She was fine. Demonstrably fine. Then why was I still so—?
Clump clump clump.
I could hear every footstep she made in that house! It was even worse than the first night. I mentally followed her from the living room to the kitchen as if she were walking around my own home. It was uncanny. Maybe that’s what had triggered my vision of her in the basement. Maybe it was just like the other night. I’d just heard her and my mind had filled in the rest.
Cupboard doors creaked open and clapped shut. What on earth was she looking for? I rolled onto my side and wrapped my hoodie-turned-pillow over my head and squeezed my ears between my elbows. It was no use. I could still feel the vibration of the cupboards opening and closing through the floor and through the mattress and into my ears. I rolled onto my back.
Just calm down, I thought to myself, you’re making it worse by letting it get to you.
I tried to remember what that therapist had suggested. The one the police made me see after the incident. I’d gone to one session, just to try it, then noped out soon afterwards. There was a breathing exercise she’d suggested. In through the nose for four. Hold for four. Out through the mouth for four. I tried that for a few cycles, counting out the numbers with my fingertips as I breathed.
In, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four.
Or was it for five?
I couldn’t remember.
It was four or five.
There was also something about naming things I could see or feel or hear. Well, I could hear plenty just now. It sounded like my neighbour was sorting through her recycling. Bottles and cans clanked and rang through the walls. I thought about moving my mattress into the bathroom. Perhaps I should have gone back for that second therapy session after all. No, I definitely should have gone back. I wondered if the therapist had reported my absence. No one had come looking for me, so I assumed I was fine.
But that’s the problem with assuming. You’re never quite sure if you’re really off the hook or if the line has just got slack enough to make you feel like you’d got away. You can never relax. You’ll always be looking over your shoulder, waiting for the line to pull taut.
Music started from next door.
I glared at the wall in the dark as some beat I did not recognise reverberated through the plaster. I scrabbled about for my phone, yanking it from its cable, then squinted in its glare. It was gone midnight! What the hell was she doing playing something like that so loud so late?
I lay back and tried to think about what to do.
Back in Edinburgh this kind of thing was a bimonthly occurrence as someone in the red brick tenement opposite my flat share brought the party home from their latest rager. I’d be woken by the unce-unce-unce echoing off the brickwork and across carparks until someone yelled for them to ‘shut the fuck up’ or just called the police. I thought I’d escaped it out here in the countryside.
The worst part was always the powerlessness of it. The many times I’d tried to talk myself into heading across the street to the flat making the noise, to ask them to turn it down. I knew what would happen, was convinced of what would happen. I could already see the shiny, happy faces laughing me out of the flat.
Leave us to have our fun. Not everyone is as wasted and joyless and heartless as you are.
Or maybe they’d get angry at me. They’d be that kind of person, sharper and harder than I was, confident in their bodies and what those bodies could do, especially to small, soft bodies like mine. Perhaps it would just be asking for trouble, a long grudge, a stream of abuse, rubbish through my letter box, dog shit on my front doorstep, because I couldn’t be chill. Couldn’t live and let live.
So, instead, I would just lie awake and silently steam, fantasising about bricks through windows, lit bottles of vodka following shortly after, speakers melting in a fire. I’d dream of myself, larger and stronger, wielding a hammer and knocking on their door all nonchalant. At first, they’d scowl at me, ask me what I wanted, then they would notice the hammer and their faces would drop. In a hushed voice I’d say something cool or chummy-sounding but most definitely a threat. I’d soothe myself with images of their faces—faces I’d never seen—full of fear. Fear of me. ‘Certainly,’ they’d say. ‘Of course. Sorry to have bothered you!’ They’d tiptoe to their flats, they’d step out of my way on the street, and they’d certainly never play their stupid, awful music late at night ever again.
The sounds of a crowd of people came through the wall. She must have invited half the town over! They filled the lower floor and—from the sounds of it—spilled upstairs. I imagined the group that had surrounded her at The Curtyard, cheering her on, now continuing the party despite me trying to sleep next door. I saw Fergus’s face in my mind, with that dismissive scowl, now lit up, welcoming, friendly. I saw Rowan, dancing in the kitchen. No, he wouldn’t have gone. Not without asking to invite me, too, right? I remembered the face he’d made back at the store when we talked about my job, when he asked about taking the costume off. And then I thought of how I had left my neighbour behind yesterday evening, how when she had come grinning at me I’d hidden in my seat in an attempt to shrug her off. I couldn’t really blame Rowan for doing the same to me now.
Someone drunkenly fell into the wall above my head. A shower of old plaster fell onto my face and into my eyes. I sat up and swore. My eyes stung. The thundering tone in my ears reached its crescendo and all hope of control was lost.
“That’s it,” I said. “That’s fucking it!”
I threw off the dressing gown, pulled the bedroom door open so hard I ripped the latch out of the wood. I marched down the stairs and pulled open my front door.
“Shut the fuck up!” I screamed up at the house.
The dark and empty house.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. The throbbing rush of blood calmed away suddenly at the sight of the quiet windows above me. No revellers in the living room. No dance music pounding into the night. Not a light. Not a sound. Just the house, stood as quiet and as still as the hill beneath it.
The loudest, most disruptive thing was me.
I shivered. Then I slunk back inside my half of the house and went back to my bed.
But despite the calm and the quiet outside, I couldn’t sleep a wink.
