The bits remember

The clock on the far side of the wall ticked midnight. Aria glanced at it and trembled, knowing what was about to come. “YOU THOUGHT YOU HAD ENOUGH,” each word shone in a shiny green light on the dull, faded, yellowish-gray monitor before her, reflecting on her pale skin.

“STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!” Aria screamed at the top of her lungs, clutching her head tightly with both hands. It took a monstrous effort not to bang her forehead against the display. 

The letters on the black screen disappeared, leaving only the flashing cursor behind. Aria waited. I… The first letter… T… The second one… M… Every single letter took its time to appear as if taunting her. She just ended up closing her eyes, counting the seconds, because she couldn’t get up from the chair. Otherwise, the machine would get angry at her.

After a moment, Aria dared open up her eyes again. “IT’S A DELIGHT TO SEE YOU SUFFER.” Night after night at these dark hours, she would have to sit down here to read whatever the machine said to her. Word after word. She couldn’t just step away. The last time she did, her old stereo had suddenly clicked on, blasting at full volume. She’d crossed the room to turn it off, but just as her fingers brushed the dial, the whole thing burst into pieces in her face. The burn marks on her fingers and one side of her face were still raw and pink.

A new message appeared, “WHY SO SAD?”. Aria was trembling now. Ice-cold sweat fell from her forehead onto the greyed-out keyboard on the desk. Her rundown mascara smushed up against the corners of her eyes, it stung. 

“OH,” the monitor replied. “POOR ARIA IS CRYING?”

Two months ago, Aria had received a letter from a name she hadn’t remembered in more than 20 years. “We need to talk. Signed, Misty Brown.” She had something she had to give her from the old school days, it said. 

There was something about that name that called her back to her childhood town of Briston. 

She had never been fond of that town, too small and filled with too many stupid people. The first time she saw a way out she took it and never looked back since. Even remembering Misty was strange to her. Curly hair, big green eyes, always in the computer lab with the glow of a screen illuminating her face. 

Misty had been nice enough, sure, but there was something about her that irked Aria. She could never understand the easy focus Misty seemed to slip into whenever she delved into the digital world. And maybe, that had been what rubbed her the wrong way back then. 

Aria stood up from her desk and stumbled to the wall. She tripped over a tangled cord, catching herself just before falling, and reached the power outlet with trembling hands. The monitor’s glow cast her shadow large and shaky on the wall as she gripped the computer’s plug, her fingers clenching it so tightly they went numb.

“THAT’S NOT THE BEST CHO–” the greenish light stopped shining in the walls as Aria pulled the plug. Darkness and silence filled the room, no more of that constant, droning hum emanating from the old machine.

The machine emitted a loud beep, and the light slowly came back to life. Aria gazed down at her hand, still clutching the plug. Her fingers gave way, and it fell to the ground. “Fuck you!” She tried to sound strong and defiant, but the shakiness in her voice betrayed her. Her eyes were fixed on the dark screen and the blinking green cursor.

A muffled ringing started from inside her bag. Aria hesitated at first because the last time she had heard her phone was four days ago when it had stopped working halfway through yet another screaming match with her soon-to-be ex-husband. She flipped it open and answered it with a weak “H– Hello?”

“Aria, dear? It’s your mother,” it answered back. “I’m here at, at the hospital. We don’t know what happened, but– but your father’s ventilator just suddenly shut down and he–” she couldn’t hear the rest, because the phone slipped off her grasp. She walked back to the desk and dropped in the seat. 

She remembered the drive back to Briston. It had been an odd sensation like she was drifting back to a time she didn’t like. She had mouthed her disgust at the “Home of the Chickadees!” sign on the town outskirts and continued along the towering pines lining the narrow road.

The Briston streets were empty that day, as they usually were during the cold November afternoons. The damp ground and the smell of wet pine and salt carried from the distant sea. Bicycles sat chained to posts, as if out of habit, in a town where no one would even bother to steal them. And of course, the old red-bricked high school, its windows reflected the gray clouds and green trees.

When she arrived at Misty’s old house on the edge of Briston Hill, there was only an older woman tending to some tables outside. On top of them, lay the odd assortment of clothes, some worn-out magazines, cassette tapes, and a pair of roller skates. But right in the corner, almost hidden from view by an oversized sweater, stood the boxy presence of a computer. “You just missed her, but she left this for you,” the woman had said.

“WHINY, WHINY ARIA. DON’T YOU DARE TO MOAN. CRYING ON HER KEYBOARD, TALKING ALL ALONE,” the eerie glimmer of the letters brought her back, and these echoed inside her like no others before, because she sang them a long time ago many times, just with another name.

She finally understood. The very day she picked up the old computer, she’d tried to abandon it in a ditch on the outskirts of the town. Her brakes failed, and the car skidded dangerously close to a big tree. The whole commotion made her forget about the machine until she returned home days later. Curiosity beat her, so she connected the CPU only to find a cryptic message written across the screen saying “TELL HIM THE TRUTH.” She ignored it, and just a couple of hours later, her then-husband arrived home and told her that he knew about the stolen funds; that someone had sent him all the emails, and that he had the evidence needed to prove she had been lying to him about the business they ran together.

Two days later her house phone rang, and a robocalling voice spoke in a grave voice, “TURN ME ON AT MIDNIGHT”. When she didn’t, her father’s pacemaker shut down, and they had to rush him to the ER.

Since then, she had diligently sat behind this desk every single night reading the texts, following the whims of the digital ghost. Whenever she refused to read or acknowledge its demands, something horrible would happen.

“I’m sorry, Misty. I’m sorry,” Aria whispered as best she could, the green from the screen tinting her tear-strewn eyes. “I didn’t know,” she pleaded to the air. “I learned my lesson. Please, please leave me alone“.

“This is not about a lesson, Aria,” the words flashed, no longer capped. Somehow, this seemed even more personal. “You killed me, and now you’re going to pay.”

“No, no, I– I didn’t kill–” Aria wheezed, but the words of the old woman echoed again in her head. “You just missed her, but she left this for you. My dear Misty, always so fond of her computers. You made her pay for that in the end.”

Nineteen years ago, Briston had been the subject of a tragic incident. Curly-haired girl, 17, found dead inside high school computer lab. Hanged herself. A computer inside the classroom had been found smashed to pieces. Aria had left after graduation, but not before she found the machine where Misty always worked on, and decided to leave her one final parting gift.

“I didn’t mean to– Please… please end this,” Aria pleaded.

“Only you can,” the monitor responded, and it finally turned off.

The printer in the corner whirred to life, its mechanical sounds breaking the silence. It began spitting papers one by one until the last sheet slid out and sauntered to the ground. Aria walked slowly to it, a heavy knot in her throat. There, was a printed image of a rope, perfectly coiled, alongside a simple message in bold letters: “JOIN ME”.