Tap! Tap! Tap!
I have become
afraid of leaving my room.
Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap!
There is no sound reason for it that I can explain to any half-sane person
that would make any semblance of sense. But there is also nothing I know with
more certainty.
Tap-Tap! Tap-Tap! Tap!
It's the irregularity of it. The absolute infallibility of its
irregularity. It messes with my head. My very being craves some order, some
rhythm, something familiar to latch on to. But so far as I can tell, if any
pattern exists, it is beyond my ability to detect.
I have started to plan for excursions from my room as if I am only allowed a
few and there are significant risks attached to them. I have started hoarding
water bottles. I’m beginning to consider storing canned foods. Whatever lets me
protect myself from what’s out there.
I know I can’t avoid this forever. And I know this is EXTREMELY stupid. But I
do feel safer when I am here. Trapped, but safe.
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I haven’t left the room in three days. The water is beginning to taste stale.
I’m going to have to raid the kitchen for some food as well. I have not been
eating well. My reflection has begun to take on a worryingly colorless hue. I
assume it is because food has been scarce, but at this point it could just be
the toll that this ordeal is exacting upon me.
But I can’t just lay here and waste away! What kind of life would that be? What
kind of end would that be?
Enough of this. I need to be an adult. I’m being ridiculous. I’m just going to
do it. I need to make a food run.
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The hallway looks the same as I remember it. Which is a much bigger relief to
me than it should have been. I realize I have begun to mistrust my own memory.
I can see my couch. My beloved, oversized, middle-aged, beaten-down, faithful
old couch.
How many evenings I spent draped over it, lifelessly staring at the TV, letting
life pass me by. I would kill for another evening like that. It would be a
return to normalcy.
The television remains off. That makes sense. I haven’t heard anything playing
on it in forever. Was it always just me who used it?
The passage to the kitchen beckons to me. My stomach rumbles out in yearning. I
make my way in a forcedly determined walk towards it, and enter the sprawling
expanse that is our kitchen.
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I remember the day we moved in. The house did not blow me away. The rent was
higher than I was used to, and I had less space to work with. But I was not
exactly spoilt for choices and there was nothing wrong with the house. I
made up my mind to compromise.
Until I saw the kitchen, that is.
Lined with gorgeous, mellow-hued cabinets that could store enough food for a
year, accented by the shiny new fridge we had recently purchased, studded with
innumerable little nuggets of inspiration – a handy hook here, a neatly
designed shelf there – the kitchen had been designed with love, with thought
and with talent.
And yet all its aesthetic and practical properties fell by the wayside,
overshadowed almost to the point of oblivion by its one overarching feature.
The space.
Just the sheer size of it, the distance you found yourself having to walk, or
even just travel over with your eyes, gave it a cathedral-esque feel. It made
it feel important, even hallowed.
I remember, as I beheld that panorama for the first time, that I needed no
compromise, and no convincing. I wanted to live here.
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I walked into the kitchen, almost optimistic that it would heal me just a
little. I felt like an Unbeliever that walks into a church in a last ditch,
desperate ploy to find some peace in God.
It had been a while since I had been here. But the cabinets still loomed over
me on both sides, almost closing in over my head like the canopies of Mirkwood.
The new fridge still looked shiny, and hummed unworriedly on, exuding an almost
surreal sense of calm.
The overall feel of the place had not changed at all. It should have helped. It
should have comforted me. It should have soothed my frayed nerves.
But, smack bang in the middle of the kitchen, stood she. The very phantasm that
I was running from greeted my sight as I fled into my church.
She looked annoyingly normal. A loose-fitting shirt, draped smartly over her
narrow frame. Her eternally trusty cargo pants covering legs I do not think I
had ever seen. Her face, rosy and in the bloom of health, almost in mockery of
my recent malaise. She looked how she always looked. And I was not happy about
it.
At this point, I would have preferred horrible disfigurement, or horns, or something,
ANYTHING, to give some credence to my fears. Why, when I knew without a doubt
in my soul that things were not right, did everything look and feel the same?
Why was there not a menacing, malevolent aura emanating from her? Why was the
kitchen not shrouded in a cloud of gloom? Why was everything the way it used to
be in the before times?
She stared at me with an unreadable expression. Her feet were tauntingly
motionless. Her eyes perceptive and probing.
I did not dare speak.
Gathering up the flagging remains of my courage, I edged past her towards the
counter, determined to get at least a week’s stock of food and refill my water
bottles.
I felt her bespectacled eyes on me, boring holes into the back of my skull.
But, proudly, defiantly, I persevered.
