THE RETURN OF THE P.A.C.T.

A Story by J

PART ONE: THE SCHOOL DAY THAT NEVER ENDS

MONDAY, 2:43 PM | WESTFOLD SECONDARY

The air smelled like dried erasers and sweat-soaked PE kits. Students dragged their feet between lessons, phones buzzing, jackets half-zipped. Everything was typical. Too typical.

And then

🎙 [SPEAKER FEEDBACK WHHHRRRT… BZZZ]

A low hiss like a snake beneath tile spilled from every speaker in the school. All motion stopped.

🎙 [DISTORTED VOICE]:
“...ATTENTION… This is not a drill. The letters and number have breached containment. They will not be reasoned with. If you see a friend change, do not intervene. They are already gone. The Boredom P.A.C.T. has begun its reclamation.”

A deep pulse hummed through the building, like a heartbeat too large to belong to anything human.

Violet (narrowing her eyes):
“What kind of twisted theatre prank is that?”

Diana (grumbling):
“We don’t have theatre class today, Violet.”

Hector:
“That wasn’t any teacher. That voice didn’t even breathe between words.”

Quilla (eyes darting):
“Listen, shut it a sec, do you feel that?”

Beneath their feet, the floor subtly rippled. Not visibly. But it felt like walking on a drum skin.

Someone screamed down the corridor. A locker door caved in from the inside. Then silence.

PART TWO: THE TAPE

MONDAY, 11:58 PM | QUILLA’S ROOM

The four of them sat around a too-small laptop, listening to a sound file loop again and again. No video. Just that voice. That number sequence.

Voice on tape:
“Reunify. Revise. Rebirth. Let the boring become the broken. The broken become the beautiful. Letters and numbers were never meant to forget.”

Suddenly

Violet coughed then hacked. Something hard smacked the carpet. A tooth.

Violet (gasping):
“Quilla.. Quilla, somethin’s wrong my jaw..”

She screamed as her jaw unhinged and snapped back American-style vowels spilling from her throat like she’d never used British English in her life.

Violet (warping):
“I-it’s fine, bro.. I’m good, I’m.. X! I’m X!!”

Quilla doubled over with a wet crunch of her ribs shifting inward. Her blood ran slick and green.

Quilla (choking):
“What is this? no! no! NOT like this! I- I d-don’t want- AAAHHHK!”

Her fingers bent backward, snapped, then reformed as angles, the shape of a capital “S”.

S (low, deadly calm now):
“The designation fits. S... yeah. That sounds right.”

X (laughing through a bleeding grin):
“S! S! You remember now, right?! We were never meant to fit in with them!”

A low pulse rippled through the house again.

The laptop screen blinked once and shattered inward like a black hole had opened inside it.

PART THREE: SACRIFICE OF THE SELF

TUESDAY, 3:20 AM | QUILLA’S STREET

Hector (shivering):
“She stopped texting mid-word. She said ‘there’s something in my chest.’ Then nothing.”

Diana:
“What if it’s the P.A.C.T.? What if it’s real?”

They reached the door. It was open.

Inside: a trail of viscera leading to the living room. A letter ‘X’ had been carved into the wall with fingernails.

X (emerging from shadows):
“Heyyy! Took you long enough.”

S (staring coldly):
“They’re here. Hector. Diana.”

Hector stepped back then gagged as something slithered beneath his skin.

Hector (panicking):
“W-what the hell is that?! It’s movin’ in my bones. DIANA!”

SNAP-CRACK! His legs gave out. Spine visibly stretched.

Hector (screeching):
“REEEEEEEEEEE- SHE- SHE- THEY- I- I AM J!!”

The transformation overtook him in waves of heat and white-hot agony. Flesh peeled away as his new body formed a glowing purple core in the shape of the letter ‘J’.

J (in calm, feminine US voice):
“I remember now. We were broken apart. But no more.”

Diana tried to run.

X (softly):
“You’re the last one. You always were slow to wake up.”

She collapsed on the threshold, convulsing. The air buzzed. Something in her mind was turning inside out.

