Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26525489-20160720175420

The idea of this story is based on an actual sound I heard last night when I was on a run. I've been reading some Faulkner lately, so I decided to try my hand at some pseudo-stream-of-consciousness writing. Clearly, I'm not up to Faulkner's level yet, but I would love to get some feedback on the product. Also, I'm terrible at names so if anyone has some ideas I would love some help with that as well.

To add another note on the composition, I gave myself a restriction while writing. The paragraphs in this story were supposed to have a measured number of lines in them, starting with 1 then 2 then 3 all the way up to 9 and then back down.That affected much of how I wrote the story and did not come across in the transfer from Word to this page. Please, keep that in mind while reviewing!

Without further ado, here is the story:

2:13, insomnia crept in once more.

Another page of the same story he’d dealt with chronically since before he was in middle school. Ten years later and it was no less annoying.

He knew how to cope with it, but coping wasn’t the same as a cure. Rolling out of the bed that was beginning to feel like a prison, he slipped on shorts, laced up his shoes, and stepped out the front door.

The night was cooler than he expected and he shivered as the brisk breeze brushed past his legs. He shook loose his arms and skipped his normal stretches in favor of escaping the cold. With a quick hop, his run began and he headed down the sidewalk.

His many years of experience with insomnia had freed him from his past fears of the night. The darkness no longer felt daunting. Rather, it evened the playing field. Every would-be attacker would be equally as blind as he and that provided a sense of comfort, even confidence. He turned down one of the streets of suburbia, on his usual route, letting routine take over.

His breathing even and measured, he traveled block after block with ease. His frequent nightly training sessions helped to keep him in peak physical form. He passed the same side streets as he did every day with out a second glance, putting distance between himself and home at his steady runner’s pace. Several miles from the start and he was nearly at the end of his jaunt. He turned around and prepared for the return journey when something stopped him.

Rather, he stopped at the beck of a distant sound. He listened carefully and it spoke again, it’s pattern consistent. It called to him from down a cul-de-sac to the right. He took a step towards it, unsure of the source. He wasn’t even sure of the sound itself, but his curiosity needed to be quelled. True to his suspicions the sound became louder and clearer as he traveled further down the side street. Suddenly nervous, he began to glance around him, jumping at every slight noise other than the one leading him forward. He finally stopped in front of a small house.

It was a nice part of town and the house reflected that. Two small lights over the garage bathed the sides of the house in just enough pale light to show off the clean white siding and sky blue trim. Wooden shutters bordering the windows were painted a matching blue. The front door stood out as a drastic, but tasteful red, an accent to break the homogeneity of the color scheme. The concrete walkway from the driveway snaked between two lines of perfectly manicured bushes before finding its way to the front porch. Despite the general welcoming aura the home should have given off, something was still unsettling.

The sound. It was still repeating, varying slightly in volume, but always there. He didn’t know what in the house was generating the noise, but the unnatural pattern continued. Three short beeps, a half second pause, three more beeps, a half second pause, three final beeps, and then a two second pause before it all began again. It was a simple noise and ordinarily would have meant nothing to him. During the day, he could have written it off as a kitchen timer or something else mundane. Tonight, however, it filled his mind and thoughts until there ways no space for anything else. It was simultaneously piercing and comforting. He wanted nothing more to stand there and listen, but all the while his terror grew.

After what could have been minutes or hours, he snapped out of his stupor and the sense of calm left him, leaving only the terror. He turned and sprinted back out of the cul-de-sac and back to the main road. He didn’t stop until he physically couldn’t keep up the pace anymore and slowed a walk, catching his breath. It was late and the cars on the road were infrequent, but he longed for one to drive by and break the sense of him being alone in the world. Suddenly, he froze. A familiar pattern filled his ears and he searched for the source. He thought he was miles away, there was no way it could have followed him here.

There it was again. It wasn’t the same pitch and it was a little slower, but it was the same pattern. He turned to his left and realized the sound was emanating from the flagpole outside of a nearby bank. The breeze must have been blowing one of the rings on the flag into the metal pole. At first he was furious that he couldn’t escape the sound, then he remembered his sense of wonder. The curiosity returned and, after a few minutes of staring, he turned and ran with renewed energy until he was standing outside the blue house once more.

He stood and listened until he couldn’t take it anymore. The call of the sound was too great. He walked around to the side of the house and began searching for a way in. He tried all of the ground level windows and discovered them to be tightly locked. His sense of urgency growing he eventually leapt down into a window well and tried his luck with one of the basement windows. This window was locked as well, but that wasn’t going to stop him anymore.

He removed his shirt and grabbed a particularly large rock from the gravel blanketing the bottom of the window well. He wrapped his shirt around the rock and used it to smash through the single pane window. The noise of the breaking glass was easily drowned out by the nine beeps filling the air. He reached in and unlocked the window, opening it so he could slide through.

The basement was unfinished, but that didn’t bother him. All that mattered was that the sound was louder that ever before, filling the air with its steady beeps. With his back against the wall, he slid down to a seated position and closed his eyes as he let the sound wash over him again and again.

The next day, the paperboy rode his bike down the streets of the neighborhood just after six in the evening to deliver the afternoon edition of the local newspaper. The front-page article had a startling headline.

“Morgan family of five found dead in their home after carbon monoxide leak. Unidentified jogger also found in basement.”

He had finally found his sleep.

  