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There’s a low treble. I can feel it pulsing behind my eyes. Thump, thump, thump. Sometimes it’s a low murmur, humming in my ears like those grey screens of old TVs. Other times it’s like a lighthouse. Things are suddenly too bright too quickly and then dark far too fast again. And at times, very peculiar times, it’s cold. Bone chilling cold that grabs you fast and holds you faster. I call that one The Monster. Other kids had monsters underneath their beds, in their closet, behind the window. What scared me was freezing to death. So maybe that’s why I call it the Monster, although I can’t say I’m sure; I don’t remember a time when the Monster wasn’t with me. Waiting, calculating. Lurking. Lurking. Lurking.
Exhale. Exhale. Just. Exhale, please. It’s good for you. Just breath out.
The treble quietens. Not much, it’s a whisper, not on silent mode. It never is. I wonder, sometimes, if other people can turn it off. If there is such a thing as silence. Experiencing one is still on my bucket list. Though, I can’t tell anyone that. They’d think me strange. Well, stranger. Everybody feels the treble. I’m just not sure whether I’m the only one wishing for silence. Call me foolish, call my mad. Call me however you wish, but I do believe in fairy tales. Fairy tales like love, happiness and silence. A world where there is no Monster.
Inhale. I-Inhale. Good… good.
I look up to face the door. It’s white. I hate white. It’s too bright and assuming. Judging. All it takes is a knock or two, followed by the soft swoosh of the air caught between the opening door and the carpet awaiting me in the interview room. Then a three-meter walk to the chair and off we go.
Breath in, breath out. Put on a pleasant but deferential smile, grit your teeth and bear it. And breathe.
I hear that there are people like me. Always wired up, always alert, always jumpy. I’ve never met anyone, though. It feels lonely to be the only one constantly on the line, waiting for signals that, more often than not, never come. It’s lonely and confusing but most of all, it’s tiring. I’m just so damn tired. But I remember to pretend to be calm. Every single time. I am a master of my trade, if you could call it that. Nobody ever knows the difference, and nobody ever will. The Monster is mine, and mine only.
Breath in. Breath out. Lift your hand, knock. Once, twice.
There’s tremble to my hands. I clench them tighter. It feels like electricity. The room is distant, like everything always is. Far, far away right in front of you. Do others feel this void between them and the outside? Or is it just the Monster in its latent state? Always lurking, lurking, lurking?
I step in with a smile and leave with another one fifteen minutes later. It’s only after I pass the first corner that I feel the tears prickling in my eyes. How stupid is the electricity running through my veins.
Fight. Flight. Fight. Flight. Fight. Flight, flight, flight, flight.
My step follows the beat behind my eyes. I can’t hear anything over the buzz. My brain have given up trying to decipher the shadows. And the Monster preens. Thump, thump, thump. My heels hit the fine stone floor, followed by a softer du-dump as the rest of the leather sole touches the ground. I walk with my head held high. The image perfect in its coolness. Like a painting. Far too close to be anything but far away. Far too cold to be real.
Where I’m going, I don’t know. I walk for minutes, hours, decades. Time is just a construct, after all. It’s just me, the Monster, and the methodical thump, thump, thump behind my eyes. It’s too bright and too dark. So loud, so freaking loud. My body feels torn apart and forced back together, only I don’t know where that together is. Or where I am, for that matter. I can’t focus; the Monster is laughing too loud.
“Hey,” It’s clear, it’s sound. I shudder in a breath.
It’s Miles, waving me over with his curly hair and mischievous eyes. He’s smoking again. I hate when he does that. I hate the poisonous vapours with a passion unmatched. He always laughs it off when I try to make him quit. The corner of his mouth lifts in a sombre yet amused half smile and the smoke from his cigarette curves around him in an uncanny resemblance of an art-nuveau painting. And he always retorts with the same words: “Bro, hun, darling, babe, the platonic love of my life. Doth thee not knoweth me? You and I, silly, we’re the same. Gen Z kids to the bone. We both know we’re not dying of old age. Why not enjoy it while it lasts?” I hate those words. Firstly, I have no idea how to “enjoy it”, and secondly, we both know, out of the two of us, he was never meant to be the one to die first.
“You doing it again,” he comments and blows out a lungful of darkened air as I close in.
“Doing what?” I cock my head to the side, trying not to cough.
“That. The – the – the thing you always do,” ha makes a vague gesture with his hands and the cigarette drops a few flakes of its ashes to the ground.
I stare at him, like I always do when I understand the words coming from his mouth but not the meaning behind them.
And as per usual, he relents: “You’re too much 4D all the time, mate.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means, that you’re an idiot. Also, that you think too much.”
He tells me as much often enough. “4D?”
“Yeah. Y’know.” He waves his hands again and this time the falling ashes glow a little, a resemblance of a feeble attempt at existing a little longer. I watch them as they make their inevitable descend.
“You’re in your head all the time. And y’know I’m not one for science- “
That’s not true. Miles is the smartest person I know. He could have done great things, cured illnesses, signed peace treaties, changed the world. Only he chose to save one person at a time. I let the comment pass, never voicing it again, not after the drunken rashness of his words from two years ago comes back to memory.
“- but human mind is not like our world, y’know? It’s not a cartoon or a book, and it’s not like what’s around us, either. It’s something totally different. Better, I s’ppose. It’s not this puny 3D world. It has that one thing we don’t understand, ya get what I’m sayin’?”
I nod; it’s unconvincing even to myself.
“That’s the fourth dimension. ‘S what I wanted to say. “
“So?”
He shrugs. “Like, our brains are incredible machines, dude. We only use like a little of ‘em. Their potential is limitless. They’re better than any computer. It’s like – like – 4D internet.” He grins. “And you use it constantly. You’re always hooked up on that amazing web of yours and when somebody wants to call you on the landline, you never there, man.”
His hands fly higher as his voice gets more agitated. “I mean, you’re always buried in those books of yours when you’re not working. And your idea of a free time activity is learning languages, for goodness sake!”
It’s my cue to shrug.
“Basically, what I mean is,” he continues, calm as ever, and drags slowly from that godforsaken fag.
“That you’re always here,” he taps his right middle finger to his temple, the cigarette getting a little smaller by the second. “And never here.”
He motions around us, at the world. The 3D. I turn my head. He’s right. I’m never here and I know that, I do. Except that no one ever taught me how not to be.
“Just wish you’d be here sometimes, y’know? For your own sake,” I hear Miles murmur. Whether he meant for me to hear it or not, I don’t know.
Later, much later, when the sky is orange and the rooftops of the buildings underneath us are painted bloody, I turn to him sitting to my right on the bridge. His legs are tucked between the bars and dangle above the deathly void beneath. He’s smoking. Always smoking.
“I don’t know how.”
He doesn’t turn to me. His gaze stays fixed on the horizon, following only he knows what. The hand lifting the cigarette to his lips stops just a breath away from them.
“I know,” he answers solemnly and goes on to drag from the little tobacco-filled killer. He exhales deeply and as I watch the grey smoke rise above the city, I wonder what does it feel like to be offline.