I Can Still Hear You Breathing
RUNNING HEAD: HYPOTHESIS TEST
- pg. 13 -
when the barn in the moonlight shot them down as all around nowhere the twilight cried for clergymen so lethal was the road he spoke before your experiment was your experiment it was my joke you see Iris kept sharing predictive text games so we thought it would be funny to mock up an article headlined something like leading theologian warns predictive text challenge puts teens in unprotected contact with spirit world after all what is the difference between predictive text and a Ouija board aside from one is digital and the other analog in any seemingly random medium something answers my friend Dave knows AP style and edited what I wrote and then posted it on Reddit and it worked beautifully Iris and her friends excitedly typing questions to the other side and sharing what the predictive engines said in response as we snickered but later that night Iris got scared saying the answers started out merely weird but grew more unsettling until her phone told her to soak in a bath with a toaster and she shut the thing into a bedroom desk drawer and so later after I stopped getting return texts I waited on her lawn enduring barking from her dog and furrowed looks from her father until she biked up then I told her it was just a joke and I wrote the article and because it was all made up there was nothing to freak out about and it was funny so funny but instead of laughing Iris stormed inside screaming I should try it and okay fine even though we thought she was being silly we took the article down but then the next night our predictive text challenge was on the news as one of those teen scare stories and Iris called and said look what you’ve done and I said we didn’t do anything and she said try it and so why not I’d go find Dave which I did he was shooting cans against the hill out back behind the shed when I biked up and my ears rang from a hundred feet away and once I got his attention by throwing a dog’s tennis ball he showed me his Dad’s 45 caliber Desert Eagle all proud like it was his and no I didn’t leave like you always said a kid should instead I held it and aimed it at the hill but I was afraid to pull the trigger for the noise and because I realized in my shaking arm instead of my head that this is a thing made to blow up in your hand
RUNNING HEAD: HYPOTHESIS TEST
- pg. 14 -
every time you use it and maybe also because I imagined your disappointment for a second too long and so not wanting to hold it any longer I changed the subject to the argument I needed to win with Iris and so we went into the shed and Dave put the gun on the table and set up his camera on the tripod and once we were set up I typed questions and recited them for the camera and then accepted predictive suggestions and assembled answers like chat with your men at arms and offer them round liturgical cheese and read them aloud as we laughed until we grew bored and Dave said how before his mother died her speech sometimes sounded like predictive text all morphine drip surreality about butterflies carrying away the cathedral though sometimes she would fight through lucid for a spell but then the phone winked out starved for interaction so to keep it awake I wrote what’s up and it suggested I don’t think you know my name and Dave said phone but I wanted to play along so I asked it who’s there and the reply was you click are click speaking click to click the click congregation and Dave laughed but the sentence reminded me of Eugenett Lack always in the front row of math and the back row of history writing up his weird mythology and calling himself its congregation how mercilessly my classmates teased him until at last a cop found him dangling from a bridge rafter neck intact but dead anyway and after a dry swallow I asked what the phone wanted and the phone replied to get the gun and we traded looks and Dave took out the Eagle set it on the table and said ask where the gun is so I did and the phone wrote back the table the table and we noped out took a walk watched the sun set convinced ourselves we overreacted but we returned and asked what it wanted the gun for and it replied perforation of the lung and we asked whose and it said you know and while I was having trouble getting air Dave reached over and typed why and then he accepted the word because and I stopped looking but Dave read aloud the next six words I click can click still click hear click you click breathing and at that point I reached for the Eagle still on the table but Dave clamped his hand over mine saying what are you doing and I said maybe we should get rid of the gun
RUNNING HEAD: HYPOTHESIS TEST
- pg. 15 -
and in reply Dave snorted that he wasn’t going to let it out of his reach after that threat against him except I was sure it meant me see the last time Eugenett looked at me remains burned in my mind all pained and betrayed because I’d done worse than keep silent no instead of sticking up for him I laughed and I can already imagine your expression at this and I’m sorry but that’s when Dave yanked on the gun and I pulled too and the inevitable happened and now I’m prone with blood tacking my shirt to the floor and pink foam bubbling through a pucker in my chest and each squelchy inhalation like dregs through a straw all of this alone because Dave has fled with his phone and the open door slams out the pulse of the wind while a mile downwind earlier this evening you saw the news about the predictive text fad and recognizing a lesson for your students you downloaded code for a predictive routine and had the program grab a word at random to seed each new sentence and then told it to write a book on autopilot and you watched for several nonsensical minutes then got bored because you’re every bit the skeptic you raised me to be so you read from a novel and fell asleep are asleep even now as I try to say goodbye Daddy even though I can’t be sure you’ll find my message buried in this sea of paper but goodbye Dad goodbye and I’m at a loss what else to say heck this is already the longest message I have sent you since I learned to write you know I call my grandparents and it is all awkward silence because I never have anything to say except of course that’s not really true the problem is I never know what to share or how to say it and I feel self-conscious about the whole idea of sharing the unshareable when I am never sure what the reaction will be or if I will even be understood and so I turtle and impatiently wait to escape which I may do here shortly because I feel all the same uncertainties now and I already said goodbye so what else is there to do other than to draw things out in ways painful for me and maybe you too but now I hear the night birds outside Eden rocking on the wing as they conjure me to a sea of bright vermillion where the inferno is a period and sentence of my own
Note: Predictive text was used in the opening and closing lines of this story.
Graham Robert Scott grew up in California, resides in Texas, owns neither surfboard nor cowboy hat. His stories have appeared in Necessary Fiction, Barrelhouse Online, Pithead Chapel, and others. He lurks, mostly quietly, on Bluesky @graythebruce.bsky.social.