The bombs fell on a Tuesday. Coincidentally, I was taking a shit.
I heard the planes first, the rumbling, the droning, the ugly blackness that grated along the chalkboard of the soul. With my shorts down around my ankles, and halfway through solving my daily Wordle, I remember thinking, This better not become a regular thing.
I had recently moved into this dingy little flat, 7 floors up, sharing a wall with a trombonist on one side, a man with lead shoes upstairs, and a serial movie watcher on the other side.
What movies? No idea, but they’d blare from when I woke up to when I went back to sleep - the constant irritation of noise just surrounded me like a warm doona on a cold night, except this blanket was soaked in hot water, acid, and just the right amount of Carolina Reaper to cause acute intestinal distress.
Every day, I looked forward to the short 10 minute solace between movies when the sole audience member in the cursed cinema next door had to exit their seat as the lights came up, have the ushers clean out the popcorn that had haphazardly spilled across the floor, spray the chairs down (ugh), and then let ‘em back in for the next feature.
Of course, I couldn’t really do anything other than thump on the walls, but then they’d start thumping on the ceiling thinking I was protesting the lead shoe man. You’d think a common enemy would bring us together, like in War of the Worlds or something, but it really didn’t. And I hated thinking he thought we were friends.
The STOMP STOMP STOMP every day was right on time, on the hour, every hour. You could pretty much set your watch to it, if your watch was a few minutes fast or slow every hour. There was that hourly anticipation - will he get up past the hour? Or will we be surprised when he gets up just before the hour is up? Or maybe - *shock horror* - he decides to get up exactly on the hour?!
So you can see that my care about noise was not unfounded, and had laboured to be as tolerant as possible to the sounds around me. Desensitised to the outside world, I just wanted to make sure that there wasn’t going to be more of the goddamn planes that would just add to the aggravation.
Of course, the bombs fell pretty heavily - I saw the plume from my bathroom, well, after my shit I guess. I couldn’t really see outside of the frosted window that let in the little rays of natural light, but when I got out and peered outside my living room, I could see the mushroom sprouting out of the land like a sped-up forest video you see on YouTube, overlaid with some motivational music or something.
This one was accompanied by screams.
Ugh the NOISE I have to tell you - so not only do I have it coming from every whichway, the door started to emanate the rushing feet, the wails, the crying - just horrible HORRIBLE noises. It’s like a damn prison I tell ya.
I picked up the phone, hoping to call up the council and add another noise complaint to the docket, but instead of hearing a dial tone I heard,
“All right, boss? Wanna hit ‘em again?”
I paused, unspeaking. Was that meant for me? Had I just eavesdropped on some sort of secret network of government agents in the building?
I grew excited. This was something out of the ordinary, my call to arms, my hero’s journey. I was going to be propelled into something great, something beautiful, an adventure, a brilliant 1.5 hour adapted movie that would become a box office hit after plastering the words ‘Based on a True Story’! My hands became slick, as I looked for the right words to come back with. I froze up, heart pounding, mute.
And yet thankfully, there was silence on the other side of the line. Blessed, empty silence. My heart sang. Maybe there was no boss on the other line, and I could bask in this silent glow instead. I could tune out the rest of the world, the unceasing noise, the hissing static, the enduring monotony of life, and bathe in this newfound sea of noiseless serenity.
Bliss.
And yet, unbidden, the need for adventure arose in me. A small spark, a match lit against the raging storm. Why couldn’t I be the one to start the fire?
I heard the movie next door pause for a moment, the lead shoes STOMP STOMP STOMP (off the hour of course) over to the window, and the trombonist playing some well-timed slides. I thought about these sounds, and noises, continuously repeated over and over and over all across the city. There was so much NOISE and now there were babies crying outside and sirens going off and it was just ARGH.
“Hit ‘em with everything we got.”
I hung up, settled into a comfy recliner by the window, and waited for the noise to fade.
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