Story code: ST-001220
Part 3: The Loop
The shrill blast of the rotary phone drilled into Elias’s skull, quickly joined by the rhythmic screech of the fax machine. Higgins was waving his hands, entirely disoriented by the sudden cacophony in a store that usually saw only a dozen quiet customers a day.
“Elias? Elias, what on earth is happening?” Higgins yelled over the mechanical noise, his cane sweeping anxiously across the linoleum.
Elias couldn’t answer. The girl was slipping away into the gray November afternoon, taking the ruins of his life with her. He bolted from behind the glass counter, his heavy boots pounding toward the entrance. He shoved the heavy glass door open, the bell above it violently chiming, and stumbled out into the freezing wind.
He expected her to be sprinting down the sidewalk, eager to put distance between herself and the man she had just cornered. Instead, she was only twenty feet away, leaning heavily against the brick facade of the adjacent dry cleaner.
She still had the phone raised, but the confident, triumphant posture was gone. She was hunched over, her shoulders pulled tight toward her ears. The heavy black winter jacket, which had seemed so imposing inside the shop, now looked like it was swallowing a frail, trembling frame.
Elias slowed his pace, the adrenaline turning into a confused caution. He took a step closer, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “Just turn it off,” he said, his breath pluming in the frigid air. “You got what you wanted. They know where I am.”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes were fixed on the screen, but they were wide, the pupils blown out to massive, dark pools that swallowed her irises. Despite the biting wind, a sheen of clammy sweat coated her forehead just below the rim of her gray beanie. She was shaking. It wasn’t the subtle tremor of adrenaline Elias had felt in his own hands. It was a violent, full-body shudder that rattled her teeth.
“They’re… they’re calling,” she stammered, her voice thin and ragged. It lacked the smooth, broadcast-ready cadence she had used inside. She wiped frantically at her nose with the back of her free hand, a wet, rough sound.
“Look at yourself,” Elias said, taking another step. “You’re freezing. Put the phone down.”
“Don’t come near me!” she shrieked. The sudden burst of volume seemed to cost her. She doubled over slightly, letting out a deep, chest-rattling yawn that ended in a sharp intake of breath. She clutched her stomach with her left arm, her knuckles white against the dark fabric of her coat. “I have eighty thousand people watching. If you touch me…”
But Elias wasn’t looking at the phone anymore. He recognized the pale, grayish tint to her skin, the frantic wiping of the nose, the bone-deep shivering. He had seen it on the streets, near the shelter where he used to volunteer before the broadcast incident. It was withdrawal. Severe, agonizing withdrawal. The digital bounty hunter, the avatar of the internet’s righteous fury, was dope-sick.
“You need a doctor,” Elias said, dropping his hands, his anger evaporating into a cold dread.
“Shut up,” she hissed, trying to lift the phone higher to frame his face again. “You’re the monster. You’re the one who ran. Look at him, chat! Look at the coward!”
She tried to step backward to maintain the distance between them, but her right leg gave out. It wasn’t a trip or a stumble. The muscles in her thigh seemed to lock up in a sudden, vicious cramp. She let out a sharp cry of pain, her knee buckling.
The smartphone slipped from her trembling fingers. It hit the concrete sidewalk with a sharp crack, bouncing once before landing screen-up, the camera now pointing directly at the overcast sky.
Elias rushed forward instinctively. “Hey, hold on-”
Before he could reach her, she collapsed completely. She hit the ground hard, her shoulder taking the brunt of the impact against the frozen concrete. Elias dropped to his knees beside her, reaching out to support her head, but her body went suddenly, terrifyingly rigid.
Her back arched, lifting her chest off the ground as a terrible, high-pitched gasp tore through her throat. Her eyes rolled back, leaving only the whites visible beneath her fluttering eyelids. Then, the convulsions started. Her arms whipped outward, her hands curling into tight, unnatural claws. Her boots drummed a frantic, arrhythmic beat against the icy pavement.
Elias froze, his hands hovering inches above her thrashing body. The freezing air around him vanished. The sounds of the traffic on the main road faded into a dull, rushing static in his ears.
He was back in the studio. The blinding white lights overhead. The producer screaming. The man on the floor, surrounded by shattered glass and twisted metal from the lighting rig, his body jerking wildly while Elias stood paralyzed by panic.
It was happening again.
A few feet away, the dropped phone lay on the concrete. The screen was cracked, a jagged spiderweb of glass distorting the image, but the red indicator in the corner was still pulsing brightly. The chat was still scrolling at a frantic pace, reflecting in the cracked glass. The camera, angled sharply upward, captured Elias perfectly.
He was on his knees, his face locked in a mask of absolute horror, hovering uselessly over a violently seizing body. The live feed was capturing the exact nightmare that had destroyed him, perfectly recreated for an audience of eighty thousand people.
The girl’s head snapped back, hitting the concrete with a sickening thud. Foam began to gather at the corners of her mouth, mixed with a thin line of blood where she had bitten her tongue. Her jacket rode up, exposing her pale, sweat-slicked stomach to the winter wind.
Elias couldn’t breathe. His chest seized, bound by invisible iron bands of trauma and terror. He stared at her thrashing limbs, then slowly turned his head to look at the cracked screen of the phone. The glowing red light blinked back at him. Unblinking. Unforgiving. Waiting to see if he would run away again.