Familiar

Pt. 3 - Cut The Rope

Michelle rolled over, wide awake in bed. She wasn't sure if it was the wine before bed keeping her up, or the heat, but she felt like a live wire inside her own body. She exhaled, peeling the covers off to cool down. Miles was fast asleep next to her, and nothing was going to wake him for the next four hours, given the way he slept.

Her eyes fixed on the blurry numbers on the alarm clock on the nightstand, trying to will them to come into focus without her glasses. No luck. She dropped her head back down to the pillow and closed her eyes.

Music drifted to her as she did, muffled and faint.

There are times in your soul. There are times, reflections.

Michelle rolled over and placed the covers above her head. The fucking hipster college kid next door, with his impeccable sound system. He had bored them to death in the elevator about the specifics of his AudioTechnica setup, but Michelle was really getting to experience the system through her walls now.

She sat up, suddenly angry, the way one tends to be, in a confused, interrupted way when you wake up in the middle of the night. She stepped into the bathroom and listened for the music.

There are times, no one's looking for the lie they don't see.

She heard the music filtering through, the bass music practically thrumming in her fingers. It made her furious. The bathroom was silent.

She strode into the walk-in closet, fists balling so she didn't shout out of frustration. Nothing. In the kitchen, she could hear the music become clear, so she followed the wall to the connecting living room, hands brushing across the wall.

Leave your friends alone, and come on down.

Stepping across the couch barefoot, she pressed her ear to the wall, but couldn't clearly make anything out.

Behind her, she could hear a glass slide across marble, getting filled. She wheeled around, looking into her kitchen. There was no one there, no glass, no bottle. The kitchen stood empty and dark, yet she could hear the glug, glug of a decanter emptying into a rocks glass.

Michelle wondered if she was dreaming or even sleepwalking, seeing a reflection of her disheveled, manic self in the dead TV.

There are times, oooh, it's so heavy. Lay down on my knees.

She took a steadying breath, surprised she was losing her cool. Noise traveled funny in these new apartments. Tee vaulted ceilings and slim little corridors made everything sound like it was right next to you sometimes. That had to be it.

At dusk these thoughts of you. Cut the rope in two.

If she saw her neighbor tomorrow, she promised to strangle him with his own aux cord. Now she was stranded without sleep in the middle of the night, holding onto strange feelings of disembodied anger.

Michelle caught herself, eyes searching the dark. Disembodied sensations that weren't hers. Music that filtered from an unknown place. It hadn't happened in a while, but perhaps something was aiding her bond to Bones tonight.

She walked to her office and pulled open the drawers, palming through all the junk for a bottle of sleeping pills. Nothing in the top two drawers. Desperate, she checked on top of her bookcase, and her fingers felt the corners of a box.

She pulled it down, suddenly rocked with nostalgia. Lifting the box lid, she peered inside—facing the only thing she feared now as an adult. Her hand reached down into the box, almost fervent to check and see if it was still there.