“You know what these are, right?”

Dylan Brinster looked to either side of him with narrowed brown eyes as he reached into his assigned storage locker. The space was a small square-spaced cubicle for personal items, all that was allowed for employees at the coffee shop he worked at with Tom Deltoren, his coworker and friend of nine months. Nine months of retail work and customer service had bonded these two men in their early thirties in a unique and special way. So, Tom figured Dylan trusted his opinion on whatever was stashed in the locker for him to see. He also figured it wouldn’t take more than a few minutes, since both men were on their assigned breaks.

The moment Tom’s green eyes saw what Dylan had, he remarked, “Oh, yeah, I’ve seen ads about those! But aren’t they expensive?” And they were expensive; Dylan held a pair of noise-cancelling headphones from a brand connected to gaming and computer programming products. The brand had been advertised online as top-quality and capable of blocking out all distractions. Tom didn’t believe those kinds of buzz words, and he knew Dylan didn’t either.

“Yeah, they’re expensive,” Dylan remarked as he shifted his hold on the headphones, rubbing his fingers along the smooth plastic frame interlaced with spirals and black reptilian scales. “But I found these at a very cheap price. Go on, try to guess how much these cost me.”

“One-hundred-fifty dollars.” Online, these headphones were priced at least $200, so a 25% discount didn’t seem too outlandish.

“Nope. Guess again.”

“One-hundred-twenty dollars.”

“Even lower, man!”

Tom looked at Dylan with surprise, taking in the other man’s youthful grin. “Okay,” Tom said after a moment, “sixty dollars. Otherwise, they’ve got to be phonies.”

“Nope! They’re the real deal. And you’re still too high on the price.”

“Okay,” Tom said with a huff, knowing Dylan was eager to just blurt out the answer, “I give up. How much were they?”

“The low, low price of a trip to the local toy donation center!” Dylan smiled at Tom with the glee of a cat who had both their favorite treats at the same time. Tom, for his part, just stared back in stunned amazement. Then Tom laughed in disbelief.

“You’re pulling my legs, Dylan. No way headphones of that quality are found in that place.”

“They were there, man! Just resting on one of the shelves. I asked around and none of the workers remembered them being delivered under unusual circumstances.”

Tom looked down at the headphones, noting the gray-colored ear cups matching with the darker gray frame of the attached microphone. “None of the workers wanted to try them out for themselves?”

“I was just going to mention that.” Dylan gave a knowing nod, appreciative of Tom’s quick thinking. “They just didn’t seem to care. Probably thought they were phonies, like you said.”

“Unbelievable.” Tom shook his head at the thought. “That’s a place where things are given for taken for free.” He looked up at Dylan again, and then at his locker. “Is that all you got from the center?”

“Yeah, this is it.” Dylan carefully placed the headphones back inside the locker, shutting the door and twisting the combination lock he had for it to a random number. “Didn’t want to go too crazy there. People might start asking questions about my finances.”

Tom rolled his eyes and winced: hearing Dylan joke about his financial state hit a little too close to home for him. They both knew this job was temporary until a better opportunity presented itself. Preferably one far away from this part of the country. “So, when are you going to try them out?” he asked.

“Tonight. Got some classic rock songs I want to hear again in high-definition sound.”

Tom smiled along with Dylan at the imagined prospect of enjoying music from when they were kids again. “Well, I’ll expect a report when we open shop tomorrow.”

“Will do. Let’s get back to work now.”

“Sure.” And with a final thumbs-up shared between them, the two friends returned to their assigned jobs in the coffee shop they called their temporary job. Anything to make their time off of work better had to be worth some effort; Tom and Dylan both knew that, and knew the other enjoyed any chance to unwind and have fun.

[THE NEXT MORNING]

[06:22 AM]

Tom tasted the morning breath in his mouth as he drove up to the coffee shop. The windows were dark, the lights off, the doors locked. The shop was closed, and it had fallen to Tom to be one of the people to open the doors and get everything lit up. He turned the ignition off in his car and got out without problem, and the shop’s door opened once he entered the correct code into the adjacent keypad. One last look at the shop’s parking lot revealed he was alone; this did not concern him. Dylan was probably running late.

