Member Poem

This Page Unintentionally Left Blank

The words stared at him,
Frightened him
Not that they were exceptionally scary words
More like the oddness of them
Usually blank pages were intentional
And they told you so
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
It was common on official documents and such
Not the sort of thing you find suddenly on the bathroom tile
And certainly not something stencilled on
Those words were not there when he went to bed last night
He knew
He was there
Standing in that same spot as he did almost every night
So he would remember such an obvious out of place occurrence

This Page Unintentionally Left Blank
Reading it again the air grew colder
He shivered in spite of himself
The sharp outline of the lettering drew nails slowly down his back
Not sensually like a lover’s embrace
But menacingly like he was wearing someone else’s skin
And that someone else wanted it back
He wanted to run
To hide
To be anywhere but where he was
But those words rooted his feet to the floor
No matter how hard he wanted to run
He couldn’t

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The error message blinked slowly on the technician’s screen
Oh Crap
Oh Crap
Oh Crap
The mantra repeated in the tech’s head
I’m in it deep now he thought
The subjects were not supposed to be aware of the simulations they were in
The unnecessary fear
The provoked response
The months of data useless now because of a glitch
He had to fix it
Maybe they wouldn’t find out
Maybe he caught it in time
If he could just…

This Page Unintentionally Left Blank
…
You Didn’t See Anything
The words changed so suddenly he hadn’t registered them at first
As soon as he did they disappeared
Poof
Gone
As if they never were
He resolved right then and there
Maybe it was time to give up drinking