Long-Term Effects
by David August
part 1
The district court judge awoke with a start and sat up in bed, sure he had heard loud thunder or someone screaming nearby. He waited for more, but no other sound came to him, not even rain. There was no one beside him, and he had to think for a moment before remembering that his wife, a judge like himself, would be away all week at a symposium. Otherwise, everything was as it should be but, instead of calming down, he felt his heart racing.
He checked the time on his phone and it was 08:16. That could not be right. The curtains were drawn and he could see that it was still dark outside. He checked the phone again and it now read 02:47. He watched in disbelief until the display suddenly changed to 02:48.
Shaking his head, the judge told himself he was being silly and should go back to sleep. After all, he had a big hearing to preside over in the morning, and he needed to be well rested. He was still holding the phone, barely aware that he was squeezing it hard.
When a full minute had passed and he still hadn’t moved, he reassured himself that everything was fine. He wanted to lie down and pretend this never happened, but his eyes kept returning to the one corner of the room where the light from the window never reached. Finally, unable to stand it any longer, he spat out the words he had been avoiding since he woke up. “Is anyone there?”
A sound reached him from the dark corner. Not words, not an answer, but the labored breathing of someone struggling for air, faint but unmistakable. Turning on the lamp would require him to reach for it, but he dared not move, lest whatever was hiding there pounce on him. He waited, praying for it to go away, but the sound persisted, sometimes punctuated by gasps and wheezes. With a cracked voice, the judge repeated his question, adding hastily, “I have a gun.”
At the last sentence, the breathing became a coughing fit. It lasted so long that the judge was sure the person’s lungs would burst. It was no longer coming from the dark corner, but from all over the room, even from behind him. He put his hands over his ears and shouted, “Stop it!” No sooner had he uttered the words than the sound was gone.
In an instant, the judge jumped out of bed, threw open the drawer of the bedside table and grabbed the pistol he always kept there. In his hurry, he knocked over the lamp, but not before he managed to turn it on. The warm light shone into the corner of the room where he aimed the gun. There was nothing to see but the bare walls.
Later that day, in court, he struggled to keep his mind on the proceedings, leading to a series of embarrassing mistakes. He later received a phone call from his wife, but he refrained from telling her what had happened. By then he had successfully convinced himself that it was just a nightmare, albeit a vivid one.
Despite these assurances, as night fell, he put off going to bed and watched television until he could barely keep his eyes open. When he finally made his way to the bedroom, he left the bedside light on, telling himself he would read a bit before turning in. He dozed off in less than a minute, having slept so little the night before.
The first thing he noticed when he woke up was how dark the room was. He stood motionless, trying to remember if he had left a light on, and when he realized that he had, he felt a weight on his chest. The atmosphere of the room had become oppressive and suffocating. He winced and heard the heavy breathing again, coming from the same corner of the room.
“Who’s there?” he asked, hoping to sound more brave than he felt. He had 08:16 on his phone.
There was no response, just ragged breathing interrupted by desperate gasps for air. He waited as long as he could, afraid that talking to whatever was making the noise would make it more real, but tormented by its continued silence, he said, “Who are you?”
“I was a teacher,” a weak voice echoed from the shadows, pausing every two words to catch its breath. It seemed to come from a very sick person. “And a mother. I had a little girl.”
Without any conscious thought behind it, he immediately knew who it was, and it sent a shiver down his spine. He had never seen her face to face, let alone talked to her. In fact, he was pretty sure he hadn’t even seen a picture of her. She had been nothing more than a mention in a lawsuit filed during the pandemic, a case that had been closed for years. He hadn’t thought about it since, but it came back to him now: a case about someone who had died from Covid.
“You remember,” the voice declared.
“No,” he denied at once. “I remember nothing. Go away.”
To his surprise, the sound of breathing disappeared. There was a noticeable change in the air around the room, and he turned on the light. As before, no one was there.
When he arrived at work, he asked to see the old case file, earning an uncomprehending look from his assistant. He found out that the plaintiff, a teachers’ union, had unsuccessfully appealed his decision, so there was a transcript of the hearing. He flipped through it until he came to the date of the victim’s death, and began to breathe more freely when he learned that it was September 1, 2020.
He was ready to dismiss it all as nonsense when he remembered that a second teacher had died, allegedly from the same causes. He combed through the records until he found the exact date: August 16th. He closed the file as if it were a sting in his eye.
That night he checked into a hotel, something he would never admit to his wife or any of his friends. He feared something was wrong with him and made a note to see a doctor as soon as possible. Eventually, he fell asleep on the unfamiliar bed, only to wake up in what felt like only a minute, in his own bedroom, at home. He assured himself that he was dreaming.