Once Tom had done an initial checkup of the night shift, he saw a pair of headlights come into the shop’s parking lot. The Sun had not yet risen, but the predawn light provided enough illumination to reveal Dylan’s car and its rugged exterior of several years’ exposure to the elements. Tom quietly sighed in relief that he wouldn’t be handling the first customers of the day alone; they tended to get rowdy because they were on the way to their jobs.

“Hey, Dylan,” Tom called over as he heard Dylan enter the shop through the back door. He didn’t hear anything back as his friend went straight to the staff room. Tom saw a beverage in Dylan’s hand—probably his morning caffeine boost—and knew Dylan would need a few minutes to get properly “charged” for his work. Tom let him have his few minutes’ privacy, cleaning up all the tables and counters before going back to check on his friend.

Tom’s greeting died in his mouth; Dylan looked too tired to be listening clearly. He was sitting on a simple metal chair facing the door. His eyes were almost completely closed, and he sipped the lid of the plastic cup containing his chosen beverage every few seconds. Then Tom noticed something odd about Dylan’s ears, or rather what was on them.

“Oh,” Tom said, “you brought the headphones here again?” Dylan said nothing, just kept sipping and slowly breathing. The headphones he had shown Tom before were resting over his ears, covering them entirely.

“Hey,” Tom said a bit louder, “Dylan. Can you hear me?” He went in front of Dylan’s view and waved his hand. Even that took Dylan several seconds to register the action: when he did notice, his reaction was slow but not sluggish. He slid the headphones off his ears and blinked three times, his eyes widening as Tom gave him a smile.

“Oh, hi,” was all Dylan said at first. He sipped more of his drink before continuing: “Sorry, I didn’t sleep well last night. I’m extra slow right now.”

“That’s what the drink is for, right?” Tom asked.

“Uh huh.” Dylan bobbed his head up and down, waited for a few seconds, and then chugged down the rest of his beverage like it was a shot of alcohol. He loudly exhaled when he had finished, and Tom saw the life come back to Dylan’s face.

“Whew!” Dylan smiled as he crushed the plastic cup in his fist. “Coffee, the fuel of the gods. Or, in our case, the gatekeepers.”

Tom let out a laugh; Dylan’s humor was back, which meant he must be feeling fine. “The drink was good, then. And the headphones?” He pointed to the objects now resting around Dylan’s neck.

“Oh, they’re fine. Worked fine. Got to hear some songs from my teenage years, really got me feeling nostalgic.” Dylan slowly lifted the headphones off him and placed them on his lap. “And they’re really comfy, too. Almost forget you have them on.”

“Well worth the investment of a trip to the toy store.” Tom shared a smile with Dylan before Dylan stood up and stretched his arms. “Better throw that away before we get started, okay?”

“Will do. Be out in a minute.”

Tom left Dylan to complete his task, a rubbish can in the staff room for just such a situation, and about a minute later Dylan was out helping him finish setting things up. When all the lights were on, the doors open, the chairs arranged in neat little rows, and the cash register loaded, the pair felt ready to take on the day’s work. At 7:00, their shift began. They would be working until midday, another period of toil in the grinding labor of their shared job.

[TWO DAYS LATER]

[6:30 AM]

Dylan’s car was already in the shop parking lot when Tom pulled in for another morning shift. He took that sight in with minimal reaction; Tom and Dylan’s shift had not overlapped until now. He hoped Dylan was feeling better, one bad night’s sleep didn’t affect anyone in a bad way. When he got inside he saw the staff room lights already on but nothing else was prepared.

Looking into the break room revealed Dylan, beverage held in a pair of shaking hands. Dylan looked worse than before; he had visible black circles beneath his eyes, and the eyes themselves looked a tinge bloodshot. Concern growing in his stomach, Tom found some satisfaction that Dylan was not wearing the headphones again. He rapped the doorway of the staff room with his knuckles, and Dylan jumped in his seat and nearly dropped his drink.

“Hey, sorry,” Tom quickly apologized. “Finish your drink, I’ll start setting things up.” But Dylan’s scared look prompted Tom to stay put. “You need to call off today?” he asked after some silent seconds between them.

