldnt decide what it was. He started working anyway, distracted and haphazard because of how spooked he had been that morning.

An hour after he got there, he suddenly jumped out of his chair, startled by the hand on his shoulder. His keyboard clattered noiselessly to the ground as he slowly rotated to see the hands owner. Quicker than he could rotate, the feeling of terror from the dream stole into him again. He finished turning to see Drew standing behind him, noiselessly moving his lips like a fish does underwater. While Frank stared in terror, sounds slowly crept in to the office, slinking back to where they belonged. He hadnt been able to tell what the problem was, but it suddenly made sense once he realized what it was. Phones were ringing, people were walking, printers were going, coffee was being slurped, and Drew was talking.