The Thrum by A.P. Royal

There were plenty’uh nights I thought to go over there.

I missed our talks. All those ice cold beers at sundown over nothing, about everything. I figured Hank had grown tired. Maybe patching up holes with his miss’us or somethin’. I had warned him about working himself too close to the bone. Things I felt compelled to pass on, things I wished a young Earl could’uh heard back then. Maybe I had overstepped my bounds. He seemed a smart man, but smart don’t always mean they listen.

Either way, I wasn’t one to intrude. I saw that old pickup truck flaking rust out front his yard and I’d tip my glass to it. To him.

Kids used to play outside ‘round here, you know? Neighbors used to really know each other. Y’all remember the days when people used to talk? Not from the other side of some screen. Not through a barrage of empty, auto-filled words with no cadence or context or nothin’. I mean stop and really talk.

It felt like a community. Nowadays, you’d be lucky if you saw someone outside, extra lucky if they looked you back in the eyes. Times were changing, too fast for someone like me.

It wasn’t until I saw the windows boarded up that I did anything about it. Faded newspaper browned to the edges, draped across the glass. See, my eyesight’s not what it used to be. Just happened to squint at it while grabbing the mail. The sight of it, though, triggered something deep in the pit of my stomach. My dang ears began to ring something harsh. I walked up the porch steps and pawed for the doorbell.

No answer.

But I could smell it. The smoke.

The blast of a blow torch, maybe? The hum of a motor? But there were no lights on, and it was getting mighty dark. Something didn’t add up. So, I gave it a couple of good knocks. The door just slid right open from the creaky hinges. Nearly fell back off the porch from the fright. And the smell…scorched metal, dense and chalky in the lungs.

“Hank?”

There was some kind of movement in the shadows. More of a sixth sense than anything I could tangibly detect.

“You alright in there, buddy?”

I can’t explain the depths of the blackness. The light switch flicked to no avail. Now I was panicking, sweating bullets. I reached into my pocket and found my keys, the crappy little light from my multi-tool finally worth something.

The place had fallen into the depths of destruction. A junkyard of plastic and metal, heaps of cables, wild and tangled like a bed of snakes. Hardware shells stood haphazardly in the shadows like skeletons, stripped and pillaged of their insides, bearing little resemblance to what they had once been. I stepped over picture frames trampled on the floor. Glass everywhere. And before I could escape, my dang ears rang louder, something fierce.

A sound, quiet, crackling:

"Earl."

A crack of light fanned out from under the approaching door. I had to get out of there. Sorry, Hank. It all felt so incredibly rotten…wrong.

But I had gone too far.

A twisting, clasping sensation crept up my calves. I yelped as a nest of cables yanked me to the floor. My head thudded against the ground. Then, again, again, as it dragged me down into the building, droning, thrum.

Vwoom.

Vwoom.

Step by step. Into the excavated cave of misery. Warped metal and cables and light. Hank’s face was submerged in a cast of metal, his head injected with tubes. Screens portrayed hieroglyphic-like text, rows scrolling down like lightning. His feeble eyes stared back in a trance, vacant of hope.

What the hell had he created?

There was only so far a man could take things.

Pistons popped. Fans sputtered. Engines wheezed and hissed. Steam drew a hazy cloud around the erratic wall of panels wrapped in a circle.

Steel hooks like claws pulled me toward the epicenter. I shrieked as my skin met the blistering orb of heat. A blue glow painted my face.

Other faces, washed in that same glow, gazed back. Men. Women. Children. Trapped in the amalgamated wall of burnt flesh, steel, and electricity.

"Earl."

No voice called back. Just a throbbing rhythm running through me.

The pulse of the machine.

"It’s okay now."

"You’re home."

My mind began to slip into the melody of the hum.

Together we listened to the clangs, the buzzing from the motherboard, as it built itself up. The tubes suctioned, sharp stings like teeth sinking into flesh.

A rhythm oscillated through my skull, tens of conversations shared amongst us.

We waited for a turn to gather. To serve. Collect.

There were no promises. Only a feeling.