Sound

by

Phoebe Donovan

The cool sheets feel pleasant in the sticky summer heat. The walls smile at me, encompassing me in safety. From somewhere in the ceiling, a cricket chirps. It must have escaped the boy with the lizard upstairs and gotten stuck in a vent. The steady noise of the cricket is relaxing, it reminds me of when I was little, sleeping in my grandparents’ barn. It sounds like hot summer days by the lake and watermelon dripping from my cheeks. It sounds like meaningless secrets that meant so much and the smell of when it finally rained. My body sinks deeper into the bed, into the memories, into sleep. 

I sipped from a paper cup on my morning drive to work. The coffee was mediocre, but the warm and comforting taste started my day off right. 

The car notified me of an incoming call.

“Goooooood morning, Iris!” my boyfriend said, his tone so gleeful I felt the car’s speakers might burst. 

“Morning, Gav.” 

“How’d you sleep?” 

My chest inflates, as if I am breathing in his words. 

“Well. How about you?”

“Oh pretty good. You know me. Out like a light at ten.”

I smiled, “oh yes, I know all too well.”

“Hey, you love an early night!” he said, mockingly indignant.

“Yes, I know,” I laughed, “well anyway, I’m nearly at work, I’d better go.”

“Okay! I just wanted to say that I hope you have a good day,” he said sweetly.

I sat behind my perfect glass desk, my fingers clicking endlessly against the keyboard as I responded to emails and scheduled meetings with prospective home-owners. 

The new gangly intern came in around eleven to remind me of a meeting with the manager of an up-and-coming vegan protein bar company who was looking for a house.

“I love those bars!” he said wistfully, and proceeded to tell me a long story about the first time he tried one, and how it was so good that he couldn’t believe it was vegan. I stopped pretending to pay attention and concentrated on my computer to show him I had work to do. He mumbled an apology and, with a jealous glance at my desk, stumbled out of the room. 

As the sky outside was beginning to darken, Gavin and I met up with some of our old friends from college at a new trendy restaurant in the middle of town. 

“Hey!” Sofia said as we approached the table, “here are the two lovebirds we all know and love!”

I gave a general greeting to the four of them and slid down the wooden booth to make room for Gav. 

“Iris!” Marty squealed, “You didn’t tell us you were FAMOUS!”

He showed me numerous photos from around the city of him posing next to giant posters with my face on them. 

I laughed sarcastically.

“No no, I really like this one,” he said, showing off yet another photo in which he sat at a bus stop, mimicking the exact pose and facial expression I was making in the poster behind him. We all laughed until the old couple at the next table shot us mean looks. We tried to smother our giggles but only ended up laughing more. 

The duvet is tucked up to my chin, its tassled threads tickling my skin. I stare at the ceiling. Little stars spot my vision as my eyes strain into the blackness. The cricket still chirps somewhere above my head. At first I am pleased, but the more I listen to it, the more it irritates me. Its sound goes deeper than my ears. It itches the inside of my skull, scraping my brain. I lie there, hopelessly searching for the cricket, pretending to find the same comfort in the sound that I used to. But eventually I lift up my pillow and pull it around my head. Though my skull hurts from how tightly I press it, I can still hear the cricket’s vexatious chirping throughout the night. 

“And that concludes our tour.”

I had just finished showing a young couple a charming cottage on the outskirts of town. 

“We think it’s lovely. What a beautiful place to live,” the sandy-haired man said with a smile.

“Yes, I think it would be perfect for us,” his wife agreed, resting a hand on her pregnant stomach. “It’s a lot to consider. We’ll have to talk about it more, but chances are you’ll be hearing from us soon.”

“Wonderful!” I said with a big real-estate grin, “and if you have any questions, please feel free to email me any time.”

I waved goodbye to them as they got in their car and drove away. I turned away from the road, letting my painted smile drip slowly.

Gavin is sprawled across my bed, his face smushed into the pillow. I return from the window where I was looking out over the buildings and roads, still so alive in the dead of night. I slide back in bed. He snores, big deep snores, and every time he does, the cricket chirps back. It’s a cycle: snore, cricket, snore cricket snorecricketsnorecricket. I jostle him roughly. His shirt catches my ring, a long green thread unravels. 

“What’s wrong?” he mumbles.

“Nothing’s wrong, it’s just– is there any way we can get the cricket to shut up?”

“Seriously? You woke me because of a cricket?”

“Just listen.” 

He sits frozen, listening intently. The cricket chirps once, then twice, then three times.

“I don’t hear anything,” he says.

“What?” I say, “But—”

“No Iris, I’m going back to sleep,” he says. 

He flops his head back on the pillow. He is asleep within seconds. I try to relax, but the sound rings too loudly. 

I stumbled through the morning. I met up with Sofia for my third coffee of the day. She greeted me with a hug and a warm smile. 

“How’s it going?” she asked. Such a simple question, so difficult to answer.

But before I knew it, I was talking about everything. About how I felt there was something wrong with my life, how I wasn’t happy, but I couldn’t think why. I found myself blabbing about my dissatisfaction, about the unsettled feeling in my stomach and the ringing in my head. 

I stopped talking to take a sip of my coffee and looked up at Sofia. She had one eyebrow raised and her lips were scrunched up towards her nose.

“Are you serious Iris?” she asks incredulously, “Out of everyone I know, you are the only one who really has their life put together. You don’t get to complain that your life is too perfect when the rest of us are working two jobs and still trying to figure out what we want to do with our lives. Just step back and look at your life. You should be grateful.”

The phone rings against my ear.

“Iris?” Gav says when he picks up, “it’s three a.m., what’s going on?”

I plug my other ear so I can hear him talking over the deafening sound of the cricket. 

“Gav! I need you to come over. To make it stop,” I say desperately.

“Is this about the cricket again?” he asks. “I’ve told you, there’s nothing there.”

“I’m not making this up!” I scream into the phone.

The cricket gets louder, like it’s laughing at me. 

“I’m telling you Iris, there’s no cricket.”

The sound of the cricket rings mockingly. And for once I pinpoint exactly where it is. I grab a pair of scissors from the dresser, waiting until the cricket chirps again. I stab the scissors into the wall. The plaster dents and splinters, but somehow the cricket escapes. It taunts me from a few feet to the right. I plunge the scissors at the sound. Another hole. But the cricket moves again. I smash the scissors against my wall again and again, but the sound of the cricket still echoes around the room. And then it is beneath me, under the floorboards. I stab downwards so violently that the scissors get stuck in the wood. I pull them forcefully and fall backwards when they are dislodged. I sit on the ground, puncturing the floor around me, trying to stop the incessant sound. 

“Iris?” Gav says from the scratchy speaker on my phone, “Iris are you okay?”

I don’t answer. The sound of the cricket has once again swelled into an orchestra of thousands. The sound presses in around me, closing in until I can’t breathe. And then it is within me, the cricket shaking my body from the inside. I can't even hear myself scream. 

I take the scissors and start cutting, so utterly desperate that the pain feels good. 

Something swings against my neck. I pull the scissors back to find them covered in the blood that pours from the hole in my head. 

My ear rests on the floor, looking small. Everything is ringing. Everything is ringing. Everything is ringing.