Breathing

Marilee sang along with the song on the radio as she drove into town. She was in an unusually good mood, despite having to make a last-minute trip because the eggs she had were rotten. Maybe it was because she was still excited to make peanut butter cookies? Or that she needed to get extra forks anyway? Maybe it was because it was a beautiful day and she had gotten out of bed at a decent time? Or that traffic wasn’t bad at all?

Whatever it was, the song, Uptown Girl, was only helping Marilee’s mood be positive.

As such, Marilee belted out the last few lyrics in joyful harmony before waiting to see what the next song would be. When the radio host instead led the audience into commercials, Marilee just hummed a random tune as she reached for the CD button. She liked alternating between her CDs and her preferred radio station instead of jumping from station to station.

However, with her eyes on the road, she accidentally undershot her target and hit the AM/FM button instead.

It wasn’t a big deal. It had happened before, and it would probably happen again. It was an easy and quick fix.

At least, it should have been.

Marilee’s eyes narrowed when instead of annoying static, she heard breathing.

Heavy breathing. Like a man had just finished a race or his breaths were labored because he had asthma.

“What the…?” Marilee muttered as she switched back to her preferred station, which actually played more songs than they did commercials.

But instead of a too-energetic or robotic voice explaining their product or service, there was just heavy breathing.

Marilee stopped at a red light before she looked at her radio, thinking she had pushed the wrong button again.

The numbers on the screen showed her preferred station.

“...Heck?” Marilee said as she switched to the next station, then another, and another. But no matter how much she skipped through the stations, Marilee could only hear a man breathing heavily.

There wasn’t even static in the background.

Just breathing.

“Okay, did someone hack the radio or something?” Marilee said as she switched to her CD right before the light turned green. As she drove on, her destination just right up ahead, Marilee felt prepared to relax and sing along again.

Only to have her hopes crash when she only heard heavy breathing.

Marilee gulped.

“...Did someone hack my car?” Marilee asked, knowing that what she just said was ridiculous. Her car was too old for that to be possible. Even if it were, they would control her steering wheel and not her audio.

But then...

“No! Stop it, Marilee!” she exclaimed as she finally just turned the stereo off. Sweet silence reached her ears as she arrived at her destination and pulled into a parking lot. Once her car was safely parked and the keys were out of the ignition, Marilee sank into her seat and just sat there, unmoving, for a few moments.

“Something is probably just wrong with my speakers,” Marilee finally muttered. “Yeah...it should…be back to normal by the time I get to the car. Yeah.”

Her smile completely gone along with her previous happy mood, Marilee managed to find the strength to leave her car and head to the strip mall that was just right ahead. The church bells ringing from across the street comforted her ears as Marilee zeroed in on the store. Her goal was to get in, buy those blasted eggs, forget the forks, go back home, and pretend nothing creepy or weird had ever happened while baking peanut butter cookies.

Marilee should be fine.

She would be fine.

When Marilee got to the store doors, she took a deep breath before she walked inside, prepared to hear some random music over the speakers.

She stopped right at the entrance.

Marilee only heard breathing.

And maybe it was just her imagination, but Marilee swore the breathing sounded...louder. Closer. Heavier.

“Did...the whole county get hacked? State? Country?” Marilee said quietly to herself, with a bit of a whimper. She looked around, but the other customers were just going about their business, picking through the shelves like nothing abnormal was happening.

“Excuse me,” said a young woman as she walked by Marilee and continued on inside like she wasn’t hearing some guy breathe heavily over and over.

...Was Marilee the only one hearing this?

Was she going insane?

Or...

“No, no,” Marilee said as she backed out of the store, her breaths coming out shakily. Once she moved far enough away that she couldn’t hear the breathing anymore, Marilee took out her phone.

“Maybe something’s wrong with my ears,” Marilee said in complete disbelief because she could hear herself loud and clear. Marilee typed her symptoms on Google, but it took a few minutes because she had trouble writing them in a way that didn’t automatically make her sound crazy. When Marilee finally pushed the search button, she found herself hoping that what she was experiencing was some kind of medical condition. Even if she did not have the time to go to the hospital.

Then the results popped up.

You might be haunted.

People have shared experiences of being haunted by the ghost of a mur-

Marilee didn’t read the rest of the entry, which at a glance was surprisingly long. She just exited the app with a frustrated huff.

“Just because it’s October doesn’t mean that ghosts exist,” Marilee said, though a small part of her noted that it would make sense. The heavy breathing was something one would hear in a horror movie.

Marilee shook her head. No! Horror movies were just that, movies! They were not-

The church bells started to ring a pretty, familiar tune. Marilee’s eyes widened with realization.

“Maybe...it’s a frequency thing?” Marilee said, full of desperate hope as she exited Google and clicked on the YouTube app. If her ears, for some strange reason, couldn’t receive a certain frequency, that would answer why she could hear the bells but not the radio. It would also make more sense than her being haunted. After all, why would something haunt her in the middle of a drive? When everything had been fine before?

Right up until she had accidentally tuned in to that random station?

A YouTube short loaded. It showed a man, his back to Marilee, sitting on a bed in a somewhat bare room. Marilee smiled because while she didn’t hear music, she didn’t hear any heavy-

The man breathed.

It was the same voice as the one in her car. The one in the store.

Marilee quickly and fearfully swiped down, only for the same video to appear. Desperate and in denial, Marilee kept on swiping down, but no matter how far she swiped, it was the same video.

The same bare room.

The same man on the bed.

The same heavy breathing.

“Stop it...stop it!” Marilee cried, tears appearing in her eyes as her thumb reached to exit the app. Right as her thumb hovered over the exit button, the man suddenly turned around, his eyes staring right into Marilee’s.

“No.”