The Infinite Phantasm

The day started like any other. I woke to the sound of Steve Miller’s "The Joker," the opening drumbeat sending a jolt through my spine. I jumped out of bed, ready to tackle the day. I’m a writer, a damn good one, and this damn good writer has deadlines.

After going through the usual routine of bathroom, breakfast, teeth and shower, I sat down to return to the chapter I’d left unfinished. It gnawed at me all night and I was eager to dive back in. Writing was my passion, my religion. It wasn’t easy and it sure as hell didn’t pay well but this novel is the one that would be different. This one would make me a legend.

I didn’t care about the money. I wanted the glory. I wanted the name Mark Radcliffe to mean something. I wanted to see my name next to the great American writers. Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Radcliffe. Now that had a nice ring to it.

“Radcliffe!”

A voice snapped me out of my thoughts. I blinked, disoriented.

“Are you with us?”

The man at the head of the long conference table was staring at me, as were a dozen others around the room. Slowly, it started to come back to me. We were in a meeting about the kidnapping that broke last night. The Bedfords, the wealthiest family in town, found their three-year-old son taken from his bedroom. Beat cops got there first, then me and my partner.

Shelly. Detective Shelly Johnson. We’d worked together for three years and I’d trained her myself. This morning we had a theory that someone inside the family took the Bedford kid.

“Mark? You okay?” Shelly asked, but her voice was softer now. It was different.

I blinked again. I wasn’t in the conference room anymore. I was at a kitchen table facing a blonde woman with striking blue eyes. She was staring at me, her face clouded with concern.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her voice gentle.

Confusion hit me like a wave. One second, I was in a meeting about a kidnapping, and the next, I was… here? At a kitchen table, with a woman I didn’t recognize.

“Hi, Daddy!”

I turned to see a small child in a highchair. He looked back at me, wide-eyed. The recognition was instant, primal, but it didn’t make sense.

“Mark, are you sure you’re okay?” the blonde asked again, her voice tinged with worry.

“I… I think so,” I said, though I was far from certain. “Maybe I should lie down.”

I stood up, heading toward the hallway. The first door I found, I opened quickly and stepped inside. The bathroom. Good enough. A few splashes of cold water might clear my head.

But before I could even reach the sink, everything shifted. This time, I could feel it happening. I seem to be more aware of the change. The bathroom began to disintegrate, the walls crumbling into white nothingness. Even the sink disappeared right before my eyes.

In a matter of seconds, everything was gone. I stood in a void, completely white, the kind of blankness that made time feel irrelevant. For a moment, it was peaceful. No sound, no pressure, no confusion. Just silence. But that didn’t last long.

The tapping started. It was loud and incessant. It was possibly one of the most annoying sounds I had ever heard. Black ink blots began to spread across the white void, transforming my surroundings. The tapping grew louder, morphing the scene around me, until I was standing in a living room.

It looked old, the kind of place that hadn’t changed since the ‘70s. There was a floor model television, wooden with beige mesh sides and big silver dials. A record player sat on top, spinning a record. Alfred Hitchcock’s Music to Be Murdered By filled the room, the scratch of the needle looping, Hitchcock’s voice slowly creeping in.

“Do you like it?”

The voice wasn’t from the record. I turned to see the blonde woman approaching. She looked different. Her once concerned face now twisted into something darker, more sinister. In one hand, she held a hatchet. In the other, a small black revolver.

“Do you like it?” she asked again, her tone playful.

“Do I like what?” I asked. I could feel the dread building in my chest.

“What I’ve done for you.” she said softly, taking another step forward. “I did it all for you, baby.”

My heart pounded. The music from the record player seemed to swell, growing louder as her fingers tightened around the revolver. She lifted it, slowly, aiming it at her own head.

“You don’t have to do this.” I said, backing away. “Put the gun down.”

Her eyes never left mine. “It’s for you.”

Before I could respond she pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot was deafening. At the same time, the world around me began to blur again saving me from witnessing the devastation of the woman committing suicide. The living room, the woman, the hatchet, they all melted away, faster this time. I braced for another shift.

Suddenly, I was back in the conference room.

“Mark!” Shelly’s voice cut through the fog. “Are you with us or not? We’re talking about the boy. This is important.”

I blinked, the weight of my badge grounding me in this moment, this reality. But something wasn’t right. In the corner of the room was the record player, spinning the same Hitchcock track, as if it had been there all along.

“Mark?” Shelly repeated, her eyes narrowing. “You’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

I stared at her and again felt the dread in my chest. “Shelly, the boy… he’s, my son.”

Shelly frowned. “What are you talking about? The Bedford kid isn’t your—”.

