I hadn’t spoken to my father for the past fifteen years. My mom had died when I was 10 and our relationship had gone straight downhill from there. I didn’t blame him for her death or anything—how can a person blame another human being for something like leukemia?—but it was like one of those stories where the husband burns everything his wife owned; he saw too much of her in him and he saw too little of her in me. It was only natural that we drifted apart, but it was painful, too, in a way that I could only bury deeper and deeper inside me.
It was late in the afternoon, around the time I used to spend a few hours alternatively watching porn or chatting it up with my sister over the internet. The topics were the usual stuff: work, friends, never family.
Tonight was different.
“Have you heard from dad lately?” she asked immediately, cutting off my attempt at a hello. Her voice was different, weird.
“...No,” I said back shortly, finger beginning to tap my desk.
“He’s…” she paused, took a deep breath, and forged ahead again, “...he’s different, now. I had, no, have to tell you. He was trying to move on, you know? Catch back up with the world.”
“That’s… good. I always said he needed to get out of that house.”
“He’s not getting out of the house. Well, he is, but...” Something ragged came out in her voice. “He’s been getting into social media. Facebook, Twitter… you’ve gotten all the messages from him, right? The invites and the friend requests?”
“Yeah, sure. Did you actually reply?”
“Of course, I just— I felt so sorry for him. You know mom’s death wasn’t his fault.”
I squirmed in my seat. “I know, but—”
“He wants to talk to you, to me, to us again. He wants to be an us again.”
“Wait a minute,” I cut her off, finger reaching out lightly for the screen, “I haven’t gotten anything from him in months. I just checked my phone. My Facebook, my Instagram… they’re all clean.” And all of a sudden that old, dull fire burned to life in my chest. “He doesn’t want to talk to me, doesn’t even want to-”
“Please, just listen!”
I caught the end of a sob at the end of that sentence. Now, my sister isn’t the strongest girl around and she’s always had a soft spot for our father, but she would never cry so much about something like this.
“...What’s wrong?”
“He said you blocked him. On Facebook, Twitter, all of them. That you wouldn’t talk to him.”
I squirmed a little more. “...Yeah. I did.”
“So he… he decided to go try something different. Something they told him would work. Some other website, it was— I don’t know — Blacpnt, that’s what they called it. Blacpnt. Supposed to help parents connect with their kids.”
“Sis, it’s a scam, there’s no way he can—”
“He did! He…” She took a second, sounding like she was swallowing. “I don’t know how it works or how it did it, but it got through to me.”
“Through to you?”
“Every phone message, every device, every camera, he saw everything and he—” Her voice was wet, now, thick with tears. “—he won’t open the doors anymore, no matter how much we ask—!”
“Sis!” My fists slammed down on something, hard. “What did he do?!”
“Please, just… talk to him or don’t talk to him, I don’t know; I promise I don't know! Stay saf-”
I blinked mid-sentence. Right before my eyes shut, for that millisecond, something seemed to twist across the screen, a smear of red and black and ochre. My eyes shut faster and a dull pounding hit my ears and eyes, like a low thumping that tried to eat up my world. I pushed myself back from the laptop and spent the next few seconds rubbing my eyes. What the hell was that? They opened again.
My sister’s feed was gone, as if that twist had took it with it. I grabbed my mouse and moved the cursor around the screen, waiting, hoping for it to pick up anything.
Nothing. It was like I had never opened the service.
I pushed back again, then spun around to take in my room. The sun was setting, so the whole place was just starting to get dark. Everything had a brownish orange shade.
And it felt like it was alive.
“Hello?” I called, “hello?!”
It’s just a connection problem, I told myself, and turned around to try to boot up my sister’s feed again. Goosebumps were prickling up and down my right side, forcing a little tremble into the hand that gripped the mouse. Something’s wrong, something’s wrong… that backwards, ever-paranoid part of my brain murmured.
The feed opened with a snap, but I didn’t see my sister at all. Instead, there was just that same mass of ugly, rusting color. The screen seemed to warp around it, twist my vision with it, and slowly drag me in. I just had to look harder, and harder, and—
Son.
A tab popped up in the corner of my screen, like those message services Google runs, but also a bit different. It was the same shade as everything else, all grungy colors mixed feverishly together.
It took me a moment to realize they formed the crude shape of a mouth.
Son. Text flashed across it again. My hand lashed out instinctively, seized the mouse and exxed it out. It came back an instant later, son flashing to life on the screen. I reached for my phone, but as soon as I held it up I saw the same colors running, dripping down the screen. In the middle flickered a single, solitary logo.
BLACPNT: Bringing Families Closer Together
A notification pinged on the computer again, bringing with it more text right in the middle of that mouth.
Son,
You, your sister… everyone’s becoming distant. It’s like I’m standing at the end of a tunnel, seeing that light up ahead, and all of you, all you people I love and care for, are standing so very far away, at the edge of the exit. I just wanted to catch up. That’s not so wrong, is it? I’m your father. I’m the patriarch. I should be able to take the lead. You know, like... in the old days.
Remember how we used to go exploring in the woods, the ones just a few miles from the house? You always liked chasing after those squirrels that kept running between the trees. I would follow behind, but… but I was still in front.
I’ve lost so much over the years. My wife, you my children… They said that this would help me keep up, get back on track and in front.
And you know what? I feel that way. I know how to put things right between you, your sister, and I. I know and Blacpnt lets me do it. It lets me control my life again. I don’t know how, and I don’t know what it’s done to me, but that’s all I want. All I’ve ever wanted. Now I won’t ever be behind again.
You’ll let me have this, won’t you? Please.
Don’t fight me on this, son. I love you.
Dad
I felt light hit the back of my neck. Slowly I turned around to see the TV, the small one I kept plugged into the corner where the right wall met the left, flicker to life. The blend of colors, the red and rotten flesh, swirled and flowed across the screen as another message flickered to life.
Outreach beginning…
The colors bled out of the screen, wrapping themselves along the fibers until they were pouring from the socket it attached to, piling onto the floor and joining streams from other power strips and other cords.
I ran to the bedroom. The stuff poured out of the lamp, the ceiling fan, dripping on and drowning everything in sight. I turned to go back, but the stuff was filling up more and more; the hallway was already full to bursting with it.
And then it started reaching for me.
Pushing and straining out of the mass, long, sharp things wormed from the swirl of ugly color and reached, shakingly, at my shoulders. I stumbled back to feel the cold touch of another one from the bed, lightly caressing my shoulder. It was hard beneath the ochre, slimy but hard, and full of chill that seemed to tunnel into my body from the place where it touched me.
Everything slowed. My heart swam. I felt my knees hit the floor as a dull thunk that registered more with my ears than with my skin. Even then, it felt like that was a hundred miles away.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the floor. I couldn’t look at whatever this was, but it kept moving in, surrounding me, and reaching out with more of those arms, like an embrace. That thought cut a line of honey-sweet, sickly warmth through where the first appendage touched me.
I remembered the last words I had seen: Don’t fight me on this, son. I love you.
All the feelings came rushing back, erupting out of my chest and into the rest of my body. The hate, the loneliness, the fear… I let it all out and threw myself forward, reaching for something, anything. I might’ve even roared as I did it.
The arms—no, teeth—were on me, grabbing and wrapping around everything. All my feelings rushed out as I was dragged in, deeper and deeper into the warmth and cold that somehow balanced themselves, the feeling of a warm love turned feverish with hate and longing.
Somewhere near that pit’s bottom I found a sort of peace; it the kind a diver feels, when his oxygen runs out and he gives up to sink, as he falls back into the arms of what gave him life and now soothes it gently away.