“No, no-no-no.” Dylan shook his head with quick jerks from side to side. “I can work today. I just…” He sighed and rubbed his eyes with the back of one hand. “Bad dreams, I had bad dreams. Haven’t had them for years. Don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Bad dreams? That could be taken in a lot of ways. Tom didn’t want to push the issue, but he chose to ask the obvious question: “This doesn’t connect to those headphones, does it?”

“What?” Dylan scratched his ear, and then the back of his neck, shifting the collar of his uniform as he did so. “What did you say?”

“The headphones. Are they why you’re having nightmares?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Dylan sprang up from his seat and then chugged down his drink like when Tom had last seen him. But this time he crushed the drink with both hands, squeezing the plastic into a shriveled pellet that he then threw like a baseball into the staff room’s trash can. Tom stepped back from the doorway, worried about his safety and Dylan’s unexpected anger.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Dylan repeated, seemingly more to himself than his friend. Then he moved out of the room with long strides, showing energy that coffee probably was the cause of. At least, Tom chose to believe that; anything worse prompted concern and worry he did not want to experience. Those feelings were given enough by the customers that they interacted with, the staff themselves didn’t need to share it amongst themselves.

Something was wrong. Tom’s conscience wanted to help Dylan, but he didn’t know what he could do. If a simple question caused this sort of reaction, pushing it further would only make Dylan react with more vitriol. Not wanting to risk Dylan walking off the clock and leaving Tom on his own, he chose to keep the situation unresolved for now. If Dylan ever called off work, Tom would check on him.

Tom made himself promise to help Dylan in this situation. This had the grounds of a purchase gone bad, though Tom had no real idea as to why that was. But he would learn why if this got any worse. This just wasn’t the right time or place.

The customers started coming in shortly after the clock read 7:00 AM. Tom and Dylan went to work, their minds moving away from nightmares and broken friendships.

[THREE DAYS LATER]

“Tom, you got a moment?”

Tom looked up from his seat in the staff room to see Barry Winkin, a man who sold the shop’s baked goods in the mornings, standing in the room’s doorway. Barry looked like the kind grandfather in a child’s mind with his graying hair and a winning smile beneath his wrinkled face. “I know you’re on your break,” Barry remarked, “so if you don’t want—”

“It’s okay, Barry,” Tom said as he put his cellphone down on his lap. “What’s up?”

“You work with Dylan, right?” Tom nodded. “Well, he didn’t show up to work yesterday. I was supposed to work with him, and he didn’t arrive. No calling sick, no email or text message. Just a no-call, no-show.”

“Really?” Tom’s eyebrows dropped as wrinkles of worry appeared on his forehead. “That’s not like him.” Maybe he’s gotten worse after all. Did I wait too long to help him?

“Yeah, I don’t get it either. Just spreading the word, is all.”

“Sure, thank you.” Barry nodded and went back out to his baked goods and sweet smiles, leaving Tom with thoughts of hurt friends and missed opportunities for aid. These darker thoughts stuck with Tom after his shift ended, and when he got back to his two-room city apartment after some late-afternoon errands he decided to do something about it.

After eating something, he considered dialing Dylan’s number, but instead settled for sending a message instead. If Dylan had those headphones on, he reasoned, the sound of the message appearing would be missed.

Tom typed with his fingers, tapping against the phone screen’s touch-sensitive keys: “Hey, are you okay? Heard from Barry you didn’t come in to work yesterday.”

Tom hit SEND and saw the message pop up on the chat log. His fingers twitched as he waited for a response. He waited. And waited. And then he closed the log and put the phone in his pocket, only for it to vibrate against his thigh. He whipped the device out again and saw a response from Dylan; a short one.

“Sorry,” Dylan had typed. “More bad dreams. They’ve gotten worse.”

“Worse? What do you mean?”

The response came faster now that the conversation had really begun. “Voices,” Dylan typed. And then, a few seconds later, another few descriptive words: “Crawling around. Always there. Can’t think straight. Can’t explain it.”

