The Static Man
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The Static Man
They say static is just noise. Harmless interference. The ghosts of old signals trying to reach us.
But Glen knows better now.
Static listens.
Static watches.
Static remembers.
Part One: The Tape
It started with a weekend cleanse. No phones. No Wi-Fi. Just Glen and his mom in a cabin surrounded by trees too quiet to feel natural.
“You’re always online,” she said. “This’ll be good for you.”
Good was not the word.
There was nothing to do, not even a proper signal to send a text. Glen wandered into town just to get out of the woods. The place was barely a town, two gas stations, one sad diner, and a dusty thrift shop that smelled like mothballs and burnt plastic.
That’s where he found it.
Buried beneath a pile of warped VHS tapes and old, dead Walkmans was a case, yellowed and brittle. No cover art. No spine label. Just a piece of cracked tape across the front, scrawled in faded red ink:
“DO NOT WATCH.”
Of course he bought it. One dollar.
Back at the cabin, he dusted off the old TV/VCR combo. The screen flared to life in a crackling hum, glowing like something half-awake.
Glen inserted the tape.
It clicked.
The TV sputtered, screen spasming with bands of static, then steadied on a grainy image: woods. Tall pine trees. Shivering leaves in low wind. The camera was handheld, swaying like the person filming couldn’t breathe right.
Glen leaned in.
In the frame, just between two trees, something stood.
Tall.
Still.
Wrong.
It didn’t move, but the trees around it bent ever so slightly away from it, as if repulsed. Its limbs jittered at the edges, flickering like corrupted film. Its face, no, its absence of a face, was smooth and pale, but smeared in digital decay, as if even the camera couldn’t resolve it.
A humanoid glitch.
A man-shaped signal failure.
The Static Man.
The tape cut.
Then returned.
Now the figure was closer.
Each new shot, the entity drew nearer to the lens, yet never seemed to move.
Then suddenly, no transition, the screen turned black. A second of silence.
Then screaming static.
The speakers erupted with a jagged burst of white noise that rattled the windows. Glen scrambled to eject the tape.
The power cord was already unplugged.
The TV was still on.
Part Two: Interference
That night, Glen couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the woods, gray and twitching, like a signal stuck between channels.
When he awoke, he found something impossible:
His pillowcase soaked in blood.
His ears ringing.
Small, hair-thin cuts on the sides of his head. Like antennae had been inserted, then removed.
His mom shrugged it off as altitude or dryness, but Glen knew better.
The mirror in the bathroom fogged over by itself.
The microwave door reflected static, even when it was open.
The dead TV still hummed. Sometimes it would flash the woods. The frame. That thing.
At 3:12 a.m., every night, the screen turned on by itself and played five seconds of the tape: the clearing, the trees, and the Static Man, closer each time.
By the fifth night, he wasn’t watching through a screen anymore.
He was in the clearing.
He saw it in dreams, sure. But then in flashes behind his eyelids while awake. Sometimes when he blinked too long, he’d open his eyes and be there, in the dead woods, the cold air full of buzzing, like an electric storm deep underground.
He started hearing voices. But only through speakers.
First the TV.
Then the radio.
Then his headphones.
At first, it was muttering. Then clearer.
Then it started saying his name.
“Glllllleeeeennnn…”
Drawn out like dial-up.
His reflection began to flicker. Not the light, his face. The eyes stuttered in sync with the static. His mouth would twist into a crooked smile when he wasn't smiling at all.
Part Three: Transmission
Glen tried to record it. Set up a camera in front of the TV at 3:12 a.m.
What he got back wasn’t footage of the tape. It was footage of him, sleeping in his bed.
Something tall in the corner. Watching.
It stood still for nearly twenty minutes. Then, one frame, it bent forward. And hissed.
Through the camera’s mic.
The video burned out after that.
Glen smashed the tape, threw the pieces in the fireplace, unplugged the TV, even taped the cord to the wall.
Didn’t matter.
The Static Man didn’t live in the tape.
The Static Man was the tape.
And the signal.
And every screen Glen had ever looked into.
Part Four: Broadcast
Glen’s mother left early that morning to drive into town.
She never came back.
He found the car parked in the road, door wide open. Keys still in the ignition. The driver’s seat was full of static, no, not sound, not light. Something more tactile. Like fog made of hiss.
He ran back to the cabin.
The TV was on.
The screen showed the clearing.
And this time, Glen was in it. Staring back into the lens, eyes wide, mouth twitching with a smile that didn’t belong to him.
Then the figure stepped into frame.
Behind him.
Not behind screen-Glen.
Behind real Glen.
He turned.
There was nothing there.
But the lights pulsed.
The speakers hissed.
And something wet dripped from the wall-mounted antenna above the set.
Not water. Not sap.
Blood.
He ran.
But not fast enough.
Epilogue: Dead Air
Police found the cabin empty. No sign of Glen or his mother.
But the tape? It was on the porch in a black case. Untouched.
Labeled, in red ink:
“NOW YOU’LL WATCH.”
No prints.
Just static.
The officer who took the tape home tried to digitize it for evidence.
He hasn’t been seen since.
If you ever find a VHS tape labeled “DO NOT WATCH,” don’t press play.
Because if you do, the Static Man will find you.
And once you’ve seen him
once he’s been in your screen
he’s already inside your eyes.
And static?
Static never stops.
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Reads like a horror movie 🍿
A creepy good story.