I was an old man when he killed me, and even if he hadn’t, time would have finished the job soon enough. My body was brittle, a creaking vessel held together by stubborn breath and worn-down bones. Yet, even as death crouched closer with each passing day, I could feel things most men couldn’t. Foul things.
The world whispered its secrets to me in its shadows and silences. And there, lurking just beyond the edge of sight, something had marked me long ago. It came early in my life—a grim shadow, a quiet certainty that I would not leave this world peacefully. But I get ahead of myself.
The business with Elliot began subtly, like a faint draft slipping under a door. At first, I dismissed it as the imaginings of an old mind, dulled by years of solitude. Elliot was my caretaker, and though young and inexperienced, he was dutiful. He brought me meals, made sure my pills were taken, and spoke to me with the kind of gentleness people reserve for the dying. He made it possible for me to remain in my home rather than be cast off to some hive of decay where the living wait to become the dead.
But there was something about Elliot that betrayed him. A subtle tension in the way he moved. A tightness in his voice that sharpened when he thought I wasn’t listening. He looked at me not as a man, but as something other. Something monstrous.
I’ve seen that look before.
It was the same look schoolchildren gave me when I came home from the war—a chest full of medals, a head full of nightmares, and an eye full of shrapnel.
My left eye was pale and clouded, frozen in its socket like a ghostly sentinel. The grenade that ruined my face left scars that turned me into something even my own reflection avoided.
They pinned medals to my chest and called me a hero, but they didn’t warn me about the stares. About the pity in people’s eyes. About the whispers.
Elliot didn’t whisper. He stared openly when he thought I wasn’t looking, his gaze drawn to the eye like a moth to flame. I could see it in his face: the loathing, the fascination. He thought I couldn’t hear the disgust in his silence, but I could.
Oh, I could.
The nights changed first.
The house was quiet, save for the faint ticking of my pacemaker, the machine buried beneath my ribs that kept my heart beating. I’d grown used to its sound. Elliot hadn’t.
At first, I thought it was nothing—just the house settling or the creak of floorboards in the dark. But on the third night, I heard him outside my door. His shadow pooled beneath the crack, still and waiting.
I didn’t call out. I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, listening to the faint rhythm of my pacemaker filling the silence.
Tick. Thump. Tick. Thump.
On the eighth night, he slipped.
The sound was small—a click of a lantern being lit—but it was enough. My eyes flew open, and my breath hitched as the faint light spilled into the room.
“Elliot,” I rasped, my voice weak and trembling.
He didn’t answer.
The beam of light cut across my face, illuminating the pale, lifeless eye. His breath hitched.
It was always the eye.
The hatred in his face was unmistakable now, raw and unfiltered. My breath quickened, my heart pounding harder against my chest. My pacemaker clicked faster, syncing with my fear.
Tick. Thump. Tick. Thump.
Then I saw it—the stake. A jagged piece of wood, sharp and splintered at the end. His knuckles whitened as he gripped it tighter, and before I could speak, he lunged.
The stake pierced my chest, driving deep, pinning me to the mattress. Pain erupted through me, sharp and all-consuming, as I clawed at his arms, gasping for air. The pacemaker ticked wildly, its sound blending with my panicked heartbeat until I couldn’t tell one from the other.
Tick. Thump. Tick. Thump. Tick. Thump.
And then… silence.
Death didn’t come with peace. It’s as though, the soul sticks around awhile—like it takes time to catch up with the body—maybe especially when it comes before your time.
I felt everything. The weight of his hands as he dragged my body to the corner of the room. The splintering of wood as he pried up the floorboards. The cold press of the stake still embedded in my chest.
The pacemaker didn’t stop.
Tick. Thump. Tick. Thump.
Elliot didn’t notice it at first. He hammered the planks back into place, sealing me beneath the floor, and wiped the sweat from his brow with a shaking hand. He thought it was over.
But the sound remained.
It wasn’t just the pacemaker.
The wooden stake he drove through me splintered at the base, resting flush against the device buried in my chest. The vibration of the pacemaker against the sharp teak created a faint, rhythmic tapping, amplified by the hardwood floorboards he had hastily nailed into place.
If only the boy had paid attention in school and read Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, he might have chosen a different spot. But Elliot wasn’t exactly the studious sort.
The house’s old joists—kiln-dried fir, thick and unyielding—acted like a drum, carrying the sound through the walls and floor. A faint click became a thump. A thump became a heartbeat.
Tick. Thump. Tick. Thump.
Elliot didn’t know it was the pacemaker. He thought it was me.
The officers came the next morning.
I imagine the neighbors heard something—the sounds of a scuffle. Maybe I even screamed— my voice echoing through the quiet neighborhood. Who can be sure? Or perhaps it was simply my absence. People noticed when I wasn’t around. For all my bitterness, I was a war hero, after all. Or at least I had been, once.
Elliot answered the door, pale and shaken. He led them through the house, his hands trembling, his voice thin and brittle.
The sound followed him.
Tick. Thump. Tick. Thump.
He tried to ignore it, but his steps faltered as they entered my room. The sound was louder here, reverberating through the wood, crawling up his spine.
“Do you hear that?” he asked suddenly, his voice tight.
The officers exchanged confused glances. “Hear what?”
Elliot swallowed hard, his gaze fixed on the floor. “It’s… his heart. It’s still beating.”
They didn’t understand. How could they?
When he broke, it was sudden.
Elliot dropped to his knees, clawing at the floorboards with frantic hands.
“It’s here!” he screamed, his voice cracking. “For the love of God, it’s here! His heart won’t stop beating!”
The officers grabbed him, tried to pull him away, but he didn’t stop. His screams echoed through the house, filling the air with a madness that clung to every corner.
Tick. Thump. Tick. Thump.
They took him away.
And they took my body with them.
But the sound didn’t leave him.
It followed him to the police car, to the cell where they locked him away, to the dark corners of his mind where guilt festered like a wound.
He doesn’t know the truth. He doesn’t know it was my pacemaker.
But in the end, it doesn’t matter.
Because in his mind, it was always my heart. Still beating.
Tick. Thump.
And it always will be—Until the boy’s time comes too.
Wow....EAP revisited...