Frayed Strings



  Frayed Strings

  A Short Story

  Shawn Cowling

  Copyright 2016 Shawn Cowling

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  Dayton was never a morning person. Rising from slumber was typically a slow, painful, and curse word filled experience. From time to time his dog, a terrier type by the name of Fenrir, barked during alongside the expletive laden morning rant against the alarm clock. Those were Dayton's favorite mornings; mornings with an ally.

  He blinked sleep away from eyes, muttering between annoyed groans. Drool dried at the corner of his mouth and he felt his thick hair doing battle with gravity as his bed-head hairdo shot skyward. Some morning more than others he was very happy to be single; no one was around to see this.

  As his eyelids cracked open, he noticed an unusual blue glow to the room.

  "What the fu," he started. Fenrir barked right on cue.

  His curtains had an uncanny ability to take the yellow hue of the 6:00am sun and bend the rays to brilliant reds and oranges. The blue filling his room had no logical source, no reasonable cause. His eyebrows tilted, confused and wondering if he was having a dream conjured by a 'gnarly' burrito he had consumed for dinner the previous evening, he stepped to the window and reviewed what he saw.

  Fenrir growled with each step.

  "Quiet, boy, I know what I'm doing is probably stupid. I don't need you harping about it too," Dayton instructed his canine companion.

  He raised his hand and with some trepidation placed his it against the window. It felt different, somewhat liquid somewhat solid, it seemed the window reformed around his palm. It was frightening, bewildering and completely unexpected. Then the window sent a painful jolt through him, like getting a paper cut and a static electricity shock at the same time.

  "Mother fu," he said, recoiling and letting loose his feel of the window. Fenrir went into hysterics.

  "Quiet, buddy, I have to think," Dayton said to the dog.

  The cell phone on his bedside table began to buzz, rattling the cheap 'build it yourself' table and sending a deep vibrating echo through its hollow legs.

  Dayton picked it up, read Dad as the incoming caller and answered faster than he thought he would ever answer an incoming call from his father at 6:12 in the morning.

  "Dad, hey, I'm having a weird morning," Dayton said.

  His father sounded older than he really was. Years of Marlboro Reds and inhaling welding chemicals weathered the man inside and out. Nothing dulled the man's spirit though. He was a jolly tradesman who valued work, god, and family above all else and in that order. He was quick to greet a friend with a handshake and a racy joke, even quicker to offer a spot on his fishing boat and a beer. "Life is a ride," Dayton's father always said, "and rides are supposed to be fun." He was not actually good at dolling out life advice, but he tried his best.

  That was the man Dayton was expecting to hear on the other end of the phone call. He got someone else entirely.

  "Hey, sport," his father said in reply. His voice was tired, his tone downtrodden. "You sure are having a weird day." A sigh filled the call. "Listen, budd-o, I'm outside your house right now standing with a kind gentleman with the government. His name is Agent Cosgrove, he's assured me he's the best there is for this situation."

  "Dad, what situation? What is happening? Agent who?" Dayton fired off a million questions with an increasingly angry tone.

  "I hear Fenrir back there, budd-o. We've been waiting for you to wake up before. Agent Cosgrove said one of his sensors went off and a guard saw your shadow walking around, they both felt I was the best to start out your day with. The Agent is waving his hands now, so I'm going to hand the phone over to him. He can explain things from here," Dayton's father said. "And, Dayton, I love you lots, kid."

  Dayton had not heard that since high school. There was a rustling sound through the phone as it was being handed over. He heard someone clear their throat.

  "Dayton are you there?" A voice asked.

  "Uh, yeah, yeah. This is Dayton," Dayton replied.

  "Dayton, nice to hear your voice. My name is Agent Cosgrove, but that's really just for the press. I want you to call me Ty, okay? All my friends do. Dayton, is your bedroom door closed?" Agent Cosgrove spoke fast. He sounded to Dayton as if he had done this a time or two.

  Dayton looked at his bedroom door and it was indeed closed. He did not remember doing that, and it was not something he typically did before sleeping.

  "It is closed, sir, yes. Sorry, Ty. My bedroom door is closed, Ty," Dayton stumbled through his words.

  "Good, that's good. I want you to keep that closed until I tell you to open it okay? Can you promise me that, Dayton?" Cosgrove asked. Dayton was getting pretty tired of hearing his name. Cosgrove's accent and pitch were difficult to grasp over the phone. The Agent was obviously not from the area, but he had won the trust of Dayton's father and that meant a lot to Dayton.

  "Yeah, I can do that. Can you tell me what is going on?" Dayton hoped he did not come off as pleading, but he was sure the fear he felt thumping through his chest and in the pit of his stomach could no longer be hidden in his voice.

  Dayton heard Cosgrove hesitate before replying.

  "That's quite a question, Dayton, and I promise you me and my team out here will answer with all the details we can as we get them. What I do know is that last night, around two o'clock in the morning our time my agency picked up some, well, let's call them 'oddities' throughout the region. I will tell you that 'oddities' in my world are not good things. They are very bad things, but we can fix them it just takes time. We don't know exactly what sort of oddity we are dealing with today, but we know one instance is located within your house. And, Dayton, I need you to keep that door closed, okay? All that matters is keeping that door closed."

