Detective Mertens – Personal Audio Journal. Entry 003.
Recorded privately. Not submitted for review.
Ropes secure me to a pipe. I’m in a warehouse. Flames rise from the center of the room. The air smells like burnt electrical cords. My captors huddle nearby.
A woman says, “Let him see it.”
“No,” a man snaps back. “He’ll kill us, then report it. We need to get rid of him.”
To the left; my Vox Coil. Resting on a table. Out of reach. Then I see it. On the far wall. The painting. I’d only heard whispers…what one might look like. But this…this is something else. It spans the entire wall. Large. Beautiful. Alien.
Bold red, yellow, and green shapes pulse across the canvas like ripples on water. The colors are intoxicating. Then the shapes begin to shift. I focus harder. First geometric, then something else. Animals? Humans? Neither. It’s familiar, yet foreign.
And then a man steps out of it. The painting goes still. He turns, looks at it and then to his friends. Smiles. Then laughs.
Holy shit.
That's what I remember. Detective Mertens. End entry. Destroy transmission.
This has been Encrypted Frequencies, part of the Shortacool Fiction series.
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