Echoes

Content Warning: Some of the stories contain depictions of violence and scenes that some readers may interpret as self-harm or suicide.

Author’s Note: This story is written in a slightly different format and perspective. Rather than a traditional short story, this is more of a collection of four events/causations, and the effects they had, presented by an entity.

The Price of a Lie

A man who would rather endure agony than admit the pain and suffering finds himself limping through a well-lit corridor of a clinic. The bright, white lights hummed overhead. As if spotlights, they embarrassed his every move and emphasized his every limp. Guilt bubbled inside of him.

As he walks down the hallway, each step echoes through it like a muffled, distant thought ‘should’ve come sooner.’

“‘Should have, would have,’ classic,” speaks a voice from within him.

The smell of disinfectant lingered in the air, as if to remind him of the reasons he refused to come. The smell with which bad memories were associated; the final days of his mother, her trembling hand, and the stench of the hospital in the air.

“Right this way,” whispered a soft, feminine voice, gesturing to the open door of an exam room.

He gritted his teeth as he walked past her into the room; pain jolted through his body with each step.

“So, what brings you in today?” queried the nurse.

The man struggled up onto the examination table and sighed, proceeding to joke off every question she asked him.

“Embarrassment,” murmurs a voice that is not present in the room, a voice that speaks to those whom it presents this exhibit to. “It begins so small, doesn’t it?”

The patient’s jokes and counters continued.

“Pain,” he lied in a playful tone, “Chest pain,” he groaned, fighting the violent pain that burned him from within.

“And so the nurse marked a wrong box on the questionnaire,” a voice continued explaining.

A bit later, she exited the room.

“Embarrassment, such an innocent thing, wouldn’t you agree?” the voice speaks humbly.

The shape was gone from the room now, and the room fell silent; just the man on the examination table, alone with his thoughts and pain. Misery to keep him company.

The nurse made her way down the corridor to the nurse’s station. On the computer, she opened the patient’s file and entered the answers he gave into the system. The system hummed obediently as she pressed submit.

Though the nurse’s hands shook with uncertainty as she entered the answers—to her, it was obvious the man was lying, the data had to be entered, and the patient’s words were to be trusted. And to a machine, her uncertainty meant nothing, and the input data was accepted by it as unconditional truth.

The patient’s answers aligned imperfectly, or rather—incorrect answers aligned with other incorrect answers perfectly. A single misplaced symptom resulted in the system posting a request to the wrong specialist.

“And that is the price of a lie,” the voice whispers. “What then, you ask? Stay and see.”

Half an hour or so passed, and the man in pain waited patiently, as a patient that he was.

A doctor walked down the pristine hallway, reading the symptoms and system-assumed diagnosis. Three likely diagnoses floated around as he parsed the patient’s file.

Age, sex, and symptoms aligned perfectly with one of the diagnoses that the system proposed.

“Fast forward a while,” he says.

The doctor went to see the patient, but the patient still lied. The doctor prescribes him a seemingly harmless pill, one that would deal with the diagnosis he suspected; one that he presumed based on the wrong answers.

The man left, rejoiced, but still embarrassed.

The doctor, later that night, input the data and the case into another system, one that swallowed his data with the vicious hunger of a starved predator.

It parsed it instantly.

New pattern discovered.

“Weeks passed, updates rolled out across thousands of hospitals worldwide,” the voice remarks with delight. “A false breakthrough, how unfortunate.”

New treatment prescribed.

Thousands of identical prescriptions for similar symptoms were given out within weeks. At first, a few reports came in. The man, the very first case, was found deceased in his apartment a few days later. Then dozens, and then an unstoppable flood.

In a conference room full of people in suits, an executive of a pharmaceutical company sat hunched at the far end of the table. He was rubbing his temples after a lengthy meeting that revolved around the massive reputation hit the company was facing if they pulled the drug back; meanwhile, the death toll kept increasing. At last—a decision is made.

Days later, the headlines in the news read:

Pharmaceutical has issued a full recall for…

He sneers, “Embarrassment, such an innocent thing. A small cause—a simple lie, like a flap of a butterfly’s wings, results in a massive effect. Fascinating.”

He walks past a bottle of pills on his shelf.

“Welcome to my exhibit. I am the Curator, and today, my dear audience, I will tell you about little causes and their effects.”

The curator smirks as he walks between the aisles of his collection, stopping by a jar of salt.

“Ah, this one is fun,” he comments, beckoning you closer.

The Price of Distraction

Steam rose steadily from a pot atop a simple stove in a modest apartment in a downtown of some metropolitan.

A young woman hummed to herself while swaying to the rhythm of music. Armed with a wooden spoon in hand and a smile on her face, she was ready to tackle the culinary challenge before her.

The recipe she was reading was scribbled in an old notebook by a shaky hand; the handwriting was messy, but one she knew well—her grandmother’s.

It was a simple recipe, but one she hadn’t managed to replicate quite perfectly yet.

“Tonight is the night,” the woman whispered to herself encouragingly.

“She is a woman of science. Cooking is her one act of rebellion, a place to let her mind drift and relax,” he explains.

