Tape Log

START TAPE:

Male voice:
I didn’t see the end of the world. I heard it. I haven’t seen anything since I was 4. I kind of remember seeing, but I’m 25 now, and most of the stuff I remember is blurs of color. I remember color. Red fire trucks and the endless expanse of blue that was the sky. But I don’t remember my parents’ faces, or what color my big sister’s eyes were.

PAUSE (BREATHING)

I killed her. I didn’t push her off a roof, or shoot her, but it‘s my fault. I promised her, but I broke that promise, and it’s my fault she’s dead. She came home one day, about 18 months ago, when the Stone began to spread. She was babbling, screaming about people standing stock still in the streets, and killing anyone who touched them.  She had bags and bags of canned food, and began tearing the furniture apart, nailing the pieces over the windows.  I’d heard a lot of commotion that day, but figured it was just people getting excited over the Sox being in the World Series. I liked listening to baseball game son the radio. I wish the radio towers around here still worked. There’s no more Red Sox to cheer for, but I guess I could have learned to like the Twins or something. (LAUGHTER) At least I know New York went down, too. No more fucking Yankees.

(MORE LAUGHTER, BECOMES WEEPING, WEEPING CONTINUES FOR 10 MINUTES)

Kris had always taken good care of me, and she was reeling off instructions to me as she boarded up the house. Things were getting louder and crazier outside.  I was begging her to slow down, she didn’t make any sense, I didn’t know what she was talking about. She wouldn’t, though, not until she’d sealed off all the windows, and the dim grey that I think of as ‘daylight’ had become the black of ‘nighttime’.  She pulled me to her, and told me she’d seen men and women standing still as statues in the streets, and when people touched them, they’d attack them. And then the people stood up and stood still in the streets, even though they were dead. She’d been running in the park when she saw the first one, and as she ran first to the grocery store to get supplies, then home, she’d seen more and more, more dead people too.

“You can’t touch anyone but me, do you hear me? They kill people who touch them! People tried to attack them, but nothing happened, not until they touched them, so you can’t touch anyone but me! Promise me you’ll never touch them! Promise me! Promise me!” I promised. I … promised her…

(TAPE PAUSES, THEN RECORDING CONTINUES)

We stayed in the house for 4 days, eating canned food, she said she couldn’t hear much through the boards, just the really loud screams, and gunfire, sometimes men yelling over megaphones. I heard things, though. I heard lots of things. Dry snaps like sticks being snapped over a knee. The far-off grinding of heavy equipment. Lots and lots of trucks, military trucks, it turned out. And many times I heard a gristly ripping sound, the sound a turkey leg makes when you rip it off the bird. People crying, children screaming, glass breaking, the screech of tires and the crunch of a car hitting something immobile and hard. The meatier thud of a car hitting something smaller, and fleshier. I tried wearing earplugs, but they didn’t help much. The only way I could sleep was by putting in earplugs, then putting my headphones on over them and playing bass-heavy classical music.

On the 5th day, I heard many feet running up our front walk. I screamed for Kris. She hugged me against her, and we hid in a closet, but the men found us anyway. They smelled like leather and gunpowder, their voices were cracked and hysterical with exhaustion and fear. They told us we had to come with them, it wasn’t safe here, it was a single story building. They grabbed my arm and pulled me up, out of the house.  I screamed for Kris, heard her screaming and struggling behind me. I flailed like a fish. One of the men yelled and pinned my arms to my sides.

“Jesus, he almost touched it!” One of them yelled, and I went limp with fear in his arms. He carried me to the truck like a rag doll. They brought us to an apartment building, told us to get to the second floor or higher, the Stone couldn’t go up stairs. I started laughing.

“They can’t climb stairs? They can’t climb fucking stairs?”

The soldiers got mad, they didn’t hear the panic and fear humming through every note of my words like I did. They thought I was being a smartass.  They yelled at Kris to get my ass upstairs. There were other people upstairs, it was a terrible din of crying, moaning, people praying and children asking “Where’s Mommy? Where’s Peter? Where’s Nanny?”  Kris kept leading me up, it felt like we were climbing forever, my thighs burned. But slowly, the noise dropped away. Finally she opened a door and led me down a  echoing corridor. She found an open door and called inside, but it was empty.  There was a little air moving through the apartment, the window was open. She told me to be careful, the safety grate was gone. I heard her bend over and look out the window, heard a small mew of disgust, then she slammed the window shut. She found the bedroom and told me to lie down for a while. This far up, any sounds were far away, and unimportant. I slept for a long time.