  ***

  Maribelle worked third shift by herself. Her factory was small and production needs low, but the machines needed someone to watch over them as they made part after part. She liked the hours and the quiet and stepping outside to grab a cigarette under the stars, but above all else she liked not having to talk to anybody. She could be alone with her machines, fix them if they broke, and read a book or two when they were working. No one to bug her, no ex-husband asking for alimony reductions, no neighbors thumping bass, no need to worry about anything other than a robot making parts she did not care to learn the names of.

  Her first break of the evening came at 11:45pm. She pushed open the employee entrance door, it was sticky and make a creaking sound that was probably not as dramatic for first shift employees, but at 11:45 at night it sounded like a bat being stepped on by a lion with a razor blade stuck in its foot. She had no experience with this situation, but figured it to be the most apt interpretation of the sound when explaining to maintenance why the door needed to be fixed.

  She loved the moment the door sealed and the sounds of the machines gave way to the chirping of the crickets that lived in the field around the building. The crickets drowned out even the hum of the HVAC system. The crisp evening breeze felt amazing against her face, moving her hair ever so slightly, but it was no friend of her lighter. She flicked the contraption over and over, but to no avail.

  "There are matches inside," she said around a cigarette in her mouth. She swiped her ID badge against a sensor to unlock the entryway door and returned
inside with a mission. She looked up at the building's clock displaying time in bright red; 11:59. She had no idea where her time had gone, but was quite glad no one was around to stop her from taking a 30 minute smoke break.

  She found the matches hidden in the drawer of the desk her 2nd shift counterpart sat at and made her way back outside. The clock read 12:02.

  "Jiminy crickets, time is not my friend tonight," she muttered. Feeling bad about potentially taking an actual 30 minute break she went to her desk to do a quick check on the machines she was to be monitoring. As she looked at the screen she remembered how daunting the entire thing felt when she first took the job. So many colors, so many buttons, so many acronyms; she thought she would never figure it all out.

  She did. She walked by her computer monitor, looked for red boxes and moved on, back outside.

  "Looking good, everybody," she said to her robots.

  From the corporate offices up the flight of stairs at the far end of the factory floor she swore she heard rapid footsteps, like something clawing at the heavy oak doors of the corporate offices. She thought she heard a faint bark followed by a man ordering an animal to be quiet.

  She stopped mid step and pivoted around to see if there was a cause to the noise or if, perhaps, one of her robots had tried to respond to her compliment by squeaking oddly.

  She was accustomed to working alone in the middle of the night. She had watched every horror movie ever created, taken self-defense courses at the community center for years, she knew there was nothing to be afraid of, but for the first time in a time longer than she cared to admit, she felt her heart rate speed up. She looked around for a potential source of the noise finding only robots going about their coded routines. One time a raccoon had found its way onto the floor, she hoped that scenario was happening again.

  She walked by her desk again, stopping at her purse sitting next to her empty chair. The feeling of fright that pulsed through her veins grew and grew. The sound had come and gone. The raccoon made its presence known. She reached into her purse and pulled out her handgun. She checked for rounds, disengaged the safety and began the long walk to the corporate offices.

  "I hate corporate," she said.

  She kept an unblinking gaze on the offices hanging over the factory floor. She walked with calculated steps, taking long deep breaths and holding his firearm at consistent distance from her side. As she reached the stairs leading up from the floor to the offices, she placed her foot on the metal step. There was nothing special about stepping onto the stairwell; she had done it a thousand times before. This time she even tried to step lightly, trying to keep her presence as minimal as possible. As her foot, clad in a steel toed shoe, hit the floor the step echoed through the cavernous room.

  She had never heard an echo in this building. Noise was always quieted by the robots churning and motoring through their jobs. This was a violently loud facility requiring ear plugs on even the slowest shifts. She removed her foot from the step and looked back at the factory.

  Production had stopped. The robots were no longer hard at work.

  Panic filled her. With every ounce of her life she ran from the stairs, right by her desk and hid behind a wall to cover herself from the view of the office area windows.

  The building rattled as she leaned against the wall reserved for policy and safety postings. She wanted to scream, but could not muster the ability. The shaking intensified, the sound from the office space returned. Maribelle was petrified. She pointed the firearm to the ground, gripped it with both hands and waited.

  Then as suddenly as the rattling and noise began, it ended. One final sound reminiscent of a large bed sheet being whipped through the air filled the building. Maribelle opened her eyes and saw a faint blue glow coming from the windows near the top of the building.

  The clock on the wall read 12:23am.

  The robots whirred back to life.

  Noise returned.

  Her cell phone rang from the inside pocket of her jacket. She shrieked, fumbled the glock in her hands and scrambled to answer the phone if for no other reason to stop the ringing.

  "Hello?" she whispered on the verge of tears.