With morbid curiosity, he checked his phone, and sure enough, it read 08:16 before changing to 01:59. Just as he was about to throw it away in a rage, the sound of heavy breathing returned. The judge roared, his fear fueling his outrage, “Go away! Why don’t you go away? Leave me alone!”
The breathing turned to a faint wheezing, followed by a crunching sound that made him recoil in disgust. He could not say what part of the human body could make such a sound. Maybe dry bones breaking. Finally, the voice said, “I can’t go. I can’t leave.”
“Why?” The judge was desperate now, pleading. “I did you no harm. I never even heard of you until you were dead.”
“Yes. You did nothing. Nothing.” There was no accusation in the voice, just the same flat tone, delivered with difficulty as breathing failed.
“You’re lying. I did my part. There was a hearing, I reviewed the evidence. It was a difficult case, but I had to decide. I applied the law.” His last sentence was practically a whimper.
He would have preferred to hear resentment in the voice, but it continued in the same impassive manner, agonizingly slow, “There were three witnesses at the hearing. You were at home, not in the courtroom, listening to them from your computer. You were safe from the virus. They all backed up what the union was saying.”
“It was not that simple, there were other factors—”
“One of the witnesses was my husband. He told you how terrified I was to reopen the school under those conditions. We were given no masks, no vaccine, just a few weeks after the peak. There were only two janitors, down from four before the pandemic. They were overwhelmed; they couldn’t keep the place clean. They told me that on our first day, it was just too big a building, poorly ventilated. They feared for their lives, but they were told to keep quiet or they would be fired. And the other witnesses, the colleagues I worked with, they told you the same thing.”
The voice, never loud to begin with, had become a mere whisper. Yet the judge understood every word, as if he could hear it in his brain, more than with his ears. He said nothing, and after another coughing fit, the voice returned, “I was overweight and had high blood pressure, but they ordered me back. I thought about quitting my job, I was sure I was going to get sick. But my daughter had been born with duodenal atresia, and we still had hospital bills. Our rent had gone up. We couldn’t afford to lose my salary.”
“On the third day...” the judge murmured, unaware of what he was saying.
“On the third day of in-person classes,” the voice continued, “the symptoms began. First the fever and some difficulty breathing. I stayed home, and it only got worse. It hurt every time I breathed, I had a tightness in my chest. I had to go to the hospital and, after three days, they moved me to the intensive care unit. They put me on a ventilator, and all I could think about was that I would never see my husband again. He would not be allowed to visit me. I’d never hold my daughter again. And I never did.”
There was no anger in the voice, and this time the judge was grateful for the lack of emotion. He didn’t think he would be able to hold back his tears otherwise. Nothing was said for a long time, but when it became clear that the apparition was not going away, he asked, “Why are you after me? I’m sorry for what happened to you, but I had nothing to do with it. The mayor, the superintendent, they may have been involved, but not me.” After a moment’s hesitation, he added, “Why don’t you go to them instead?”
“The union asked for an injunction after the two deaths,” the voice said. “They wanted proper ventilation in the school, more janitors, free masks for all teachers. You denied them everything. And in the months that followed, more teachers fell ill.”
The judge became indignant: “But no one else died! Look, you have to understand that in my profession you have to make tough decisions. Someone is always going to come out the loser and be upset about it, but that’s—”
The voice cut him off, not by raising its tone, but with a horrible inhalation that lasted for an impossible amount of time, as if the air never reached the speaker’s lungs. When that was over, the voice said, more tattered than ever, “He cried at the end, didn’t he? My husband, he cried when he talked to you, he couldn’t hold it in. I can see it in your mind. It must have been hard for him to pour his heart out to a stranger like that. You see, he never cries, at least not when he thinks someone’s watching.”
Before the judge could reply, angry at the impertinence of having his decision second-guessed, the voice said, “You never mentioned any of the witnesses in your decision. Not a word of what they said found its way into your final judgment, and you took their testimony just days before. Why did you do this? Why did you silence their voices?”
“Is that what this is all about?” the judge said in a defensive tone. “Believe me, it wasn’t my fault, if the attorney had done his job—”
“He did,” the voice countered. “He produced documents, witnesses. The defense didn’t bother with any of that. The school district’s lawyers acted like they knew they couldn’t lose the case. It worked out well for them, didn’t it? So why, why did you do it?”
“There was an appeal, my decision was confirmed,” the judge claimed, almost shouting. “So I was right. No one can say otherwise.”
“Yes, there was an appeal, and the second decision also failed to mention the witnesses. But I’m not asking those other judges, I’m asking you. Why did you do it?”
“Shut up, just shut up,” he burst out, actually screaming now. “Go away, damn you!”
Copyright © 2025 by David August
