The Voice in the Static

They always believe the ones who speak with certainty. Even if it’s a lie. Especially if it’s a lie. I clip the ring light onto the table, angle the camera up to catch my best side, and smear a little more gloss over my lips. Confidence shines better when your mouth looks just wet enough.

The crystals are arranged in a sloppy pentagram. The incense curls and fakes a fog of mystery. Stage dressing. Props. It doesn’t matter. They’ll believe anything if you say it like it’s already true.

The guestbook smells wrong when I pull it out. Not wrong like rot—wrong like something burned itself out but left the bones. I bought it at a thrift shop for three dollars and didn’t bother to flip through the pages. Now I feel it thrum under my hand, like a dying heart refusing to stop. Perfect, I think. It’ll scare them more.

The camera light burns hot against my skin as I go live. “Tonight,” I purr, voice low and dramatic, “we reach out to the lost ones, the hidden ones, the ones who still whisper beneath our world.” The chat floods fast—hundreds of usernames. Some I recognize. Some I don’t. Little hearts and stars fill the side of the screen. I press my hand to the book’s cover. It's cold. Too cold. The lights flicker.

For half a second, the feed cuts out—just a flash of static and a sound like teeth scraping metal—and when it comes back, my fingertips are stuck to the book. There’s a new name inside. Fresh ink. IMANI BLACKWELL — RECEPTION CHANNEL: ACTIVE I didn’t write that. The chat has gone quiet. No more emojis. No more jokes. Just rows of staring faces in tiny icons, eyes locked onto me.

I can’t move my hand for a moment. It feels rooted to the book. Like veins. Finally, I rip free. The show must go on. I force a laugh. I make a joke about "technical difficulties." No one laughs. I close the guestbook. I end the stream early. My computer won't shut off. The screen glitches—quick flashes of numbers, too fast to catch. Zeroes and ones. I slam the laptop shut. It hisses.

The numbers start following me. First in the foam of my morning coffee—patterns that loop, echo, double back. Then on my phone clock—always 11:11, no matter when I check. Then carved faintly into the bathroom mirror, fogging and reappearing even after I wipe it clean. Zero. One. One. Three. One. One. One. I start to hear the counting when I sleep. Not in dreams. Beneath them. A soft static hum threading through my breathing. The fans don’t leave. They multiply. Every video—views spiking, comments flooding in, none of them in English anymore. Strings of numbers. Symbols. Glyphs that twist when I try to focus on them. The guestbook lies on the floor, spine cracked wide open, pages turning without wind.

One night I check my inbox. There’s a file attachment: no subject line, no sender. A photo. It’s me. Or at least, it looks like me. My face pale and stretched. My mouth sewn shut with black cord, eyes rolled back so only the whites show. My phone buzzes. A text from a number I don’t know. {“IT LIKES YOUR VOICE.”} I throw the phone across the room. It bounces once, lands face up. New text. {“DON’T STOP.”}

The next stream isn't my idea. I didn’t turn the camera on. I didn’t sit down in front of the light. But there I am. On screen. Smiling. The book open in front of me. Pages flipping. Bleeding. My mouth opens. Words fall out that aren’t mine. {Shhhhtk. Kkkkzt. Zzzzt. 01100101 01100001 01110100.} The faces in the livestream windows start to change. Mouths unhinging. Stretching. Splitting. They’re not watching me anymore. They’re feeding.

I try to record a final message. I try to tell them. “It wasn’t real. I made it all up. I wanted you to believe me. And now you do. Too much. Too much—”

The guestbook opens itself. Pages writhing, spasming like something trapped under skin. I see diagrams—bones splitting, tongues sliced into spirals, throats stitched into radios. I feel something inside me tear loose. My mouth moves, but no sound comes out. Just soft, wet clicks. Numbers leaking from my teeth.

I sit on the floor, knees drawn to my chest. The computer screen fills with my own face. Not one. Hundreds. Each face with a slightly different expression. Each mouth opening, wider, wider, until only static spills out.

The guestbook rests on my lap. It’s bleeding from the spine. I reach for the camera. I try to say goodbye. But the stream has no end button. Only the whisper, soft and tender, just beneath my heartbeat: “Reception Channel: Permanent.”

Final Incident Note

Neighbors complained about a high-frequency noise. When authorities entered the apartment, they found the lights still on, the camera still recording. No sign of Imani Blackwell. Only the guestbook, sitting in the center of the room, breathing faintly between bursts of static, humming numbers no human throat could shape.