On the counter sat a jar; within it, the white substance glinted playfully in the sunlight. She danced toward it, grabbed it playfully without giving it so much as a thought. She turned toward the sizzling pan. A soft fragrance filled her kitchen. She opened the jar and grabbed a pinch of what she assumed to be salt, just as her grandmother always did.

“Measure by feel, add more after sampling it,” she repeated her grandma’s words to herself. She sprinkled a bit over the food in the pan and then tossed the jar down onto the counter beside the stove as she continued to stir. The fragrance grew stronger, sharper, and eventually turned almost metallic, but she kept on stirring, distracted by the music.

From the other room, just barely audible, the phone rang urgently. When no one answered, it rang again, but she was too absorbed in cooking and distracted by music to hear it.

A voice message was left, “Keira, there’s a bit of an emergency. The White Ghost substance is missing from the lab. Please call me back as soon as you can,” a distressed voice spoke with a sense of urgency.

Far away, yet not too far, a distressed scientist was scrolling through security footage in search of a clue as to what happened to the substance.

On the jar on the counter, a yellow triangle label could be seen.

DANGER: Highly volatile when heated.

“Curiosity and distraction make for an amusing combination, albeit, not always a healthy one.”

His voice echoes through the aisles of his collection.

The substance sizzled violently, as if the heat was turned up too high. She swiftly turned the heat off and stared at the pan, perplexed.

“Odd,” she uttered to herself, but against her better judgment, she reached in and scooped a bit of the food into the wooden spoon. Blowing on it to cool it off, she then took a whiff of the scent. It smelled different from how she remembered, but the texture looked just right. So she thought that perhaps she had overcooked it.

She put it in her mouth to have a taste, and in that moment, her eyes shot wide open; the taste was all kinds of wrong.

Within a blink, her muscles seized up, and she collapsed to the floor a short moment later. As her throat swelled, and breathing became impossible while the substance crystallized inside her body, she realized her mistake.

Her gaze darted around the kitchen, landing on the jar of substance from which she took a pinch of salt. Panic flooded her when she noticed the yellow caution label.

It was the White Ghost.

It was now that she realized her mistake. Her eyes darted to the jar of white substance on the table. Panic filled her gaze; fear distorted her expression as her throat swelled, cutting off her breath. She collapsed before the stove as the mixture began to crystallize within her body.

“Life is so fragile. A simple mistake due to distraction,” the Curator whispers, his voice carries a hint of awe.

Her body was discovered the next day.

Investigators bottled the substance for study, and later they learned that it was a secret research by the government. A hidden lab, a hoax job title.

Within weeks, the lab was closed.

Within months, the outrageous story of covert government research was forgotten.

The Price of Exhaustion

“Ah, this one,” the Curator stops by a half-burned letter stuck mid-air as though a memory froze in time. “Another example of a simple mistake, this time, the cause was— exhaustion.”

Wind roared through the streets of a snow-flooded town. An exhausted mailman waded through the deep drifts that tried to swallow him whole. Harsh wind whipped his face, frost bit at his skin as icy-snow thrashed against his face.

A relentless onslaught of the elements, one he had to endure to complete his work for the day. His heavy eyelids struggled against the winter’s storm, and his boots fought a losing battle against the ever-piling snow.

He pulled the mailbox open, rummaging through his sack in search of the letters for this address.

“Exhaustion, one of humanity’s worst enemies, along with distraction, and impatience,” the Curator spoke softly, his voice carrying confidence in his statement.

As the mailman plucked out the letter that he assumed to be correct, a gust of wind thrashed against him, ripping it out of his hand like a thief in the market, eager to get away with it. The mailman wasn’t having it; he caught the letter, crumpling it in his thick glove in the process.

The molten snow upon the paper smudged the ink just enough to make the address illegible. He hesitated for but a moment before placing the letter in the mailbox; the numbers looked barely correct, or perhaps barely incorrect.

A couple of days after that, the blizzard subsided at last.

“And the smudged, crumpled letter found its way into the hands of the wrong receiver—a mistake that never would have happened had the weather been better, or the mailman slept a little longer,” the Curator explains calmly. His voice carries an edge like a blade.

A woman whose skin bore the soft folds of time found herself holding the crumpled letter in her hands. Her name was written in it, as well as the name of her son.

She read it once, and then again.

“We regret to inform you,” the letter read.

Each line struck her chest like the recoil of a rifle.

Each word—a knife in her heart.

“We regret to inform you,” she read over and over and over again. Her tears fell onto the paper, her hands shook, and her muscles tightened, crumpling the letter further.

Sharp pain shot through her heart.

The crumpled letter fluttered onto the table; a heavy thud echoed through the kitchen.

She knelt there, alone in this moment.

Sorrow.

Pain.

Her heart wrenched, but not just from her loss; it was deeper, sharper. The pain shot through her body as she clenched her chest. She gasped for air, tears continued to stream down her wrinkled cheeks.

“Elgor,” were the last words to escape her lips.

