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Dark Fiction 2
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DarkFiction2.adf
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ooh
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Vibration
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1996-06-07
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5KB
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84 lines
Andy J Campbell: VIBRATION
She's a student. He's not sure how he knows this because she looks
quite grown up but she's definitely a student and she's sitting cross-
legged in a small, brightly-lit room eating a salad sandwich, and he's
watching her from somewhere on the ceiling. She sometimes turns and
looks up and stares at him but she never attempts to communicate; he
feels like a picture on the wall that keeps drawing her attention.
She's looking towards him right now with a piece of lettuce hanging
out of the corner of her mouth and he's smiling. He thinks she's nice;
she feels warm and friendly and... Somehow familiar.
There is a large, silver washing machine not far from the girl's
chair. It's making a lot of noise and spinning very quickly and some-
times, when it really whines and rattles, the girl glances at it, or
stands up to examine it. She never kicks or punches it or gets cross,
but she very often looks worried, and when this happens he feels
frustrated that he cannot assist her; he wishes he was down there on
the ground in human-form, rather than stuck here on the roof like a
smoke-alarm.
The machine has begun to wail again and the girl is up and out of
her chair, chewing her food lazily as she attempts to locate the fault.
Every time she gets to her feet, the noise seems to become louder,
more urgent, as if the machine is angry or desirous.
He feels unsettled now; the girl doesn't seem to want to sit down
anymore. She is repeatedly pacing around the machine and looking over
her shoulder and glancing without appetite at the remaining crust of
her sandwich. He wishes he could whisper words of comfort to her, but
he can't because his tongue is too big.
The furious washing machine begins to screech like a car out of
control. The girl drops the last bit of her sandwich and steps on it
and puts her fingers into her mouth and starts to chew. The machine
is wobbling and banging as if it might explode, faster, harder,
vibrating on the floor so much now he can actually feel the shockwaves.
Enraged, he tries to move, but it hurts, tremendously. He attempts to
shout but the only thing he hears is the thunderous racket and the
uncontrollable sobs of the distraught girl. He senses that it would
be unwise for him to attempt to move around; he must stay still or
something terrible will happen to him.
The circular door of the machine springs open and water and clothes
a lot of blood splashes out onto the floor, forming a kind of rainbow-
coloured swamp. The girl screams and jerks and covers her eyes.
Releaved, perhaps, the machine begins to wind down, gradually losing
its power, rhythm and noise.
Now, there is only a soft, delicate whimpering. The girl is standing
beside the pile of regurgitated clothes, covered in goosepimples. She
can see horrible things in the blood: clumps of hair and tiny, severed
fingers and toes. Slowly, she turns around and points up at him, her
once innocent face now stained with black hatred.
"You!" she growls, staggering closer. "You! You put him inside!"
He woke up with a sore throat and a headache and his arms hanging
around in the air, like an astronaught who'd forgotten to strap himself
down. For a while he lay there, trying to recall the events of the
lucid dream he'd experienced only moments ago, before dropping his
arms, slipping out of bed and leaping downstairs.
His girlfriend was in the kitchen, cuddled up in the corner beside
the washing machine with her head between her knees. Startled, he
tiptoed barefoot across the lino.
"Oi, hey, what's the matter? What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she sniffled, touching his arm briefly as he crouched
beside her. "It's nothing."
"It doesn't look like nothing from here. Hey, come on, tell me. No
more dark secrets, remember?"
"It's just another bad memory, that's all. About Mum, of course." she
sniffed up and her nose crackled. "She... She once put... One of my
pets into the washing machine... Killed it. It's nothing. It's so long
ago, I don't know why I got so upset."
"She's dead now," he hissed, squeezing her tightly. "She's gone, you
don't have to think about the evil bitch anymore. Try and think about
the good things. Think about /us/."
"But she's only been dead a few days, I can't just switch off and
forget-"
"I know, I'm sorry... You're right, I'm so sorry."
`She's lying,' he thought, despite his concern. He wasn't quite sure
how he knew, but yes... Yes. She was definitely lying about the pet.
And as his girlfriend cried into his dressing gown, he looked up at
the corner of the room and saw a spider's web with a fly caught in the
middle of it - wrapped up, struggling, and about to be consumed.
900 words