Program

Dave obeys the voices in his iPod. Go there. Fetch that. Mail that thing somewhere. Sometimes the voices need a visual aid, and then there is a clip in YouTube that makes sense to nobody else.

He'd rather not do the things the iPod tells him to do, but it knows about that guy Dave killed once, the one that was screwing with his girl behind his back. Even cops have iPods, had said the voice.

He could be imagining things, but he prefers to think that he isn't. Better blackmailed than crazy, he says to himself, chainsmoking in his apartment with shaky hands. Better blackmailed than crazy.

He could be imagining things, but he isn't.

Except when he thinks ATMs flow lewd poetry through the screen when nobody else can see. That is an hallucination at least half of the time.

.finis.