A soldier, in a crisp, parade uniform, stood at attention, at a funeral; tears streaking down his cheeks. His attention was focused on the grave of his mother. His jaw was clenched, his fist tightened around the wrongly-sent letter, the last thing his mother read.

“A couple of matching names at a wrong address entirely,” the Curator comments, his voice carries a hint of remorse.

Beside the soldier stood his friend, hand firmly planted on the shoulder of the grieving soldier.

The funeral ended, and the muffled sobs were now replaced by the dull scrape of metal against soil as shovels dug into the dirt, filling the grave. And still he stood there, long after the others had gone, with the letter clenched in his fist and tears frozen on his cheeks.

An unknown amount of time passes in a blink. At last, the soldier turns to leave, softening his grip just enough to let the crumpled letter fall out of his grasp.

It fluttered down into the snow.

The Price of Rush

The Curator claps his hands, “Exhaustion leads to mistakes that could otherwise be avoided. Do make sure to rest plenty after your visit here tonight,” he remarks before turning to walk further down the aisle of causations, beckoning for you to follow to the next exhibit.

In an unnamed location, the printer clanked, screeched, and then hummed to life.

A warning flashed on the computer’s screen

*Black ink low*

It read, but the operator dismissed the warning,

*Continue anyway*

She pressed.

The printer’s head buzzed as words took shape on the pristine white paper.

On the last line, where the address was to be written, the ink smudged a little too much, but time was of the essence. The paper was folded and packaged into an envelope; the letter was sent and prompty received by the intended recipient.

An average-looking man in his mid-thirties opened the letter at a pub. He took a swig of his whiskey and snapped the bartender over again.

“Repeat,” he demanded before turning his attention to the letter.

From:[blank].

To: Richard Fandleberg.

It was an intelligence gathering request. The letter included the address information and a brief explanation of the purpose of the mission. However, the address was barely readable. The last digit in the address number was either a 6 or an 8. After another shot of whiskey, Richard took it for an 8.

“Rainfall, a perfect veil for his mission,” remarks the Curator.

Shrouded by darkness and under the cover of rain, Richard stood by the side door of a house of an unknown person. From the letter he received, he could only assume that the house would be that of a corrupt politician, or something worse, much, much worse. Metal clanked softly as he fiddled with the lock.

A moment later, a soft metallic click made Richard grin. The door creaked open in what could best be described as a pained scream of unoiled metal.

Richard found himself inside the dark house. The day prior, Richard disguised himself as an electric company employee to check in with the neighbors, and he learned that the resident of this house was a man in his sixties, who had departed somewhere a couple of days prior and would return in a few days.

Richard closed the door behind himself softly and locked it just in case. He walked quietly through the dark house, stalked only by his sense of justice, and the creaks of the floorboards. While digging through the file cabinets in the office of the unknown, his gaze darted to what would be a very obvious safe.

It was tucked away neatly behind a painting; a gap between the painting and the wall on one side was ever so slightly larger than the other side. He sneered, approached the safe, and worked his magic to crack it open.

“Experience,” whispers the Curator. “Sometimes it takes one to interesting places, and sometimes—it takes you way too far.”

The safe clanked open.

Money.

A handgun.

A block of white powder wrapped in plastic.

And at last–a folder.

The folder, like a sly serpent, slipped out of Richard’s experienced grasp and fell to the floor. Images, files, bank statements, transactions, and call transcripts, scattered around the floor.

The Curator grins excitedly, thrilled by the impatience in your eyes. He knows you are brimming with curiosity to find out the culprit, and their crime.

“Director!?” Richard and the Curator spoke in unison, though only one of the voices echoed through the office of the house; the other echoes through the aisle, and his eyes fixate on yours, his gaze brims with excitement.

Images showed the director of Richard’s agency shaking hands with a drug cartel leader. Trading weapon crates, accompanied by the military, with a local war-leader of some hidden-in-the-corner, endlessly-at-war country.

Transactions of millions that were going through offshore accounts. Richard gathered the files with trembling hands.

Days turned to months.

Seasons changed, but his resolve did not.

Richard was a righteous man, and that righteousness led to discoveries of secrets he wished he had never known. Within weeks, the internal investigation turned up—nothing. Nothing of good anyhow.

The director now had his sights set on the righteous man, a paladin wanna-be, a hero that the country did not need.

Months later, Richard went into hiding, but he knew full well the capacity of the system and the agency for which he spent a large portion of his life working. Each place he stayed was uncovered within days; there was nowhere left to run.

One spring night, a single gunshot echoed through a dark and chilly alley behind a pub. As Richard lay there, hand on wound. He stared the devil in the eyes.

“Truths have a price. You paid yours. Thank you for your service, Richard.” The devil whispered to Richard with a grin.

Another flash, and then an echoing shot.

A soft thud followed as Richard’s cold body hit the ground.

The killer—never to be found

The Curator grins excitedly as he gestures at a black, wooden door.

“Truth has a price, as do mistakes and haste. To do something fast is to make a fool of yourself, rather—take your time but do it right.”

He claps his hands and the windows’ blinds fold closed.

“I am afraid that’s all the time I have. Farewell, for now.”

THE END