The Welcome

Page 5 of 8

This was more than that.  This was an invasion she couldn't wrap her mind around.  A normal burglar, a rapist, a drug-crazed murderer, those were tangible.  Those were fears she could comprehend, intruders that she would be able to see, touch, defend herself against.  Those were concrete, rational fears.  This was...what was this?  Her brain rejected every possible explanation before the thoughts were even completely formed.

A simple idea came to her mind, one that she was surprised she hadn't thought of sooner.  She moved the mouse to the icon in the upper right corner of the window and clicked.  She let her breath out in a sigh of relief as the program closed.  She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself again.  This isn't really happening; you're just working too much, too hard, stressing out about it.  That's all; you just need to take a break.  That's it.  Relaxed now, she opened her eyes again to the sight of Microsoft Word, a document filled with the words she had just closed, words that should not be still in the computer's memory without having been saved to disk, but that were there in front of her.  There was a difference this time; the same words were now being repeated, over and over, page after page.  She looked at the page counter in the bottom left of the screen.  Forty pages, forty-one, forty-five.  Sixty, seventy-three, ninety-two.  The numbers were growing faster than she could count.

Out of habit she started to shut the computer down using the proper method, but decided that wouldn't work, couldn't work, it would take too long and whatever had taken control of her laptop would stop it from happening.  She pushed the power button and held it down for a couple of seconds to force the computer off, the words flying past on the screen, too fast for her to read.  Without the normal musical fanfare her laptop used to signify it was saying goodbye for the evening, the screen went black.  She took a deep, cleansing breath, afraid to close her eyes out of fear of what she'd see this time when they opened, and closed the laptop and started out the door.

She had only taken one step when the familiar music that greeted each of her workdays rang from the speakers on her desk.  She stopped and turned around.  The laptop was still closed, but somehow it had turned itself on again.  She could see the light of the screen glowing from around the edges of the thin block of plastic and electronics on her desk, a blue, sickly hue that stained the wood grain it rested on in a way it never had before.  Just as quickly as it came on, the cheerful goodnight-great-working-with-you-see-you-tomorrow music played and the glow went out.  The laptop turned on again, then off, on then off, continuing in such rapid succession the screen's glow appeared to be a strobe light at a dance club, and the music it played at startup and shutdown came in bleeps and blurps.

Breaking a paralysis she hadn't even noticed, she turned and ran out the office door into the hallway, where the lights had started flickering on and off in much the same rhythm as her laptop had been.  Her first thought was to hit the light switch by the office door, the one that controlled the hall lights, but as she reached for it she saw that it was already in the off position; this wasn't some strange power surge, the lights themselves had come alive.  She looked into her bedroom to her right, and saw that the lamp by her bedside had started into the strange dance of light and darkness as well, and a glance to her left into the living room showed enough evidence to believe that the rest of the house was partaking in this strange event as well.  She started to run towards the living room, to get to the front of the house, when the walls started speaking to her, stopping her in mid stride.

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