Static Between the Screams

Static Between the Screams

The photograph slid from my fingers and landed face-up on the cold floor.

Me—bound in a chair, mouth stretched wide in a scream, wires clinging to my temples like parasitic veins. And behind me, half-shrouded in the gloom, stood the girl. Her inked skin shimmered like something alive, her face calm. Watching. Always watching.

My stomach twisted, a chemical churn of fear and revulsion. That wasn’t just a photo. It was a moment—something real, something lived. The scream wasn’t just a sound frozen in time. I could still feel it, vibrating in my jaw, clawing up from my lungs.

And the worst part?

I didn’t remember any of it.

I dropped to my knees, hands trembling as I picked up the photo again, forcing myself to study every detail. The room was unfamiliar—no windows, just metal walls. A surgical tray blurred at the edge of the frame, gleaming with tools too sharp to be anything but cruel. And behind the girl, half-lost in shadow, was a mirror. But it didn’t reflect her. It reflected me—alone.

I stood abruptly, the photo clutched in my fist. My heart thundered like a warning bell inside my ribs. I needed to know where that photo was taken. And I needed to know who took it.

The hall outside the record room was quieter than before—eerily so. My footsteps echoed down the corridor, each one swallowed quickly by the oppressive silence. The fluorescents overhead flickered as I walked, and for a moment I swore I saw movement in their stuttered glow.

My reflection flashed in the glass of a door.

Except… it wasn’t my reflection.

I froze.

It was her. The girl with the ink. Standing inside the glass like it was water and she was waiting just beneath the surface. She tilted her head, mimicking my pose, then raised a hand and pressed it against the inside of the glass.

My breath caught.

I did the same, reaching out—and our palms met through the glass.

The chill of the door leached into my skin. Her eyes locked onto mine—wide, dark, endless—and I felt something stir in the base of my skull. A pressure. Not pain exactly, but weight. Like a memory trying to crawl out of its grave.

She mouthed something.

One word.

“Remember.”

The glass shattered.

I stumbled back, heart leaping into my throat, arms up to shield my face. But there was no sound. No shards. Just… nothing. The door was intact. She was gone.

I backed away slowly, the tremble in my legs more than adrenaline—it was recognition. Some part of me knew her. Not from nightmares or hallucinations, but from somewhere deeper. Older. Like she’d been carved into me long before I ever found her body on that slab.

I pressed forward, down into the lower levels of the precinct. My badge opened doors most people didn’t even know existed. But even as I moved through the bowels of the building, the temperature kept dropping. The air smelled sterile—bleach, iron, old paper.

I reached the morgue.

It wasn’t where I wanted to go, but my instincts dragged me there anyway. The moment I stepped inside, the lights dimmed. Drawers lined the walls like filing cabinets for the dead. And in the center of the room—laid out under a sheet—was a body.

I didn’t want to look. But I had to.

My fingers curled around the sheet’s edge and pulled.

It was her again.

The girl. Eyes closed now. Ink still vivid against pale skin. Only this time, something was different. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and between her hands lay a slip of torn paper.

A photograph.

Of me.

Not screaming this time. Sleeping.

In the same chair. Wires still attached.

No blood. No struggle.

Just stillness.

I stepped back. The room tilted. My balance wavered.

How many photographs were there? How many versions of me were trapped in different poses, in different moments? I felt like I was being watched by my own life—edited and rearranged without my permission.

I spun to leave.

But the door was gone.

The morgue had shifted. Walls stretched taller. The drawers retracted, disappearing into slick stone. The slab the girl lay on was suddenly ancient—carved from black obsidian. And behind me, the sound of dripping. Slow. Measured.

I turned.

She stood there.

Alive.

Not in a mirror, not in a dream—real. The ink shimmered over her body like liquid mercury, moving of its own volition. Her eyes glowed faintly, like something lit from inside.

"You're getting close," she said softly.

I opened my mouth, but no words came.

She stepped forward. “That photo... the one with the wires. That wasn’t the first time. It won’t be the last.”

“Who are you?” I whispered.

“I’m the echo,” she replied. “The memory they tried to erase.”

“What memory?” My voice cracked.

She reached out—and this time, her fingers touched my arm.

Images slammed into me like a tidal wave.

Not visions—experiences.

The smell of burned copper. Screams filtered through static. My own hands, covered in ink. My body strapped down, not just once but many times. Rooms that shifted shape. People with no faces. A woman in a red coat whispering my name through a cracked mirror.

And always, always the girl. Watching.

“Stop,” I gasped, jerking back.

She let go.

“You needed to see,” she said. “So you’d believe.”

“In what?”

“That this isn’t your first time through.”

The words hollowed something out in my chest. My heartbeat skipped, faltered.

“What do you mean?”

Her smile was sad. “You died, Reese. More than once.”

"No," I whispered.

“You keep coming back. But they keep taking more each time. More memories. More of who you are.”

“Who are they?”

She didn’t answer.

Instead, she pointed behind me.

I turned.

Where the wall had been was now a doorway. Beyond it, stairs spiraled down into pitch-black.

The girl’s voice whispered behind me.

“If you want the truth… you’ll have to go deeper.”

The stairwell yawned open, swallowing what little light the morgue had left.

I looked over my shoulder, but the girl was gone again.

Alone, I stepped into the dark.

Each stair creaked beneath me, and the air grew warmer, thicker—like something was breathing just beneath the stone.

One step.

Another.

And then a new sound.

Music.

A piano, soft and discordant, echoing from far below. The tune was haunting. Familiar. The same one that had been playing in the photo room, faintly behind the humming lights. Only now it was clearer, as if the distance between me and it was shrinking.

I descended faster.

The music grew louder.

And then I saw it—light, faint and golden, spilling from beneath a cracked door at the bottom of the stairs.

My fingers curled around the doorknob, slick with sweat.

I turned it.

The room beyond was a perfect replica of my childhood bedroom.

Same posters. Same bedspread. Same stuffed bear with the missing eye.

And in the center of the
room, playing a piano that shouldn’t exist… was me.

A younger version. Maybe thirteen. Maybe fourteen.

She looked up.

Smiled.

And the ink crawled from beneath her sleeves.

She spoke in my voice. "You're late, Reese. They’re already here."