Building 35 “The Red Light”

“There is a red light sitting behind me by the door, like the sort of neon glow you get when you are sitting by a barstool, waiting for your mate to come back. I don't know if I have earned what is going to happen to me now. Far as I can tell there isn't anything in particular someone does for something like this to happen, but here I am.

The light shuffles about a little, causing shadows on the wall to shift and titter all about. The lights are off in my room. I tried turning on the lamp by my desk, but the bulb flashed with light and then was snuffed out.

Now the only light I have is the one coming from the laptop where I am writing, and the dull red light, standing by the closed door.

I guess...I suppose we all just assume that nothing will happen when we decide to do a deep dive on some weird forum. We chat about, looking for something scary, like a horror story or a weird video.

I always dismissed the idea that you draw to ourselves what we get. It always has seemed to me like a very fatalistic way of looking at tragedy, but I am sure in a sick way that pain attracts pain, or at least that the pained are drawn to it.

To the dark corners of a room and the black spaces on a website, those little places where pain sits and is expressed in stories and tales meant to illicit pain in someone else. It is always done in good fun, and quick thrill if it is done well, maybe a nightmare or two if we decided to eat before bed, but after that it is gone, lost to the ether.

Until another night comes to us, and we are drawn back to that feeling.

I can feel heat radiating off of it in waves, the sort of waves you would attribute to maybe something a lot hotter than it is. At the start, I thought I could smell the hair on the back of my head burning, could feel the sensation of my skin building up temperature, but I was mistaken.

I haven't turned around, though I did check the back of my head. The hair is fine, but the light is not. That dull red light that makes me think of bars and late nights with my friends without another soul in sight.

I had a friend back then, long ago when I still left the house. Their name was Louis. My other friends and I would always call him Lois, on account of him having that name and all. It was petty, stupid shit, but the sort of crap you always pull when you are a young man and you don't feel or know any better.

My heart is starting to hurt in my chest, and I think my foot won't stop trembling but I am having trouble feeling it.

One night the rest of the guys were gone. It was just me and Louis, sitting at our usual table near the corner of the bar, a little bit tucked away from the fireplace. Louis and I had both had a split with our respective girlfriends a week before, so we were both just happy to be out of the damn house.

My girl had caught me eyeing someone else, and that was that, nice and clean. Found out later she had been seeing someone on the side, but at that point it didn't matter. I felt like it was my fault, and Louis seemed to be in similar spirits.

I didn't think much about it at first when they didn't really want to talk about what caused the breakup. They were always pretty reserved, probably from all the shit we flung their way, but that night I seemed to be picking up on something. They kept looking towards the fire all empty like, and for the life of me I cannot say why the hell I decided to pry.

I guess it was just a good night for it, or maybe it was just the drink.

The red light...if I turn my head a little, I think I could make it out in the mirrors that make up the face of my closet doors.

I want to look, but I don't want to look.

I already see the red light. That is all I want to see of it.

So I ask them what the hell had caused the split, and what they told me tears me up inside. Maybe it is the way I reacted that makes me feel that way, but maybe it is the red light that is bringing it all up in me.

If I was them, I wouldn't have told me. For a while I justified how I reacted by reasoning that they should have known better, but I know I probably should have known better too. I knew exactly what was going to happen when I reacted like I did, but I did it anyway.

So Louis tells me that their girlfriend had caught them trying on their clothes.

I laughed a little, but they are serious as I had ever seen someone.

I...didn't take it well. I asked them if they were gay and they told me they weren't, that they didn't know what the hell they were. Then they start crying right there in the middle of the bar. The bartender is too far off to listen in and we were the only ones there but I felt an awful need to tell them to shut the fuck up.

I held it back for about as long as I could, as they went on and on about how empty they felt and how I was their only real friend in the world and that they loved me and didn't know how to think about it...and...by the end they were a blubbering mess.

It was then that I told them to shut up.

I called them gross, said that it was shit they needed to keep to themselves and that if they ever told anyone about it that I would hunt them down and beat the crap out of them. To this day I can't think of why the hell I had to say that. Maybe it the breakup talking or maybe I am just a bastard.

Lois got real quiet after that, and it wasn't soon after that that they got up and left.

I think a lot of people might think that I told my friends about it, but I never offered up even a whisper.

When I found out Lois was dead, I cried harder than when my mother passed.

Something inside me I think broke when I said all those things, when I, the one person they had trusted with all of that, had told them to get lost. I think I knew right then and there that my days living as a human being were numbered.

I sure as hell couldn't call myself a man, not after what I did. For a while I didn't know what to think of myself, though I told people I was a guy.

The truth is, that day I felt like I was something sick, like the sort of sick you get after a night of rum and whiskey with no food. I've felt that way ever since then, and the feeling never passed. I haven't told anyone about what happened that night, though eventually their bitch of an ex spilled it to someone.

The family didn't bury them.

No one claimed their body, and I still don't know what happened to it.

I'm crying right now, not that it matters. You would think time would have done something but it didn't help at all. I am haunted by what I did, and when I read that story on the internet, I knew somewhere deep inside that it was meant for me and me alone.

I am going to turn around, but I wanted to get this to someone first. I don't want people to wonder what happened to me, and I don't want people to think that I am anything more than what I am. What I was.

I'm sorry Lois.

The red light...the pain in my chest is spreading.

I can

't feel my fningers too good.

I'm ready.

The red light consumes, and sits in judgment.”

The Historical Society received photos of the aftermath, mostly due to some work put in getting permission from the family, what small number there were.

The man's computer had been saved, mostly due to their body acting as a shield against the brunt of whatever struck him. The rest of the desk and the items on it were destroyed.

Dental fillings were conclusive enough evidence to suggest the identity of the deceased.