Tom’s breath slowed as his stomach turned cold. He thought carefully about what to say next. If Dylan was typing coherently, then pushing him to give more details was the best option right now. There was no way to tell when Tom would get another chance.

“Dylan, listen to me. I need you to be honest with me. I want to help you get better. Okay?”

Tom didn’t get an answer for four minutes, and then all he received was an, “Okay”. But that was enough for him to ask the big question.

“Is this because of the headphones? If so, you shouldn’t use them anymore.”

No response. Three minutes passed, and still no answer. There wasn’t even an icon showing to say Dylan was typing. Todd started to sweat, counting the minutes like they were hours. I should do something else to help him. But what?

The short ding of a message update came out of nowhere. Tom looked at the new entry and saw what he had feared from Dylan: “Yes.” Yes, the headphones were the problem. Yes, he shouldn’t be using them anymore. Yes, he was suffering in some way and wanted help.

Tom’s fingers flew across the keys, composing a strategy on the fly. “Okay, we need to get rid of those things. Or you can do it yourself, if you feel okay with it. Give them back to the center or something, just get them out of your home. Do you understand?”

Tom waited for an answer. None came. When Tom sent a follow-up “Hello? You still there?”, there was nothing sent back. Tom checked his contact information about Dylan to find a small red “X” alongside his profile picture of him smiling on top of a hill. Dylan was offline. Tom cursed and closed the Messages tab, upset at being closed off so suddenly by his friend.

The dark thoughts came back to Tom. Was Dylan breaking up their friendship? Was this some sort of jealousy? Was Tom missing some vital component? Had he pressed too far already? Should he press even more, dig for answers by calling Dylan’s number? Even with the risk of Dylan missing the call thanks to those headphones, would that help things at all?

Tom didn’t want to risk going to Dylan right then and there, that would add fuel to the fire. Tomorrow, he promised that night as he went to sleep, I’ll call him tomorrow. He should rest and get some real sleep. But Tom couldn’t shake a constricting feeling in his chest that things had already gotten out of hand.

(LINE BREAK)

Tom woke up to the sound of his phone ringing. Grogginess made him not get the phone quickly, so that by the time he got it in his hands the call had gone to voicemail. And there was no voicemail recorded. Blinking sleep out of his eyes, Tom’s nerves were electrified at the sight of Dylan’s name as the caller ID. He did not leave a voicemail.

Before Tom could call back, a short message came up from Dylan, a typed one. Then came another one a second later, followed by a third, and a fourth. Rapid-fire, they all came at him, forcing Tom to read through them all as fast as he can.

“We need to talk.

As soon as possible.

I know what’s wrong.

I need your help.

Come here now.

Please.

Please.”

The next message was a street address; Dylan’s home address, Tom figured. He had never been there, but he could find it easily enough using GPS. Invigorated, Tom leapt out of bed and started to put a fresh set of clothes on; then he glanced at his bedside clock and saw the time was 5:52 AM.

Why is he…? Tom paused midway through sliding a long-sleeved blue shirt over his chest, and then finished the act with a grumble. “Don’t ask stupid questions,” he lectured himself out loud, “your friend needs your help. That’s what matters.”

Tom got on a few more layers of clothing before he left his apartment. The early morning air he felt through a brief opening of his window was crisp and windy with a chill that promised a day of uncomfortable weather. Once outside, he opened his phone’s GPS tracker and typed in the address Dylan had given. The small blue arrow on the screen came with an automated female voice telling him the fastest route. Tom looked around him, seeing other people out even at this hour and sticking to their own objectives. It was easy enough for him to join them in their solitude.

The GPS led Tom to another apartment complex. The front door to the complex was open. A red-haired woman with a body that had been ravaged by time was standing by the door, smoking a cigarette, and giving a thousand-yard stare to anyone passing by. Tom bore the weight of her look as he passed by and walked inside, the screen of his cell phone giving his face a small glow. The woman said nothing, but he could feel her eyeing him up and didn’t like it.

Tom took the stairs up to the fourth floor and Dylan’s apartment, despite an elevator present as a faster method of transport. The stairs were narrow, a small metal railing painted black going along one side and crumbling plaster on the concrete walls opposite. There was a cylindrical open space going all the way down to the ground floor and further up to what looked like three more floors above the one he wanted to go. He didn’t want to guess how many people lived here; it seemed like a unique bunch of folks, but Tom only had an interest in one person.