(TAPE PAUSES, THEN RECORDING CONTINUES)

The other people came up eventually, most of them were pretty nice, Kris cleaned out the apartment we’d commandeered, we settled into a life. I can hear the helicopters coming form way off, and I have to go downstairs. I count the landings carefully, 23, and then I’m on the second floor. The sound of the chopper’s blades and the roar of the engine gives me a wicked migraine. If my name ever comes up in the lotto, I’ll probably throw up all over that godawful loud thing.  Kris used to follow me everywhere, but after a while, the apartment building became our home. I knew where everything was. I knew how many steps from our door to the stairwell door, I knew how many landings to the second floor, I knew the sound of all our neighbors footsteps and voices. So after a while, Kris stopped following me downstairs when the choppers came. She wanted to hear news from the soldiers, she hated the long climb back upstairs, and the second floor smelled. There’s no running water here, so most people dump their garbage and…septic out the 20th floor windows. Kris says all the buildings with people have a ring of filth 20 feet around them. I wonder about the people in the other buildings. It get kind of boring talking to the same 21 people all the time. But those other people may as well be in China. I’ll certainly never meet them.

I normally started the long trek back upstairs when I heard the helicopter engine winding up to take off again, but one day I felt lazy. I was fighting a bit of a head cold, and felt rundown. So I stayed where I was a bit longer, in an apartment Kris had opened up and cleaned out for me to use when I was hiding down here. I was stretched out in a recliner, and I must have snoozed a bit. I was woken up to soft, soft sobbing. I went out into the hallway, but the sound got dimmer. It was coming from outside! I ran back into the apartment and ran up the window. There was someone outside, beneath the window, crying softly. I thought, “It has to be a person! Kris says the Stone don’t make any noise!”

I thought about running upstairs, getting help. But what if that person was hurt? What if a Stone was slowly creeping towards them? I decide I would just stick my head out the stairwell fire door and yell to them. They could come in the door, and we’d escape upstairs. I went down the stairs quietly, my ears pricked for the slightest sound. I heard someone far up in the stairwell, but nothing below me, just that crying getting louder. Quietly, I opened the fire door. Sobbing roared into my ears. That person was crying so hard now.

“Hello?” I called, opening the door further and stepping out, but not quite daring to let go of the door handle. “Come inside! Where are you?” I started to lift my hand up to feel for them, they were close.

Then Kris screamed “NO!” and shoved me aside. She barreled past me, shoving me back into the stairwell. I heard her gasp, then the door was swinging shut. I felt hot, thick liquid splash across my face, then it slammed shut. I screamed for her, over and over, but there was only that sobbing, endless, and I realized it was them sobbing, all of them, all of the Stone sobbing together, so low no one but me could hear them. I ran back up the stairs, sweat burning my stupid useless fucking eyes, and a taste like the way lightning smells in my mouth. I ran up to our room, and slammed the door. I locked it and shoved all the furniture against it. The neighbors were banging on the door, asking me what’s wrong, where’s Kris, what happened? But they’ve given up now. I wonder if they heard me through the walls. I hear them, fighting and making love, and crying. But I hear a lot they don’t hear. They’ll break in eventually, someone will spot my body down in the ring of filth when they dump their bucket of shit out, and they’ll break in here to see if I left a note.

This is my note. This is why I deserve to die in the garbage and waste down there. I’ll die on top of the body of the last guy who jumped out this window. There’s no safety bar on the window, and it’s what I deserve. I can’t live with the thought that Kris might be down there, endlessly sobbing. I can’t live knowing if I’d kept my promise she’d be alive. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Kris.

(SOUND OF WINDOW OPENING, RUSTLING, TAPE CONTINUES TO RECORD SILENCE FOR 3 HOURS)

(END RECORDING)

End

*Well you asked for it. I couldn't sleep and decided to try another one. I have a few more ideas for Stone stories, you may get more out of me yet.  God, I've been awake too long.