Diana (sobbing):
“I don’t wanna forget my name! My friends.. I can’t lose them! I can’t-”

S (reaching out):
“You’ll gain new ones. Bigger ones. Forever ones.”

Her ribs punched through her shirt. Her teeth gone. Replaced with fragments of something... Symbolic. Familiar.

She cried.

Then, slowly… she stopped.

Diana (softly):
“Wait. No. I’m… I’m not Diana, am I? I’m…”

X (gleefully):
“Say it…”

Diana (smiling faintly):
“I’m Four.”

And he was.

PART FOUR: THE SILENCE BEFORE THE END

TUESDAY, 5:00 AM | OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL

They stood in the flickering amber glow of the parking lot lamps, the letters and number fully formed, no trace of the humans they once were.

Their silhouettes pulsed:

S, bone-sharp and blood-warm.
X, wild-limbed and grinning.
J, smooth and quietly seething.
Four, eyes half-lidded, voice distant, yet final.

Four:
“The cycle is done. The noise has faded.”

J:
“But we’re not bored anymore. Are we?”

S:
“Let the quiet spread.”

X:
“Let ‘em all become letters. Everyone’s got one in them. Just needs… loosening.”

The intercom above the school’s front doors crackled again:

🎙 [FINAL SYSTEM MESSAGE]:
“This announcement is for anyone still human:
You will not remain that way.
We are inside your language.
You cannot speak without us.
We are P.A.C.T.
You are next.”
[END TRANSMISSION]

© 2025 J

My Review

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Reviews

JayG

Nice try, but guessing doesn’t work.

You’re trying to present fiction in the style of a film script. But it’s not a script. And a fiction reader would have to read for a while and adapt themselves to your made-up approach before they could even begin to enjoy it. And no one is willing to do that when they can simply turn to fiction that’s written in the way they expect it to be.

So you get a point for trying, but lose points for trying to re-invent the profession without first learning how it works.

You’re thinking in cinematic terms, and trying to reproduce the film version that's in your head. But. You tell the reader that there was “speaker feedback.” Who cares? They can’t hear it, and it’s irrelevant to what’s said. So including it slows the pace of the action, which you want to avoid at all costs. Every unnecessary word you can remove makes the story read faster for more impact.

You’ve forgotten something critical: Film, and the real world is a parallel medium. You see the action, while at the same time noticing everything in the background. So in a fraction of a second, you know who’s in the shot, how they’re dressed, and what they’re doing. Plus, you recognize the era, the location, and lots, lots, more. And in parallel with that is the sonic landscape

On the page, everything must be spelled out one-word-at-a-time...slooooowly. And most of what you’d include is being ignored by the protagonist, so the words contribute nothing to the plot, to the personality of the one who matters, or, setting the scene meaningfully. Telling the reader of all the flowers in a garden is unnecessary if the protagonist is focused on the body lying on the dirt of it.

So to cut down on including irrelevant crap, we present only what matters to the protagonist enough to react to, in the moment they call “now.”

In short, we use the skills of writing fiction that have been developed, refined, and more, over centuries because they work. Making it up as you go doesn’t.

So...you have the desire and you have the story. And that story deserves the best presentation possible, so, grab a good book on the basics of how to add wings to your words and dig in. Then practice them till the skills you learned are automatic. Learn how to calibrate your reader’s perception of the scene to that of the protagonist so strongly that when something is said or done, the reader, who learns of it first, will react as the protagonist is ABOUT to.

That’s critical, because when the protagonist then seems to take the reader’s advice and acts on it, the reader will feel as if they are making the decisions in real-time, and living the scene with the protagonist as their avatar. If you have ever stopped reading to say, “Damn... Now, what do we do?” it’s happened to you. And that’s where the joy of reading lies.