I had always loved the almost vulgarly oversized water bottles I owned, and
their storage capacity had recently become even more of a blessing, given that
I had taken to confining myself in my room for days at a stretch.
But now, standing as I was under the gaze of the Being, the very thing that I
loved about the water bottles became its curse. Filling just one of those
gargantuan constructs took ages at the best of times, but now it felt
positively eternal. I measured time to the arrhythmic heartbeat that hammered
deafeningly in my ears. I started questioning its passage, whether it was
consistent and my perception was off, or whether reality was bending around me while
my senses remained intact. The steady rush of water flowing seemed to mock me,
giving tangible proof of the task being performed, but showing no evidence in
the still concerningly empty water bottle.
My breathing got shallower as time passed, and my arms began to hurt. The
bottle felt heavier in my hands, but why did it look so goddamned empty? And
why was it taking so long?
Finally, after a period that felt like it aged me a decade, the first bottle
mercifully overflowed. I turned with dread to look at the two additional,
identical-sized bottles that stood on the counter, and the magnitude of the
task before me descended upon my fragile shoulders with the ominous weight of impending
doom.
I glanced over my shoulder, nervously, vainly hoping the apparition had left.
She had not.
Her face was still inscrutable. Her posture still passive. Her whole persona exuding dormancy.
And then, suddenly, terrifyingly, her hand moved.
It did not provide me the vindication of moving with unnatural speed, nor did
it justify my fears with any uncanny motions, but the mere break from the
heretofore inert status quo froze my very spine.
My head whipped back towards the water bottles in an instant, and my quivering
hands reached for the empty flask as I muttered frantic prayers under my
breath. My brain had tried to understand the motivations behind the movement of
her hand, and had not only failed to discern its motive, but had broken
formation and fled in the face of fear, reverting to the bestial instinct to not look at a threat and hoping it goes
away.
Two eternities of nothingness later, the task was completed. I allowed myself a
sigh of relief. It was important to celebrate the little victories.
Now all that remained was to grab as many cans of preserved food as I could and
beat a hasty retreat to my fortress. The sanctuary was bittersweet, because
while it did make me feel safe within its four walls, it also meant the
resumption of the Sound. The very root of all my fears. But, standing where I
stood, defenseless in the face of the all-powerful predator, I could not put
enough store in the feeling of safety my room provided. No cost was too high.
And so I walked over to the cabinet that I had stocked to the rafters with
canned goods, determined to wrap up the task and call the mission a success.
And, mid-walk, I stopped dead.
There, on the counter, lay a pristine, fresh cucumber. Vigorously clean and
almost uncannily even-proportioned, it lay tantalizingly on the cutting board.
It had been chopped neatly and evenly upto its midpoint, with the slices
toppled over daintily at progressively steeper angles, and the uncut region a
study in contrast, a picture of solidity and cohesion.
Next to it lay a knife, still glistening from the perspiration.
I recoiled. Mentally, at least. Physically, I had been struck immobile once
again.
What was it doing here? Why had she left it half cut? Why was none of it being
eaten? How long had it been there?
The mundane absurdity of the entire spectacle sent tendrils creeping down my
insides. This was EXACTLY the kind of subtle, insidious act of perfidy I could
expect from her. She was far too wily to allow me the solace of confronting my
fears head on. I knew then, that the rest of my life was to be lived in this
limbo of unreason. Never receiving confirmation of the legitimacy of my fears,
never receiving the validation of at least being justifiably afraid of
something, if not victorious over it. I would always feel like I should be
afraid, and never know why.
The knife, still dripping from the lifeblood of the cucumber, took on a
grotesque hue. The half chopped cucumber, a metaphor for my uncertain plight.
The room swam before my eyes. My eyes darkened. And then I slept.
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Tap-Tap-Tap! Tap! Tap-Tap-Tap! Tap-Tap!
I awoke in my bed to the by now all too familiar soundtrack. Almost comforting
in its familiarity, in its insistence on irregularity. I had been tucked in
with care and consideration. At my side table, the three water bottles were
lined up neatly. The cans of food I had hoped to fetch were piled up against my
room wall, in an impressively solid tower.
Tap! Tap! Tap-Tap! Tap-Tap-Tap!
She had done this to me. I was not going to be allowed to be free of this
ordeal so easily. I would be kept alive to witness the Beat, until its every Tap!
sapped at my sanity and crumbled my coherence.
I could never leave the room again. This was to be my last stand, my final
defense, and my tomb.
I would stay alive as long as I could, sipping what little water was needed to
keep me alive, and rationing out the food. And then, when it ran out, I would
waste away to the sound of her footsteps.
Tap!
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