Not Crazy

Sounds

Part One
The familiar sound of footsteps on the stairs from below, a sound of something falling that you have heard many times before but now cannot place. You think it sounded vaguely of wood. You would like to know more. You are afraid to know more. The fear settles within you, and you are too frightened to move. This is silly, you think, because you have been awake for hours and surely you would have noticed someone come into your room. You don't know for certain, the fear in your stomach shoots back. So you sit there, wanting to act but fearing the consequences, no matter how nonexistent they are. You sit there in the quiet dark. Alone. It's been a while since you have experienced loneliness on this scale. You tell yourself it's because it's pitch black out, the night has bled into early morning and you are tired. But you don't know for certain, the fear in your stomach shoots back. How could you know for certain, when nothing is ever entirely for certain. You think about that. You don't know how to quite respond to that. You continue to sit in silence and yet, listen. To the sound of familiar footsteps on the stairs from below, to the sound of something falling that you have heard many times but cannot place. You continue to feel the fear.

Part Two
You can hear it out in the grass beyond the house, a low, whooping holler that puts you on guard and draws your attention. You can't quite determine what it is- it could, in fact, be the sound of your sibling in the room next door, dozing listlessly and breathing deeply; it could also be an animal, either out roaming the plains or a frog simply calling out into the night. Or it could all be in your head, you fabricated a sound in the back of your mind for a purpose you cannot quite recall. Was it because you craved company, that you wished to hear something beyond staggering silence? Was it because you were trying to make a connection to the outside world in the only way you knew how? Or perhaps, it is because you find your own fear to be exhilarating, and what better way to scare yourself than hearing noises in the dark that don't exist? Your ears are once again adjusted to the silence; you know there are no sounds besides the occasional creak of the house settling, the persistent ticking of the clocks that you will suddenly become hyperaware of, the rare buzz of a fly that comes near and the grumbling of the vent beneath the bed. Part of you wonders why you still consider your situation silent when there is, indeed, so much noise about you. The other part of you argues that these things have always been there, they have become your version of silence. You think to yourself now, that without these things- you would have gone crazy. It would go from a comfortable silence into a deafening silence- one so still and undisturbed that you wouldn't be able to tell if you were deaf or not.
So you accept this reality willingly, fearing the alternatives that could be, that might still be- and you once again here the sounds of a low, whooping holler in the grass beyond the house. You do not care what makes this sound.