Line Towers

Hell wasn't scalding red coals. For Tom, it was the fluorescent lighting that buzzed from the ceiling. The stench of overripe mayonnaise that hung in the breakroom. The Monday morning pep talks that his boss gave the office.

And then there was the angry lady screaming at him through the phone. Prices for advertisement space had almost doubled and, as usual, Tom was the bearer of bad news.

"Ma'm? Excuse me ma'm?”

“My place can’t afford your ridiculous prices. Hell, my business doesn’t mint gold. And you know what? I don’t even think anyone reads that damn paper anyway!”

“But ma’m, just think about how many people...”

The hangup was a weight falling into the pit of despair that was his stomach, as he imagined his sales commissions incinerating into ashes, just like a match being lit to a newspaper.

While all of those things gnawed at him, what haunted him the most was the whisper in his head.

"Tom, you're only twenty-five. You've got forty more years of this shit."

Indentured servitude. The common man's lot in life.

However, this Monday was different.

The lighting didn't burn his retinas. His boss’s scolding didn't hurt his ears, nor did the thundering of chairs wheeling across the carpeted floor. And the fact that he was missing his commissions? Meh, whatever.

It was a seductive whisper that sent a carefree breeze through his ears. A secret that he wasn't meant to hear.

"You're shitting me! How did you find this out?"

The whirring ceiling fan gave a wind tunnel effect, making Tom lean further against the office door. Everyone else had left for the day. He had stayed on the phones in hopes of a meager sale.

His boss’s voice paused for a moment, and then took on a sly tone.

"So what does this mean for us?"

Yes, it was that evening that changed everything for Tom. The place that had been printing his paychecks for the past five years, was getting bought out.

Before he got off the phone, Tom had already clocked out and was in his car.

###

Billy was a high school dropout; someone with whom Tom would not have associated. However, they had a history. Billy had grown up in the trailer down the street, and they'd shared a school bus since kindergarten. When Billy's dad didn't come home at night, Tom's mom would let him sleep over. On snow days, they would build snow forts together. He had smoked his first cigarette, a Camel unfiltered, with Billy (that was, of course, after Billy had shoplifted the pack from behind the counter at old man Jerry's corner store. Since then, he'd been permanently banned for pilfering through the nudie magazines on the top shelf of the newspaper stand).

Sure, they had run with different crowds in school, Tom being an honor student, but they remained friends, but they had remained friends.

Besides, Billy's smarts didn't come from text books. After dropping out after the eleventh grade, he had gotten a job at Wheelie's and made decent money. That, however, had come to an end when he'd gotten caught rolling back odometers. After a year in prison and no job when he came out, he bought and sold car parts online. Where these parts originated, Tom never asked.

###

The shine from the full moon bounced off the dilapidated truck bumper where Billy sat.

"So you want me to buy ten thousand bucks of a penny stock. And why?"

His eyebrows raised, he exhaled a plume of smoke, brushing his mane of black hair out of his face.

Billy passed his joint to Tom who fiddled with it awkwardly.

"I'm telling you, we'll make bank! Your company is getting bought, dude.

Billy shook his head in disbelief.

"You mean the folks who make that dinky, ad newspaper that’s shoved into real newspapers? I mean, no one even reads newspapers anymore and..”

Tom cut him off before he could start to mock him.

“That’s the point. Why do you think they’re getting bought by an online classified ads ezine that can advertise for a fraction of what it costs to print inked words? Not only that, but it’ll advertise all over the world. Hell, they know we’ll go bankrupt if we don’t take their offer. With all this tech, it’s a different world now.”

Billy stared back, eyeing him suspiciously.

"So why don't you buy stock in it?"

"Don't you think that would look a little obvious?"

Billy jerked the joint back from his hand.

"You gonna smoke it or just play with it?"

"Hadn't heard from you in ages. And you had to drive all the way out here to talk about stocks."

"There's no way I'd talk about this on the phone. Besides, I…"

Billy spat on the pavement and grinned, waiting for Tom to finish.

"Don't tell me you still have that!"

Hopping off the bumper, Billy lunged cat-like, grabbing Tom behind the knees before slamming his spindly frame into the gravel.

