The Static Man

The static started on a Wednesday.

Mara assumed it was the old TV in the living room, the one her grandmother refused to throw away. Even though nobody watched it anymore, it sat like a relic from another life, humming with white noise whenever the power flickered.

That night, the static didn’t stop.

She turned the TV off. The static kept playing.

She unplugged it. The static kept playing.

She tried to laugh it off. Maybe her phone was interfering. Maybe the neighbors were doing something weird.

But then she realized—the static wasn’t coming from the TV.

It was coming from inside the walls.

Mara put her ear against the drywall. The noise grew louder, deeper, layered with whispers she couldn't quite make out. They weren’t in English. Or maybe they were, but distorted—like a broken radio station tuned to a dying world.

That night, she slept with the lights on.

Thursday, the static followed her. It crackled through the air vents. It hissed under the floorboards. When she showered, it echoed through the pipes, as if the entire house had become an antenna for something that shouldn’t exist.

Her phone wouldn’t record it. She tried. Every video played back silent.

Her friends wouldn’t believe her. "Sleep deprivation," they said. "Get off TikTok for one night," they joked.

But Mara wasn’t sleeping at all anymore.

On Friday, she finally saw him.

It was 3:17 a.m.—the numbers glowed red on her alarm clock, the only light in the room. The static was louder than ever, vibrating through the mattress, the floor, the bones in her ears.

And then, she saw him in the corner of her room.

A man made of static.

His body flickered like an old CRT screen. His face was scrambled—a blur of eyes and mouths and fractured smiles, always shifting, always wrong.

He didn’t move.

But Mara couldn’t look away.

When she finally found the strength to close her eyes, the static roared inside her skull, like he was crawling inside her head.

When she opened them again, he was gone.

But she wasn’t sure if she was awake or still dreaming.

By Saturday, Mara had stopped leaving her room.

It wasn’t safe out there.

The static man waited in every reflection—TV screens, turned-off monitors, glass windows at night. She saw him flicker in the shadows of her own face, grinning, reaching out.

She covered every reflective surface in her house. Blankets, duct tape, whatever she could find.

But it didn’t matter.

The static was inside now.

Inside her ears.

Inside her breath.

Inside her.

She tried to call for help. The phone only played static.

She smashed it.

She tried to scream, but her voice came out warped, glitching, fragmented into a dozen copies of itself, bouncing off the walls in a digital echo.

On Sunday, the house fell silent.

She thought maybe it was over.

Maybe she’d finally tuned out the noise.

But when she looked in the mirror—the only one she hadn’t dared to touch—she saw herself.

But not her.

A Mara made of static.

Her face crackled and warped, eyes blinking in and out of existence.

And she realized:

She wasn’t in her house anymore.

She was inside the static.

The static man didn’t want to haunt her.

He wanted to replace her.

He wanted to wear her skin, speak with her voice, smile with her mouth.

And Mara? She was just another ghost in the static now, screaming forever behind the glass of a turned-off screen.

They found her apartment empty on Monday.

Lights on.

TV playing nothing but white noise.

Mirror shattered from the inside.

And somewhere, someone turned on an old TV.

The static whispered back.