Broadcast Flag- A Horror Story

• This story and fifteen others will be published in the Spring/Summer of 2022 in an anthology of horror and dread entitled “CONFESSIONAL”. Stay tuned for updates.

Hello, I guess. And I'm sorry.

My father died when I was a young man, though it wasn’t so long ago.

I wasn’t too young, not so young that I’d post videos or textual laments across social media, but also not quite so old that it didn’t affect me at all. I don’t even know if that second part is an option or if there’s any such thing as that level of stalwart bravery you sometimes see in movies or read about in books. I don’t think there is, if I’m being honest. What a stupid thing to expect of someone, that they could suffer that kind of loss and just trudge gamely onward with no trauma to show for it. What a damaging thing to teach our young people.

So yes, I was a young man and I think his death might have ruined me.

See, and this is just a little thing, but my father looked a lot like me. That sounds stupid, doesn’t it? It’s not like I died that day, it’s not like I was the one who had a stroke in the middle of the backyard we’d once used to play catch and field grounders during my time in little league, but it almost felt like I did. When we found him curled up in a ball next to a pile of fallen but gathered leaves, he looked so much like me. When the coroner had him on his slab and I had to ask what had gone so terribly wrong so very quickly, he looked like me. And then, on the day of his funeral when all the pictures of the man he used to be and the one he wasn’t any longer were propped up along the walls, he looked like me again. 

His hair was a different color, of course, silver instead of black. His face was more haggard and lined with age and adventures I’d yet to experience. His nose was a slight bit larger, a little more broad, but it was still my nose. And I think even more than that was the eyes. We had the same color eyes, a stark blue not unlike the sky on a blisteringly cold winter day. It wasn’t the warm summer green of my mother, it was a brutal windchill, and over the years that more than anything else sometimes made it feel like I was staring at myself and that those unblinking eyes were mine. He never looked away, that time had been and gone, but then again I didn’t either. 

My father was dead and in the ways that mattered most, he looked so much like me. 

We didn’t do much mourning after that, not publicly anyway. And that’s not to say we didn’t care or we were already over it, or that perhaps we’d been glad to see him go. We were just a large family spread out far, so when that kind of thing happens, everyone grieves in their own way and then goes their own way too. Tears were more often than not relegated to the privacy of one’s own home, no one ever wanted to burden anyone else with the expression of some valid human emotion, and so time kind of just moved on. I think we all meant to remember him as the days turned into months, but I don’t think we ever did. Maybe that’s on us. Maybe it was a matter of processing gone wrong. I don’t know. I’m just an electrician, have been for almost a decade now, and I don’t understand that kind of thing. 

It’s weird, writing this out, trying to make sense of what’s important or why. Maybe none of it is. Maybe… I don’t know. But I’m here, I’m talking, so that should really be all that matters. He wouldn’t have liked that, of course. Dad, I mean. He was a “cards close to the vest” kind of guy, no matter whether he was holding a flush or trying to bluff his way into something meaningful, so he wouldn’t have cared too much for anyone talking about him when he’s gone. I guess that’s why my siblings haven’t. Then again, maybe for them he’s really gone. They got our mother’s looks, her features, her eyes… they weren’t like me. They didn’t have to see him every time they looked in a mirror or saw faces shimmering in the water of a puddle or sink. Maybe, for all the loss we suffered as a family on that autumn day, theirs was lasting. Sometimes I wish mine was. 

What a terrible thing to say. What a horrible son I’ve proven to be.

I used to daydream when I was younger. My parents had to bring in a therapist eventually, because it wasn’t the good kind that might turn me into a novelist or a screenwriter. It was the sort where I could almost fade away into nothing, where I’d see things happen in the form of something more akin to waking nightmares or sleep paralysis, and they’d go on for minutes at a time. One moment I’d be sitting at the dinner table, laughing with siblings over a casserole and perhaps a can of Coke, and then I’d be somewhere else, like an out of body experience even though I was tethered to myself like a kite to the ground. And in those moments, I’d see myself move. I’d watch as I continued to laugh and eat and exist, and even though I always knew it was me and that whatever was happening wasn’t my fault, it still felt just a little bit wrong. It felt like I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. And my mouth would hang open and I would laugh and stare.

It happened a lot more over the years until I eventually got medicated, something that, depending on the dose, seemed to do the trick. But there were moments. There were times. I remember as clear as day the instant it got worse and god I hate remembering this kind of thing, I hate telling it, especially given what’s just happened and what’s happening now. It feels like such a disgrace to his memory, because my father was a very good man. But there was a moment, I think I was ten? Eleven at the oldest. And I was standing in the upstairs living room while my father read a book in front of the Christmas tree and next to the television. We lived well so it was a large room, open enough that we had a workout space and an elliptical off to the side of the makeshift theater that doubled as his reading room. It was more than big enough for the both of us.

I don’t remember what I came upstairs to ask him. It was probably nothing, as the concerns of most children tend to be, but I was standing behind him as he read and I’d almost opened my mouth before I felt my body seize and I slowly went away. I was gone again, a kite on the wind, and I watched that little version of myself do nothing. He didn’t speak to the man in the chair, he didn’t announce his presence, he just stood there and watched. And for the first time in my young life, I felt the feelings and thoughts of that little piece I’d somehow left behind. Before I go any further, I want to make it perfectly clear that I love my father. I don’t have a single terrible thing to say about him. He was there for me every moment of my life and he helped build me into the man I eventually became. But all those good feelings don’t change the thoughts I heard, those strange things tumbling down a long cave towards me like a rolling boulder from which there was no escape. 