"Ah, I see that bulge in your pocket!"

He squirmed as Billy reached into his front pocket.

"Get off me you…!"

Billy's smile broadened into the smile of a deranged clown. His left hand emerging in mock triumph, he raised the black flip phone to eye level.

"Ha, I knew it! Still worried about getting spied on!"

Hobbling up from the gravel, Tom brushed himself off, scowling.

"Oh, you haven't been noticing all of those data centers? Coincidence, huh?

"Are you worried about those stupid red light cameras downtown again?"

Tom sighed exasperatingly.

"It's more that that, Billy.

And of course, there was. Or at least in Tom's mind.

###

It had all started years ago around Solset Woods. Old Man Solset, a childless bachelor, puttered along until the ripe age of one hundred. With no one to inherit the farm, the trees and weeds had decided to stake their claim. And. of course. after Mother Nature had transformed the once baren farmland into a forest, the local children had made it their own. And Tom and Billy were no exceptions.

They monkeyed up the prickly branches of the tall evergreens. And after they tired of those, they slurped the golf ball sized fruit from the nearby persimmon tree. They had even camped out there once in sleeping bags, keeping one eye open for coyotes or skunks.

This sort of thing would have probably continued through future generations. Unfortunately, however, the local power company had other ideas.

The first one sprouted overnight; a tall, steel gladiator shape with beams reaching into the sky. As their numbers grew, so did their features. Their metal wings reached outwards, invading the spaces where the proud evergreens once stood. Their bright steel kilts moved upwards from the ground, morphing into tiny waists about midway up. Flexing their chests, the beams moved outwards and upwards into flexed shoulders.

And the dead, elliptical eyes hanging down, those connecting cogs, stared coldly forward; awaiting the linemen to show up and feast on the daisy chain of wires.

Soon, the ground foliage was no more; replaced by a blood-red clay, which passed for dirt in these areas.

At first, Tom and Billy had pretended that nothing had changed, but both knew that it had. The neck-hair raising buzzing sound above was a constant reminder. It was the day, however, that Tom had brought along his transistor radio, the one with the leather pouch strap, that ruined it forever. With the speaker to his ear, he was bopping his head to the hair metal blairing. Billy bounced along ahead of him, flailing his hands madly on an air guitar. Suddenly, the music fizzeled into snowy static. The high pitched vocals disappeared into the noise. A monotone voice spoke on the other end.

"Line 142B connecting. Do you copy?"

A brief pause followed, and then an almost robotic voice.

"Line 142B copies. Activating power."

Startled, Tom dropped the radio to the ground, holding his hands away as if he'd picked up a dog turd. The lines buzzed their crinkly language, which sounded like continuous static electricity to Tom. The daisy chain continued up the hill to the next tower, a four pronged monstrosity with multiple mutant arms, each catching wires, as if grasping for food. The structures continued up the hill grade every few hundred yards, endlessly across the hillside and eventually shrinking into the horizon. In the shadows of dusk, they winked back at him knowingly, the blinking from their tower tops in a rhythmic heartbeat.

That was the last time they had played in Solset Woods. Years later, the power company had claimed even more land and had even birthed a substation there.

###

"So let me get this straight, I buy ten thousand shares of stock. You give me five thousand. I chip in my half, and we spit the money. So how do I know when to sell?"

"They announce the buyout next month on the first Friday of August."

"If you sell immediately, then it might look too obvious, except for.."

Shaking his head, Billy chuckled and cut him off.

"Except we haven't because you haven't called in years."

Tom stared shamefully down at his shoes., shifting his feet back and forth.

"Sorry man, I've just been busy with work and.."

"Too good for a high school drop-out now that you've got a real job and all."

At this, Tom's chest shrunk inward, his shoulders collapsing with the weight of guilt. A few seconds later, Billy's scowl broke into a grin, which shattered into a cackle. He smacked Tom on the shoulders, nearly knocking him down.

"Oh c'mon. You know I'm just fucking with you. Look, I get it. I open a trading account online, and we each go in half. Once this, whatever the fuck it's called…"

"I can't remember the company's ticker symbol."

"So whatever it is, I sell when it skyrockets."

