Phantasmagoria: The Silent Chatter

Special deliveries of the dead? Manic missives from deep space? Creepy crawlies through some rupture in the fragile membrane of reality?

John woke one rainy morning and discovered the writing in the floor.

When his bare feet touched the cold concrete, he looked down to locate his slippers and saw the scribbles. They weren’t written on the floor but just below the surface, which was somehow part of the concrete. In sloppy cursive, they spread across the room then faded at the lamplight’s perimeter.

Long unpunctuated lines, tightly stacked one over the next, slanted down like someone writing on unruled paper. John tried to make sense of the writing but the letters reconstructed as he worked to decipher each word. New lines scrambled to overwrite the others in a mad rush to communicate.

He got one phrase, or at least a part of it.

the water

No, now the shapes were all wrong. The message had changed but he couldn’t exactly make it out. Letters morphed here then there. Small loops opened larger then reformed anew.

John was sure, though, that for part of a second, two words had been clear. The water. A warning, perhaps, but he lived on high ground.