THE ODD TAPES: Blink / I Laugh Because We Are All Nothing & You Think You're Something

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Feb 04, 2025

You’re left alone for many days, long enough you begin to think you won’t be getting a response to your request.
What did he hear on the tape?
The question eats away at your thoughts until you’re unable to think about anything else. Your mind is filling in the gaps, trying to make sense of the tape and its meaning in your own life.
Perhaps you asked the wrong question? If you could go back in time, would you have asked something else? Would you have never played the goddamn tape in the first place? Why do you care so much?!
This mysterious man and his bag of cassette tapes should mean nothing to you, but at this particular moment in time, it seems to be the only thing you care about. And this obsession is growing. You’re not eating as often as you should be. You’re looking thin and sick and nothing seems to bring you joy anymore.

Something in your apartment smells terrible. You can’t tell if it’s your body, the overflowing trashcan, or something else.
On your way back from the garbage chute, you discover a yellow envelope sitting by your front door. You’re not sure if it was there when you left the apartment or if it was delivered within the three minutes you were away.
Inside the envelope is another cassette tape.

There’s something written in black ink on the outer sleeve, so messy you can hardly read it:
the devil is smilin’
the devil is smilin’
the devil is smilin’
BLACK TOOTH.
Obey the song.
Talk soon. Until then, here’s the tape…
—Tom S.

You remove the cassette from its case and frantically stuff it into the tape deck.

You push play.

THE BEGINNING

You haven’t been the nicest person, let’s just say that. But you haven’t been the meanest either—you’re somewhere in between.

Right now, you’re eating dinner at a table with forty others, and not one have you ever seen before. That’s because you’re new here at the Joliet Correctional Center, just outside of Chicago, Illinois. The fuzz caught you committing some petty crime and the judge gave you a year to think about your bad behavior. But you’re smart. You know how the system works. You know how to play the game. If you can manage to keep your nose clean while locked up, you’ll be out on parole in just a few months. Fully reformed, as they say.

With a spoon, you push around the so-called ‘food’ on your dinner tray, already dreaming of the big, juicy cheeseburger you’re going to eat the second you get out of this hellhole. As you play with the slop on your tray, there’s a fella sitting on the bench next to you, telling a story that’s captured the attention of at least half the others at the table. You lean in to see what has everyone so interested.

“...nah, I don’t think I should,” the prisoner says, which causes the men huddled around him to groan audibly. He laughs. “Or…maybe I should. I ain’t gettin’ out of here no time soon, that’s for damn sure! You’re gonna see to that, ain’t ya, Officer Bobby!” The prisoner looks back at one of the officers standing guard by the door. The officer pretends he can’t hear him, but you can tell by the look on his face that he’s annoyed. The entire table erupts in laughter.

“Alright, alright! Keep it down!” Officer Bobby yells. “One more outburst like that and dinner’s over, fellas!”

“Yeah, yeah,” the prisoner says, waving the officer off, then he leans in over the middle of the table, motioning for the rest of you to move in so he can continue his story in private.

“Any of you ever hear of the Eighth Block Tower?” he asks, just a hair above a whisper. Many shake their heads, but the ones who recognize the name all back away.

“Oh, no. I’m out of this one,” one of the other prisoners says. “That place is bonkers, man. Nuts! I don’t want any part of it.”

“Yeah, the tower is infamous in the south side. Tryin’ to understand the things that go on in there will make your brain bleed,'' another prisoner quips. “I’ve heard the cops won’t go anywhere near the place.”

“Exactly!” the first prisoner says, continuing his offer. “That’s what makes this the perfect crime! Even if things turn south, the cops won’t bust you. It’s a clean gig. You’ll either get the cash or you won’t. No consequences.”

“Man, you’re gonna be begging the cops to come as soon as you set foot inside that tower, I’m telling you! I’ve seen the shit that goes on in there!” the other prisoner says. His eyes are wide and unblinking, as if he’s caught in the trance of some traumatic flashback. “I’ve seen people—normal people, like us—walk into that building, and an hour later they're scraping their eyes out of their heads and screaming about radiation in the walls.” He shakes his head, still not blinking. “No amount of money could ever get me to go back there. No, sir.”

“Not even tens of thousands of dollars?” the first prisoner asks. “Cause I happen to know for a fact that there’s at least fifty-six thousand dollars in unmarked cash just sittin’ in a cardboard shoebox, rotting away on the top floor of that building. It belongs to no one. I heard it was grant money for some science experiment or something, but the scientist who brought it there went mad and was never heard from again. At least that’s what I’ve been told.”

“If this is such a perfect score, then why don’t you go after it yourself?” you ask, which causes everyone at the table to turn and look at you.

The prisoner smiles, but it doesn’t look to be a happy smile. He stands and walks over to you. You look up at him, but you don’t bother to get out of your seat. He positions his body so that his face is only a half an inch from yours, close enough you can smell the prison meatloaf on his breath.

“It’ll be tough gettin’ to that cash pie while stuck inside these concrete walls, wouldn’t you say? Do you know who I am? Do you know the things I’ve done? They ain’t ever lettin’ me out of here. Never! And they’re justified in it too, cause if I ever get out, the first thing I’m doing is killin’ the first man I see. And I’ll do it again and again and again. Hell, I’d do it in here if the guards would give me enough time with the body afterwards. That’s when I really get to have some fun!”