"But you've got to wait until they announce it. So watch the market news because we can't be talking on the phone."

Hearing this, Billy cocked his palm backward, as if in a mock backhand slap.

"Now get the fuck out of here. You and your powerline, phone tower spooks."

###

That had been a month ago. A few days later, Tom had raided his savings account and dropped off five thousand dollars in neatly paper-clipped Franklins to Billy. They had not spoken since.

Tom had fought off urges to call and remind him. Instead, he'd made weekly detours past Billy's trailer. And every week was the same. Nothing.

Aside from the rusty truck carcasses and trash barrels that littered the property, there had been no signs of anyone living there. Just the dead stare from the trailer's windows had gazed at him when he passed.

Last Friday, he decided to stop. He banged on the door, yet there was nothing but the clanging of vinyl against metal door frame.

"That's just like Billy. Son-of-a-bitch probably skipped town with my money."

But tonight, as he left the office, those thoughts had gone away. That haze of doubt had no choice but to evaporate. It was that hope that kept Tom fighting another day.

As Tom cranked the Nissan's ignition, the sound signaled what was to come. Tomorrow morning was the big announcement.

He pulled out of the strip mall's parking lot for the last time and sped into the night.

###

Stopped at the parkway's intersection, the traffic light's crimson eye glared at him. As the light turned green, he cut into the left lane of Oak Street, deciding last minute to stop by the liquor store first. After all, he didn't want to show up at Billy's place empty-handed.

Gunning the accelerator down Oak, he sped past a black SUV in the left lane. As the four lane merged into two lanes, the sedan's headlights grew smaller.

Pulling into the liquor store drive-thru, he was greeted by an irritated-looking older woman with pointy glasses.

"What'll it be?"

###

Pulling back right onto Oak Street, he continued onward. Soon, the streetlights that had been dotting the road every hundred yards became more sparse. The shadows of the trees reached into the streets, as he drove past Parson's Park.

A strobe's bluish white light blinked in the horizon.

A few miles past the park, the trees began to disappear, and the sky's radiance opened upon its surroundings. The full moon lit the darkness with a purple hue.

As Oak morphed into State Route 77, the barely marked lines of the road grew brighter and more rigid with their orange luminated reflectors.

Off in the cow pasture, the contours of a cell phone tower grew visible in the dark violet sky. As he drove closer, the towering skeleton seemed to reach higher into the clouds. The eye at the top brighter; the strobe pulsing its rhythmic heartbeat.

Tom reached over and popped open his glove box. The dead Nokia phone tumbled to the floorboard. The phone's battery nestled in the wad of registration papers and junk.

He breathed a sigh of relief.

At that moment, a pair of high beams appeared in his rearview; the ultra-bright kind from a truck or an…..

It was the black SUV from earlier. The shade of night was just bright enough for him to make it out.

They've had a bead on you. FBI, SEC, or whatever. They know.

Pressing his foot to the gas, the engine whined its high pitch before backing off as the car's transmission shifted into 3000 RPM. Enough distance was made, and the headlights began to grow smaller.

Tom looked down at the speedometer. He was doing 80 mph. The headlights were now specks.

###

A gravel driveway slithered off Highway 77 a few hundred yards away. Slamming the brakes, the Nissan squealed its tires, as Tom wheeled into the driveway. A plume of dust clouds rose into the night air. His front end barely missed the barbed wire fence to the left. With no house in sight, it appeared to be just farmland.

He slid the car into reverse and backed it up. Far enough away yet facing the road, Tom had the perfect view of the road. He cut off the lights and waited. The green digits on the dash displayed "7:15"

Five minutes went by, and no vehicles passed. There was no sign of the SUV.

Probably some guy lost who turned around.

The thought was no more logical than it was consoling. Route 77 had no gas stations or even houses nearby. No one had any reason to be out here.

The green digits displayed "7:20". Still nothing.

With growing relief, he clicked on the headlights and crept warily onto the road.

###

After a few minutes of driving in silence, he turned on the radio dial. A high pitched female voice chirped a weather forecast.

