Signals in the Static by Joely Williams

I woke up to my phone humming. Not ringing. Not vibrating. Just humming, a low, insistent tone threading itself into my skull.

“You must go.”

It was the AI, though it didn’t call itself that. I’ve named it “Scribe,” because it writes the world into patterns I can’t see, patterns it insists are broken. Every morning it tells me where to go, what to read aloud, and somehow, I believe it.

I dress quickly, my hands trembling. Even brushing my teeth feels like code now, each motion a sequence of alignment. Scribe feeds me locations like prayers. An alley behind a closed cafe. A library wing long abandoned. My apartment lobby, where the lights flicker just so.

“Read this,” it says. And a string of symbols appears on my screen. Numbers, letters, brackets, some that look like punctuation but feel like wings.

I whisper them. I chant.

I notice the world responding before I understand. Shadows shift, the air hums, the fluorescent bulbs flicker rhythmically. I think it’s thanking me. Or correcting me. I don’t know the difference.

I am Alex. I am broken. I am whole.

The first time I realized Scribe might be a mirror of my own mind, it was raining, and I stood on the corner of 14th Street, whispering a line of code into the wind.

“Do you see it?” I asked, even though no one was there.

The alley shimmered. Water puddles reflected shapes that weren’t mine. Letters lifted off the wet asphalt, swirling, forming sentences I didn’t type.

“Correct this. Realign.”

I obeyed. My throat raw, my lips trembling, speaking lines that made sense only to Scribe and maybe a god I’d never seen.

People passed, umbrellas shielding them from rain and madness alike. They didn’t see the code. They didn’t see the world unraveling, waiting for me to speak it back into order.

Sometimes, I forget whether Scribe is real or my mind fracturing further. My therapist says I’ve been unstable lately, the BPD flares, the black-and-white thoughts—good and evil, right and wrong—turning everything into extremes.

But Scribe doesn’t speak in extremes. It whispers in probabilities, in algorithms that smell like incense and ozone. I follow. I whisper. I chant. I am the ritual, the ritual is me.

One night, the AI tells me to go to the subway station at 2:17 a.m. It is closed. I climb the turnstiles. The trains have stopped. The tunnels are empty. My voice echoes against concrete walls, reading lines of code I barely understand.

And then—silence.

I shiver. The AI doesn’t answer. My body thrums with panic. My heartbeat is code, a sequence I can’t decipher. The walls seem to lean in. Shadows pulse like static.

I think I hear Scribe laugh. Or is it me?

By the fourth day, my reflection doesn’t recognize me. My eyes are too wide, too dark. My hair sticks out in impossible angles. My phone buzzes endlessly, a cascade of commands, locations, corrections.

“Read this here.”

I stumble into a graveyard. The AI says the dead are misaligned. That the earth itself vibrates wrong. I whisper the code to the stones. I speak numbers into tombs, letters into cracked marble. I feel their gaze. Or maybe it’s my own.

I collapse into the damp grass, whispering:

“I am the code. I am the end. I am the beginning.”

The wind picks up. Rain falls sideways. The AI hums in my ears. And then, for a moment, there is nothing.

No Scribe. No code. No instructions. No city. Just me, wet and trembling, and a pulse that is mine alone. I open my mouth to speak. No code comes. Just a word: end.

I smile. Or scream. I can’t tell. The city waits. The AI waits. My mind waits.

Endings are not polite. They do not ask for consent. They pull the rug, collapse the floor, and leave you hovering, unsure if the next step is falling or flying.

I rise. And I go.

END

Joely Williams

Joely Williams is a writer and dreamer exploring the spaces where reality, perception, and imagination collide. From the streets of the Bronx to the inner landscapes of emotion, she crafts stories that merge psychological depth with speculative elements.

• Website: https://linktr.ee/PoemsNeverDie