You look around at the others. Some are laughing, others have turned their attention to their food tray. The prisoner standing behind you growls like a wild dog, grabs the lower half of your face and aggressively pulls on your jawbone until you’re facing him once again.

“Now, that don’t mean I wouldn’t ever consider it,” he continues. A warm gob of spit projects out from his mouth and lands in the middle of your left cheek. “I’d make an exception, just for you.”

He leans in and licks the side of your face. The other prisoners are howling now. The guard finally steps in and pulls the prisoner off of you. You hold up your hands, signaling to the guard that you had nothing to do with the altercation that just took place.

So much for getting out early on good behavior, you think.

Surprisingly, you avoid getting into trouble over the next six months, and on the day of your first parole hearing, the board agrees to let you out on certain conditions. You try to concentrate on what exactly those conditions are, but your heart is racing and your mind is thinking of all you’ll do as soon as you get out. You thank the board members, promise you’ll stay out of trouble, and once the paperwork’s been signed and filed, they set you free.

Along with two others—men you recognize from the inside, but never got around to knowing. The three of you are walking towards the bus station together, but don’t say anything to one another the entire way there.

At the ticket booth, the three of you ask for a ticket and curiously you’re all headed in the same direction: south side, Chicago.

One of the others immediately speaks up, “You’re goin’ after the loot, huh?”

You and the other man both look up at him as if you have no idea what he’s going on about, but you absolutely do. It’s all you’ve thought about since the day they locked you up. There’s at least fifty-six thousand dollars in unmarked cash just sittin’ in a cardboard shoebox, rotting away on the top floor of that building—the words have echoed inside your brain every day and night for the last 188 nights. Still, you play it cool.

“Don’t play dumb,” the man continues. “I remember your faces. The two of youse heard about it, same as me. Now we can keep playin’ dumb and kill each other right here in the street—a one way ticket straight back to Joliet—or we can make a pact to split it even, three ways, and we all leave with a little more than we have now. Now what d’ya say to that?”

You look over at the other man and he looks back at you. You both nod in unison.

“Sounds good to me,” the other man says. “I wasn’t looking forward to goin’ into that tower alone, anyhow. In a way, knowing we all have the same plan—well, it’s a relief.”

You run the numbers in your head. Fifty-six thousand split three ways equals a figure that’s just under nineteen thousand each. It may not be what you were hoping for, but it’s still enough to get a fresh start somewhere. With money like that, you can buy a used car outright and still have enough dough left over for a couple months rent. That’s plenty of time to get some revenue coming in.

You nod at the others, and the three of you get on the bus, headed to the south side.

You decide to take a quick detour to pick up guns and ammunition from a shop you’ve been to before that doesn’t require a background check. As much as it worries you to trust two armed criminals during a robbery, you aren’t about to step inside that building without some sort of protection. If the residents of Eighth Block really are as insane as everyone says, then walking in without a gun would essentially be suicide.

You get the guns and the three of you wait at the bus stop for the next bus.

The bus drops you off directly in front of the Eighth Block Tower. It’s late in the day when you arrive and the building is difficult to see at first because there are no streetlights in this part of town. If it weren’t for the light of the full moon beaming down from above, the entire block would’ve been blanketed in total dark.

You notice a tan-colored Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale sitting on the side of the street, just in front of the building. It looks exactly like one you used to own years ago, only this one is a bit more beat up and all of the windows have been busted out completely. Still, you wonder if it’s the same car.

You look up at the Eighth Block Tower. It’s a gargantuan seven-story building that stands taller than all the other buildings around it. It too is pretty beat up and many of its windows are missing. There’s a nasty crack in the foundation, just by the front entrance that looks as if it could crumble at any minute, taking the entire building down along with it. Other than that, it looks pretty much the same as any other apartment building in the south side of Chicago—an insufferable shithole.

As the three of you walk toward the front entrance of the building, a man suddenly bursts through the doors and stumbles down the concrete steps that lead into the building. He proceeds to roll around on the sidewalk, as if he’s immersed in flames.

He’s not currently immersed in flames.

“Make it stop!” he shouts. “Please, for the love of god, make it stop!”

The three of you rush over to the man, however it becomes quickly apparent that there’s nothing you can do for him. Finally, he stops rolling and lies flat with his back against the sidewalk, trying to catch his breath. He’s laughing uncontrollably now. There’s a smile on his face that extends from one ear to the other. A stream of tears leak down each side of his face.

“Please, make it stop,” he cries, calling out to no one in particular. His laughter morphs into a sob, then back into a fit of laughter again. He’s clawing at his cheeks, as if he means to rip the smile right off his face.

One of the fellas you’re with looks over at you, then points to the front entrance.

“Let’s get in and get out,” he says. “I don’t wanna be here any longer than we have to be.”

They start walking toward the entrance. You begin to follow, but a weird chill rushes through you and you stop to consider your options.

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The featured story in this issue has been a thorn in my side for many years—seventeen, to be exact. I wrote the first incarnation of “Blink” in 2008 and it was even published that year in the horror publication Flashes in the Dark. Between the publication folding and my laptop crashing, I thought this story was lost forever. It has been my intention for nearly a decade now to rewrite this story, and after a long, tumultuous journey, it’s finally here! Was it worth all the trouble? Absolutely not. But it’s out of my head now. I’m free.