Then out of nowhere, the blinding high beams jolted his senses back into the sharpened throes of panic. This time, the SUV's bumper was closer. Tom pressed the accelerator to the floor. 75, 80, 85 mph…

The SUV was now almost on top of his bumper. With a heavy pit in his stomach, he nausiousely waited for those red and blue lights to glaze his rearview mirror.

Except they didn't.

They're following you to Billy's place. That's where they'll cuff you both.

That was when he saw a narrow line spitting out into the roadway, barely noticeable from a quarter mile away. The flat land had begun to voluptuously develop into hills.

Decelerating enough to make the turn, his car wheeled into the access road. The splattering of gravel kicked upwards at his rear tires, peppering his bumper like buckshot. Jamming his foot the floorboard, his body whipped forwards, as the little Nissan sped up the embankment with all of its four cylinder might.

The half-paved cinders, littering the road disappeared. Within a few hundred more yards, Tom suddenly realized that he was driving on well-packed dirt. Branches reached out from both sides, making wisping sounds as they clawed for him. The electro pop music from the radio grew into a searing buzzing noise.

Topping the hill, the Nissan jumped a few inches from the ground before gravity pulled it back. The wooshing of waist-high weeds tickled the bouncing undercarriage. It continued down the hill, swerving side-to-side. Tom slammed his foot on the brake, yet to no avail.

The car flipped over on its side and rolled. Tom's head bashed the side window with every tumble, leaving splattered red splotches with each hit, until it broke into splintered spiderwebs.

The metal beams sliced through the hatchback, severing it from the front seat.

Through his blood-soaked eyes, Tom peered up at the steel tower above; it's god-like wings catching the drooping wires. Its vertical pupils inside those triangular perimeters, stared ahead indifferently. The continuous buzzing sound from above drilled through his ears like a final lullaby. Tom closed his eyes for the last time.

###

A few miles away, the stench in Billy's trailer would have been unbearable to any human. Of course, no living person had graced the interior in almost a month, least of all Billy. His body crumpled forward into a puddle of congealing, dark blood. The bullet hole in the back of his head puckered in the softening tissue, hidden by his matted hair. If one had turned him over, they would have seen his bloated face beginning to soften into a gelatinous yellow, as time and maggots began to eat away at it.

###

Miles away, the black SUV sped down Route 77.

"I can't believe you wanted to stick around all this time." The gray-haired woman in the passenger seat scowled.

The grizzled man took a drag from his cigarette. The orange tip glowed, illuminating the pot marks on his face. He said nothing.

"Talk to me Ray!"

Ray stared coldly at her for a moment, exhaling the smoke in wistful contemplation.

"Helen, that son-of-a-bitch had ten thousand dollars in 100's."

He opened his wallet and pulled out a few for emphasis.

"Yeah, it was a great score."

"And yeah, we're set up for a while."

Ray leaned into Helen's ear.

"But who the fuck keeps ten thousand dollars in cash on them without someone else involved?"

Helen leaned to look him in the eyes.

"But Ray, it's been two weeks. No cops showed up. No neighbors. No.."

Ray grabbed her arm.

"What are you talking about? That Nissan has stopped by every week. Hell, we were following it for miles just while ago."

"You're just being paranoid Ray. You and your imagination. Y'know, you need to kick the speed habit, now that we've got all that money and all!"

Ray stared back at the road.

"I don't know. I just think somebody somewhere knows something."

He mashed the cigarette butt into the crinkled ads of a newspaper pullout that was wadded underneath his seat.

Passing underneath the powerlines above, the SUV continued onwards into the night.. The steel towers stoically watched nearby.

BIO: Eric Rogers Bach, born November 17, 1976, was raised in Western Kentucky by his mother and father, Diane and Edward Bach, respectively. The backyard was his universe, while his imagination was the blue print. "Staying home" meant building "waterslide" mud holes in the garden, draping bedsheets across tree limbs for "palaces", and constructing "rollercoasters" out of the aluminum slide and Big Wheel. His flash fiction piece, "The Taste Tester" was published in "Down In the Dirt Magazine’s 2024 anthology. "The Last Night At Esmerelda's", another flash piece, was published in the April 2025 issue of the Ezine, "Flash Phantoms". Recently, "Pentimento", a short horror story, appeared in the February 2026 issue of "Black Sheep" Magazine.

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