  "Maribelle, my name is Agent Cosgrove. I need you to listen to me and listen close. First, there's a restroom about twenty steps away from your current location. Run there and close the door behind you. Lock it. Can you do that for me?" Agent Rodriguez said. There was no fear in the agent's voice, no worry; just confidence.

  Maribelle nodded.

  "Maribelle, I need you to answer me with a yes or no. Preferably yes. Can you run to the restroom as fast as you can and lock the door behind you?" The Agent prodded again.

  "Yes," Maribelle said. She ran to the restroom and locked the door behind her. She double checked the lock.

  "I'm here," She said to the Agent as soon as the door was secure.

  "Good, that's good. That was a fast run. Maribelle, listen to me here. You are about to have the most bizarre morning of your life. Something odd has happened and me and my team are here to fix it. You just have to sit there, and you can put the gun away we plenty out here, you have to sit there and wait for me to find out how put this oddness right, okay?" Agent Cosgrove asked.

  "Okay," Maribelle answered. The tears began to roll one by one down her cheeks.

  "Good, that's good. Maribelle, the second thing I need you to do is call me Ty, okay? All my friends do."

  ***

  Fenrir clawed at the bedroom door, growling.

  "Ty? Can I get some food for my dog in here?" Dayton asked. His cell phone sat on the bedside table, connected to a charger and set to speaker phone. Agent Cosgrove was no less difficult to understand, but at least the phone was no longer right in Dayton's ear.

  "I wish we could, Dayton. That blue bubble around your house is all that is keeping that oddity contained though. Unfortunately that means you and Fenrir are stuck too. Nothing in, nothing out until we have a solution," Cosgrove explained.

  Dayton's heart plummeted. It dawned on him in that moment that he was not a priority.

  Agent Cosgrove noticed the hesitation. "Dayton, we're going to get you out of there. We just need you and Fenrir to be patient, okay?"

  Dayton wanted to feel reassured. "Sure, Ty. Let's just keep things moving though, you hear me?"

  Cosgrove forced a laughing reply, "I hear you, Dayton."

  That part of the conversation where exhaustion takes hold and silence fills the gap between words fell harder than either Dayton or the Agent had ever experienced. The lull cut like a knife as both men tried to figure out their next words.

  Fenrir continued clawing at the heavy oak door of the bedroom.

  "I'm pretty sure Fenrir is going to try to take care of the situation himself here, Ty," Dayton chuckled.

  The young man listened to his dog snarl and dig at the door and stared into the blue glow of the window. His stomach rumbled and he was starting to think risking pushing himself through the window, despite the shock and pain, would be worthwhile for a cup of coffee. Hours had been spent in the room already. He was sure there would be no more coffee in his future.

  He did not want to think of that just yet.

  "Ty," Dayton called out, summoning the attention of his crisis handler once more, "earlier this morning you said there were oddities, plural. You also sound like you've handled this sort of thing before. I gotta tell you, I spend a lot of time on Twitter, well, the whole internet really, but I've never heard of anything quite like this. When this is over am I going to get a memory wipe or something?"

  Ty was silent a little too long.

  "Kidding of course," Dayton hoped to brush aside the comment. He knew his anxiety was starting to show.

  "Would you like to speak again with your father, Dayton?" The agent asked.

  Dayton put his face into his hands, sighed, and held back tears. He had been found out.

  "Sure, yeah, that'll be
fine, thanks. And hey, you don't have to say my name every time we talk. I don't think Fenrir thinks you are addressing him," Dayton said.

  Agent Cosgrove's long pause returned, "I'll go get your father, Dayton."

  My one request Dayton thought while he rolled his eyes harder than he had ever done so before.

  Dayton looked at the blue curtains again waiting for his father's voice to provide some comfort in a wildly uncomfortable situation. The whole world waited for him on the other side of that blue light.

  A rustling sound came from the phone followed by his father's tired voice, "Heya sport, Agent Cosgrove says things are looking pretty good right now."

  "Any idea what that means?" Dayton asked.

  "Well, we're all still here so that's something, right?" Dayton's father laughed in a way that once meant he ate the last of the ice cream.

  Dayton was 14 years old when he learned how to tune out his father's voice. It was an ability that had caused more than its fair share of trouble. He was hopeful it would be forgiven this time around. He watched Fenrir continue to claw at the door, growling louder and louder.

  The dog is trying to get us out of here Dayton thought.

  "Dad," Dayton cut off his father, "the problem is on the other side of the door right?"

  As his father started to respond, Dayton dove under his bed. For years he had kept a corked baseball bat under his bed thinking one day he would have to join a company's softball team or hop onto a community league like he saw late-20s TV characters do all the time. He was surprised to be approaching 30 and never once even met someone who played weekend softball. Now the bat would serve to break him free from the prison of blue lit windows.

  "If there's a problem we fix it, right dad? That's we said growing up," Dayton was speaking faster than he meant to be.

  "Well, sure, buddy, but right now Agent Cosgrove is working to solve the problem. You should just stay put," the father said.

  "Would you stay put?" Dayton asked.