The final part of the journey came on the fourth floor, leading Tom down a hallway with faded blue paint and a thin carpet leading down to a fire escape door on the opposite side. Tom tracked the door numbers until he came to the one he wanted: Number 406. He put his hand against the door and gathered his courage, which was hard to do in an unfamiliar place and facing an unfamiliar situation.

Tom knocked on the door a few times. A few seconds later, he did so again. There was no answer from inside. Tom knocked harder, to the same lack of response. He slammed his fist against the door, not wanting to call out Dylan’s name unless he absolutely had to. Already he was probably waking people up, and then he would have to explain things to strangers and—

The door was swung open. Hands grabbed Tom’s arm and jerked him inside. “Hurry,” he heard Dylan hiss, “We don’t have much time.” The hands pulled Tom into darkness and he stumbled about when he was let go. The door slammed shut behind him, leaving him in momentary blindness as his eyes adjusted to the lack of almost any light whatsoever.

A lamp was clicked on, a small deskside model that gave an orange glow across a worn couch and those strange headphones of Dylan’s on the cushions. As Tom took this in he felt someone pass by him from behind and looked over in time to see Dylan move by the couch. But this was a shrunken version of Dylan, a twisted version with unkempt hair, sunken cheeks, and bugged out eyes. There was enough light to see Dylan’s pupils dilated, almost completely filling the iris with a deep shade of black.

Tom had to take a moment to breathe in, swallow his reactionary surprise and get enough willpower to speak. “Dylan, what’s happened to you? Have you gotten rid of the headphones yet?”

“The headphones!” Dylan barked out a laugh, and then looked at Tom with open fear. “That won’t help me. I’ve already heard the voices. They’re in my head, always… moving.” He shuddered with that last word, his fingers twitching individually as he spoke.

“What did those things do to you?” Tom insisted. “Come on, tell me!”

“Noise. White noise.” Dylan swallowed with what sounded to Tom like a dry throat. “It was nice at first. I used it to, to sleep. Sleep at night. That’s when it started.”

“You mean the nightmares? They started after you wore the headphones while sleeping?”

“Creatures. Things, gigantic things in the sky.” Dylan spoke without consideration of Tom’s question, talking without slowing down. “They were dreams, but they felt real. Dreams that felt real. That sounded real.” He raised a shaking hand to his lips and started nibbling the index finger. “They’re crawling, slithering, everywhere!”

“Dylan, stop talking like this!” Tom stepped towards Dylan but hesitated reaching for him, not knowing what might set him off. “Come on, you need a doctor, a therapist, someone who can fix your head. We’ve got all day to do it.”

“All day?” Dylan stopped nibbling his finger, looking Tom right in the eyes. “Yes. We have some time. Time to explain. Time to…” Dylan stopped and looked to the couch, at the headphones on the couch. “Time to show you,” he concluded. “Yes, show you what I mean. You must hear it!”

Dylan dove for the headphones, faster than Tom could stop him. But Tom had enough time to block Dylan’s attempt to force the object onto him. Dylan bent to one side and then the other, searching for an opening, but Tom gave him none. He struck Dylan’s hands away when he came close, but Dylan didn’t give up.

“Dylan, stop! Stop!” Tom’s words fell on deaf ears as he spun around and around, blocking Dylan and his cursed headphones. “Put the headphones down right now, or I swear--!”

“Listen to it!” Dylan screamed as he barreled forward, crashing into Tom and making them both fall back. They fell on the couch, the cushions sinking beneath the added weight and paralyzing Tom for a fatal moment. Dylan shoved the headphones over Todd’s ears, laughing in his triumph. Todd heard a few milliseconds of that laughter before the soft ear cups shut out all outside noise.

