#slenderbro

It sounds like soft tapping, like gentle knocks against a door.

At first you write it off--there's hundreds of sources that could produce such a sound, even if it's a little bit out of the ordinary. It doesn't really concern you, even if it sends a slight creep up your spine. There's something familiar about it. 

But you keep hearing it, no matter where you go. At school, at work, at Vriska's, at the supermarket, at home. Its volume is never consistent--sometimes it's far off and muted, and other times you could swear that the source of the noise is coming from right next to you. But no matter where you turn, no matter how hard you listen and look, you never find out where it's coming from. 

Thankfully, the noise seems to leave you alone at night--though the memory of it is clear as a whistle in your mind. It keeps you up when you're trying to sleep, playing steady in the back of your head. And the worse part is is that there's something familiar about it. Teasing at the edges of some memory that for the moment you can't call to light. 

One night, you fling the comforter off your bed in frustration and straighten up to your feet. Tonight the echo of the sound is more insistent, tugging at you and making you far too anxious to even attempt lying down, much less sleeping. You think that perhaps a bit of fresh, autumn air will help you relax. You walk over to your window, your hand finding the latch just as you happen to glance across the street. 

There's someone there. Someone in clothing that pricks a bubble deep, deep inside you.

You immediately fling the curtains shut. A chill rattles through your body. You clasp your hands to your face, teeth intuitively finding your nails. 

No.

No.

It can't be. It can't be.

Your hands shake. 

It can't be.

He's dead. He's dead, your dad told you he was dead. He's fucking dead. 

He has a fucking Wikipedia entry, for crying out loud. And why wouldn't he, considering all that he had done? Though your dad tries to keep it from you, you know that to this day there are still more and more cases much like yours coming to light.  Dozens. Hundreds. Too many for you to possibly conceive outside of the bubble of your own personal pain. Too many lives ruined by one man.  

You'd been a kid, so the media flareup had been nothing but a blur. It's such a mess that you almost don't remember what he did to you--almost. 

God, he has a fucking Wikipedia entry and right below the sections chronicling the events of the trial and the controversies and the appeals there's a big blurb about how he died. There's a date. You have a date. 

He had taken everything from you but at least you'd had the morbid comfort in knowing that the bastard was dead. The satisfaction of internet-leaked images of his corpse. Ghost-white and slackened and bloodied and still. Dead and gone and unable to hurt you or anybody else ever again. 

Just as you begin to convince yourself that what you saw was a trick of insomnia, you hear the sound. It's faint and faraway but you hear it. And you wonder if maybe, maybe, you've finally found the source. Even if it's impossible. Even if he's dead. 

The nagging familiarity comes back as the tap of the sound continues. You listen, tongue between your teeth. Then it hits you. It hits you, and your mind grows solid in fear. 

It's the sound of cheap wood tapping against plaster in steady, steady beats that eventually dissolve into the erratic. It's the scrape and squeak and squeal right before the decline into sobs, into shrieks, into sighs.