In those moments, l watched that leftover version of me. In the living room of the only home I ever knew, I heard him begin to wonder what would happen if he picked up a free weight from across the way and brought it down on the man’s head over and over again. That was it. There was no emotion. It was just blank questioning, wonder, and curiosity. That little shell wanted to know what would come of the future if he picked up something heavy and then let it go. You can’t possibly know what that kind of thought can do to a child. You can’t ever know what it did to me. My father came to realize I was standing behind him when I started to scream uncontrollably, manically, with my mouth having fallen open like a banshee from a cheap horror movie. By that point I was myself again. Whatever had taken me away had brought me home. But I couldn’t forget what the remnant had said and wondered. 

Ever since then I’ve been possessed of worries and fears that one day I’d walk into a bedroom or an office and find myself standing in a corner waiting for me. And in that moment, I’d be no more. I’d rise up in the corner of every room and watch as that remnant walked through my life and did things I would never even consider on my own. Wait, that’s not putting it quite right. It’s not that I’d never consider it on my own, it’s that I’d never consider it at all. I’d be stuck there as a powerless god while the man I used to be wandered through my life with bludgeoning echoes of that eternal moment I’d once spent as a child standing behind my father’s chair.

That feeling went away but, as with all things when you live long enough, nothing ever really stays gone. 

Not the remnant boy. And not even my father. 

It was three and a half years after he died and we put him in the ground that echoes came calling. I left the cemetery where we’d purchased a plot as a family, every kid putting in just enough money to cover whatever needed covering, and came straight home after talking to the headstone for a respectable amount of time. I own a small condo about thirty minutes away and it’s nice enough for what I have going on in my life, so when I locked the door behind me and took a beer from the fridge, I sat down on my living room sofa and felt at peace. That was ninety-eight hours ago to the minute and I haven’t moved since, save to blink my eyes. The peace is gone. The acceptance I’d felt while visiting the grave for what must’ve been the fortieth time over the past three years had fled. And all that is left is me, sitting in front of the television I’d never quite gotten around to turning on. 

I almost did. I still have the controller in my hand, but I can’t quite bring myself to push the button. I don’t want the screen to flicker and flare to life. 

See, when I sat down, I saw myself in the early afternoon reflection of the black glass. I looked a little older than I thought I was, a little more disheveled, but I was there. And after trying to say goodbye to my father once again, I almost felt like I was ready to move on with my life and forget all the trivial little things that hovered over me like a child’s unforgettable nightmare. But that’s not how things go, I guess. For all the years I’ve lived, I worry that I’m a stupid man, a fool, a child too scared to confront the truth. But hiding and ignorance can only last for so long. Sooner or later when you’re sitting on the couch with a beer in one hand and a television controller in the other, you’ll realize that your reflection isn’t holding either of those things. You’ll see that the age isn’t in your face but in his. That your nose appears slightly different not because it’s an off-kilter reflection, but because it’s not your nose or your face at all.

And you’ll know that those blue eyes staring back at you aren’t either. 

And though the space beside you is empty, in the reflection it is full and occupied by the man who looks so much like you.

It’s been four days now and the space around me is beginning to reek of filth and ammonia, but I can’t leave. I keep my eyes glued straight ahead, locked on the black screen and the two men shining back. I know who I am, I see the muscles in my jaw tighten just as I watched the beer fall from my hand. But the man who’s watching me is the same one I found dead in the backyard. The same one from the metal slab and the funeral home. I don’t know why he had to look so much like me. I don’t know why he’s followed me home. But he’s there and I can see his eyes darting across the screen, watching me in the reflection just as I’m watching him, as if that’s the only way he can see the son he could reach out and touch if only he knew how.

But I don’t want him to. I don’t want him to figure it out. 

So I’m sitting here on the couch I haven’t left, because I don’t want him to see me move. Not when he might figure out how to follow. I have not looked away from that screen out of fear that my eyes might stray just a little bit too far to the left, and that I’ll see sat next to me the father who looked so much, so very much, like me.  

And he’ll know that he’s here too. 

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “Who doesn’t want his father back? What sort of son could be that monstrous?” 

But the reflection is not my father. I can see it in the distance and the space that isn’t there, just as I’ve seen it so many times before. Like a kite that’s left the important bits behind. 

He knows what I tried to do to him. That I was one panic attack away from breaking apart his skull with either steel plates or free weights. And I don’t think they can forget things like that. How could they? 

If I haven’t, how could they ever let that go?

The battery in my phone is dying now and I don’t think I can write much longer. My father is growing more agitated and his static blue eyes are flickering faster now. They’re darting. Always darting. And they incessantly follow every single move I do not make. If you find this, please look for me and I’m sorry for the state of my surroundings, but if it helps I think I know where you can look. For all the things that don’t make sense, for these horrifying remnants that have been following me all my life, there is still clarity even though my mind is fogged by panic and such a delirious and crippling fear. 

There is a tree behind my condo. The leaves have started to fall.

And even though there are no rakes to gather them, there is more than enough space to lay down as if I’ve been standing alone in a backyard all my life, and die. 

Because there’s a man beside me on the couch and he’s looking at me now. His eyes are fixed and leveled. They’re cutting through the line and I can see the tattered fabric of a kite getting lost in the sky.

The leaves are falling faster as a strong wind blows and I wish for all the world that my father had never looked like me.