The headphones did their job; Tom heard nothing outside of his heartbeat. He saw Dylan laughing, his face glinted with sweat and his eyes bugged out like an insect’s compound orbs. He felt the strain of his muscles as he continued to struggle, but Dylan’s insane strength held him down on the couch. He tried to think, to breathe, to free his arms and pull the headphones off. His thoughts were chittering around in his brain, buzzing like flies, hissing like…

Those aren’t my thoughts. Tom’s struggles slowed as comprehension slowly dawned in his head. He could hear a skittering click, repeating over and over, getting louder and louder. Then it multiplied into a swarm of clicks, and beneath that was a deep hissing white noise. It was in his ears, and then it went from his ears into his head.

In my head. It’s in my head. I… What is it? What is this in my head!?

Tom was given an answer as the room changed around him. He didn’t feel lightheaded: he could still see Dylan laughing at him like a madman. But he also saw something in the air, around Dylan and on him and twisting around inside his skin. Bugs, snakes, worms, he didn’t know and couldn’t tell. They were all making those clicking sounds together, overlapping each other to make more noise.

Click-click-click. Click-click-click. Click-click-clicka-clacka-clacka-click!

Tom’s eyes rolled back in his head as he silently screamed. Silent to him at least; his ears were overwhelmed by the sound of something crawling inside the air of his ear canals, inside the space the air occupied. Something that was always there and would never leave. It tapped around Tom’s brain, picking at his nerves and senses with rippling mandibles and needle-sharp legs. It drove him mad to feel it happen.

Desperation took over. Everything that had mattered no longer compared to the truth of survival. Education, upbringing, the desires of the human mind: meaningless before the greater need to Spread, to Feed.

Tom surged up, off the couch, throwing Dylan off him. Stunned, Dylan didn’t get up before Tom had thrown the door open again, the headphones still on him. He reached up to pull them off and cried out as he felt them sticking to his head. They were stuck, wedged tight, like a tick in someone’s armpit.

Clicka-clack-clack-click! Click-click-click!

Tom screamed again as the clicking took a new, more fervent pace. He ran out into the hallway and veered left, towards the stairway, without fully seeing it. His vision was filled with tiny creatures, things with legs and claws and teeth and fangs that were eating him from the inside out. He ran in the desperate hope of freedom against something inevitable.

“Tom!” Dylan shouted as he ran out after his former friend. “Tom, wait! Don’t run away!”

Tom shoulder-checked the door to the stairway. Dylan was several paces behind him, arm outstretched, reaching for Tom to pull him back. Tom’s legs moved without coherence, his mind lost to the consuming menace that was eating away all he was and digging for even more.

Dylan gasped as Tom’s body hit the railing, teetering on the edge of the stairs before falling over the railing and plummeting through the open gap. Twitching in midair, Tom’s eyes went white as he shut down in body and mind. He didn’t feel the impact of his body hitting the stairway’s bottom, his neck and spine shattering on impact. But Dylan heard the crash from the fourth-floor stairway, and the sound made him freeze with a terror-stricken expression.

For a long moment, Dylan didn’t know what to do. The shreds of humanity he still had clashed with the voices he had heard for the past several days. He ambled to the railing and looked down, hyperventilating as he saw Tom’s broken body down below. When he saw the headphones were also broken and still attached, Dylan wailed in agony.

“Tom, no! This wasn’t what was supposed to happen!” Dylan’s hands gripped the railing so hard his knuckles turned white, threatening to snap the thing off. “I was the first! I was to ascend first, not you! It should have been me!”

Grieving for his loss, Dylan looked up at something only he could see, some great thing beyond the known range of human sight. “Why?!” he bellowed, oblivious to the people who were coming out to look at what had developed. “Why have you forsaken me? Why is he worthy, but not me?”

There was no answer. No voice gave Dylan comfort or solace in his moment of need. Sobbing uncontrollably, Dylan slumped against the railing, falling to his knees and cursing a being only he understood. Strangers, other residents of the apartment complex, came and grabbed him and pulled him away, and still he cursed and spat like a man possessed.

Down at Tom’s corpse, the headphone pieces grew longer and scaled. They reknit into one form, sinews joining from eons of memory to mimic a long, thick serpent. Reformed, the spiraled reptile flicked a black tongue and looked at its work with midnight eyes. Then it slithered into the shadows once again.