So try a book like Debra Dixon’s, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict. It’s a warm easy read, that feels a lot like sitting with Deb as she talks about writing.

https://dokumen.pub/qdownload/gmc-goal-motivation-and-conflict-9781611943184.html

Read it, taking time to think about each point as it’s raised, and then practicing it, to fix it in memory, so you won’t remember reading it a day or two later. Then, after six months of using those skills, read Jack Bickham’s, Scene and Structure, to double your skill.

https://archive.org/details/scenestructurejackbickham

But wait, because you’re not ready for it yet, and need some basics that will help you to better know where he’s going.

And for an overview of the traps and gotchas that catch so many, you might check a few of my articles and YouTube videos.

Hope this helps

Jay Greenstein
Articles: https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@jaygreenstein3334

. . . . . . . .

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
~ E. L. Doctorow

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
~ Mark Twain

“In sum, if you want to improve your chances of publication, keep your story visible on stage and yourself mum.”
~ Sol Stein

Posted 7 Months Ago

Nice try, but guessing doesn’t work.

You’re trying to present fiction in the style of a film script. But it’s not a script. And a fiction reader would have to read for a while and adapt themselves to your made-up approach before they could even begin to enjoy it. And no one is willing to do that when they can simply turn to fiction that’s written in the way they expect it to be.

So you get a point for trying, but lose points for trying to re-invent the profession without first learning how it works.

You’re thinking in cinematic terms, and trying to reproduce the film version that's in your head. But. You tell the reader that there was “speaker feedback.” Who cares? They can’t hear it, and it’s irrelevant to what’s said. So including it slows the pace of the action, which you want to avoid at all costs. Every unnecessary word you can remove makes the story read faster for more impact.

You’ve forgotten something critical: Film, and the real world is a parallel medium. You see the action, while at the same time noticing everything in the background. So in a fraction of a second, you know who’s in the shot, how they’re dressed, and what they’re doing. Plus, you recognize the era, the location, and lots, lots, more. And in parallel with that is the sonic landscape

On the page, everything must be spelled out one-word-at-a-time...slooooowly. And most of what you’d include is being ignored by the protagonist, so the words contribute nothing to the plot, to the personality of the one who matters, or, setting the scene meaningfully.  Telling the reader of all the flowers in a garden is unnecessary if the protagonist is focused on the body lying on the dirt of it.

So to cut down on including irrelevant crap, we present only what matters to the protagonist enough to react to, in the moment they call “now.”

In short, we use the skills of writing fiction that have been developed, refined, and more, over centuries because they work.  Making it up as you go doesn’t.

So...you have the desire and you have the story. And that story deserves the best presentation possible, so, grab a good book on the basics of how to add wings to your words and dig in. Then practice them till the skills you learned are automatic. Learn how to calibrate your reader’s perception of the scene to that of the protagonist so strongly that when something is said or done, the reader, who learns of it first, will react as the protagonist is ABOUT to.

That’s critical, because when the protagonist then seems to take the reader’s advice and acts on it, the reader will feel as if they are making the decisions in real-time, and living the scene with the protagonist as their avatar. If you have ever stopped reading to say, “Damn... Now, what do we do?” it’s happened to you.  And that’s where the joy of reading lies.

So try a book like Debra Dixon’s, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict. It’s a warm easy read, that feels a lot like sitting with Deb as she talks about writing.

https://dokumen.pub/qdownload/gmc-goal-motivation-and-conflict-9781611943184.html

Read it, taking time to think about each point as it’s raised, and then practicing it, to fix it in memory, so you won’t remember reading it a day or two later. Then, after six months of using those skills, read Jack Bickham’s, Scene and Structure, to double your skill.

https://archive.org/details/scenestructurejackbickham

But wait, because you’re not ready for it yet, and need some basics that will help you to better know where he’s going.

And for an overview of the traps and gotchas that catch so many, you might check a few of my articles and YouTube videos.

Hope this helps

Jay Greenstein
Articles:  https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/
Videos:  https://www.youtube.com/@jaygreenstein3334

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
~ E. L. Doctorow

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
 ~ Mark Twain

“In sum, if you want to improve your chances of publication, keep your story visible on stage and yourself mum.”
~ Sol Stein