There was music in the night. The soft, fleeting hum of crickets drifted through the open windows, wrapping itself around the edges of the dark kitchen. Greg moved within the stillness, his feet ghosting across the cold floor. He didn’t need the light. The darkness suited him—it was in this quiet, in this void, that he felt most at home.
His fingers touched the countertop, brushing it in slow, rhythmic circles. He wasn’t really thinking about it, not consciously. It was muscle memory, a habit formed over the years, like a ritual he didn’t fully understand. In the silence, the world felt clearer, more focused. And yet... it was not a world he shared with anyone.
The kitchen was full—not of life, but of things. Supplies. Cans of food, bags of rice, towers of toilet paper. He’d spent years building this—preparing, always preparing. For what, he could never fully explain, but he knew it was coming. Something. The whispers had told him so.
Outside, the song of the crickets faltered, just for a breath. Greg’s steps didn’t change. He didn’t hear the pause. He was listening to something else.
The whispers.
They were soft at first. They always were. They began at the edges of his mind, creeping in like smoke, until they filled every quiet space within him. He didn’t respond. He never did. The whispers didn’t need answers. They were not a dialogue, they were instruction.
Keep preparing. It’s coming.
His feet moved slowly across the kitchen, tracing an invisible path, the pattern as familiar to him as breathing. The whispers grew louder, their words curling into his thoughts, filling his mind. It was all so clear. So simple. It had always been this way, hadn’t it? The whispers had always been there to guide him, to tell him what to do, even when no one else had.
His family… his wife… her.
The thought brushed against him, light as a feather, then faded back into the dark. His hand trembled on the counter, but only for a moment. The air in the room grew thicker, the crickets silent now, as though the world outside had paused—waiting, watching.
The whispers faded, and with them went the pressure that had filled the room. Greg stood still for the first time in hours. The silence that replaced the whispers was deeper, heavier. But it didn’t bother him. It had never bothered him.
With slow, deliberate movements, Greg reached for the light.
The room flooded with brightness, and there they were.
The bodies.
A man and a woman, twisted and still, their forms tangled in a final embrace. The blood had pooled beneath them, spreading like ink across the tiles, dark and unforgiving. Their wedding rings—oh, how they glinted in the harsh light—unsoiled, untouched by the destruction around them.
Greg stared at them, unblinking. The stillness inside him matched the stillness of the bodies. There was no surprise here, no remorse, no sorrow. This, too, was as it was meant to be.
Flashback:
The Honda’s engine groaned under the strain, the tires crunching against the dirt road as it wound deeper into the unknown. The air inside the car was thick with the stench of cigarettes and whiskey—an atmosphere heavy with words left unsaid, too painful to speak aloud.
“We’re almost out,” the man muttered, his voice a thin thread stretched tight. His hands gripped the wheel, knuckles white with the tension.
The woman beside him shifted, her fingers fidgeting in her lap, her gaze fixed on the road ahead. “We should’ve stayed on the freeway,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, fragile. There was love in her words, though—an undercurrent of something still there, but fraying at the edges.
The man turned to her, his jaw clenched, frustration evident. “The freeway was a dead end, and you know it.”
She didn’t respond. Silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating, the weight of their fights still lingering. They had been fighting more lately. About the little things. About everything. But underneath it all, they still loved each other.
Up ahead, the house came into view. A beacon in the night. The windows were wide open, cars parked outside like they’d been left there in a hurry.
The man slowed the car, his eyes scanning the darkened structure. “We’ll stop here. We need fuel.”
They pulled into the driveway, their hearts still beating to the rhythm of a shared life, though that rhythm had begun to falter. Their love was bruised, but not yet broken. They didn’t know, couldn’t know, that the whispers had already reached them—had already begun to tear at the fabric of what they once were.
Greg stood motionless in the kitchen, the light flickering above him. His gaze lingered on the wedding rings, on the faint shimmer of gold that seemed untouched by the blood that had swallowed everything else. His mind, though still, was not empty. He had prepared for this. He had always been preparing.
In the silence, he could almost hear them again—the whispers. They would come soon. They always did. And when they did, they would tell him what to do next.
And Greg would listen.
He always did.