The lights flickered and the hum of the record player grew louder. In a blink, the conference room vanished again, and I was standing in the Bedford family home. The curtains fluttered from the broken window. The child’s bed was empty.

And in the corner of the room stood the blonde woman, the revolver still in her hand.

“I told you, Mark.” she said softly. “I did it all for you.”

The revolver in the blonde’s hand gleamed under the dim light, her fingers tightening around the trigger as her gaze remained fixed on me. The room seemed to breathe, the shadows flickering like living things. The air felt thick, heavy, as if reality itself was straining to hold together.

“I told you, Mark.” she said softly, her voice steady, almost tender. “I did it all for you.”

I took a step back, my heart racing, but no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find a way out. The walls seemed to stretch and curve around me, a white-noise hum vibrating in the air. I couldn’t tell if the gun was pointed at her or at me anymore. Her eyes, though, the same blue eyes that once looked at me with concern were now cold, distant. She wasn’t the woman I thought I knew. Or maybe she never was.

Suddenly, the lights flickered. Everything blurred at the edges, like ink running off a page. I blinked, and the world around me shifted.

The room fell away, and I was back in my bed.

Steve Miller’s The Joker blared through the speakers, the drumbeat pounding like an alarm, rattling me awake. I sat up, gasping, drenched in sweat. My heart hammered in my chest. My eyes darted around the room. Everything looked familiar. My room. My life.

Just a dream.

I tried to calm my breathing, but something felt wrong. Déjà vu washed over me in thick waves. The beat of the song seemed too loud, too sharp. My hands trembled as I rubbed my eyes, trying to shake off the unease.

But there was a knock at the door.

I froze. Slowly, I turned toward the sound. I knew what came next. It’s what always came next. The knock came again, louder this time. My heart sank. I stood and moved toward the door, feeling the weight of dread crawling up my spine.

I opened the door, and there she was. The blonde woman. Those same piercing blue eyes.

"Radcliffe," she said, her voice carrying the same strange mix of affection and detachment. "You ready?"

“I… I thought…” My voice cracked as the words tumbled out, but my brain couldn’t form a coherent thought. Everything felt like it was slipping.

She smiled softly, almost sympathetically, and handed me the badge that I didn’t realize I was missing. “We have to get to the Bedford case. The kid’s still missing.”

The weight of the badge in my hand felt too real to be a dream. But I knew that somewhere, deep down, I had experienced this before. The scene in the conference room. The missing child. Shelly asking if I was okay. The sinking feeling I couldn’t shake.

It all circled back.

I blinked again, and I was sitting in the conference room. Shelly was across from me, frowning, concern etched into her features. The room felt cold, clinical, the tension palpable.

“Mark, you with us?” Her voice was firm this time, but that same edge of worry lingered.

I didn’t answer. My mouth was dry. My thoughts spun in a thousand directions at once.

The record player was still in the corner of the room. Spinning. Alfred Hitchcock’s Music to Be Murdered By played quietly, its eerie melodies weaving into the background. My mind tried to grasp for something solid, something that could make sense. But the harder I tried, the more it slipped away.

“Mark?” Shelly’s voice again, snapping me out of my fog. “What’s going on?”

I stared at her, then at the people around the table. They were all looking at me, but their faces seemed to blur, warping into one another. My breath quickened. “I think I need to step outside.”

Before anyone could respond, I bolted from the room, my hands shaking as I reached for the door. But the hallway wasn’t there. It was the kitchen again. It was the same kitchen with the blonde woman. The same highchair. The same child with the wide eyes staring back at me.

"Daddy!" The boy chirped happily, his voice light and innocent.

“Mark? Are you okay?” the blonde asked, her voice soft, the same concern clouding her face.

My pulse raced. My throat tightened.

No. Not again.

I turned and stumbled back down the hall, desperate to escape the suffocating loop. I grabbed a door handle and flung it open, but instead of a room, I found myself standing in the Bedford’s home again. The curtains swayed, the child’s bed was empty. The broken window gaped like an open wound.

In the corner, the blonde woman stood. The revolver glinted in her hand. Her eyes, the same, dead, blue eyes pierced through me.

“You can't escape it, Mark.” She whispered, stepping forward. “You never could.”

The walls began to close in. The air thickened, and the buzzing grew louder, vibrating in my bones. The scenes shifted faster now. Quick flashes of the conference room, the kitchen, the empty bed, the spinning record, Hitchcock’s voice looping and looping and…

The day started like any other.

I woke to the sound of Steve Miller’s The Joker. The drumbeat sent a jolt through my spine. I shot up in bed, my heart pounding.

And I knew, without even getting up, that the knock on the door was coming.

This was how it always began.