A Crack in Space

Something happened that wasn't supposed to happen, one random day in Bob's apartment. Behind his dusty old suit jackets, packed away and forgotten in the attic, there it was: a crack in space itself; not quite on the wall, but close enough you'd think it was. What was in there, visible from that small window, Bob will tell you, but not yet. Not until he discovers this little accident in the universe himself.

One day later, following that "one random day", Bob was at his stove, stirring around a pot of boiling ramen. "What ingredients should I include this time?" he thought to himself, ever excited to spice up his cheap ramen; so many possibilities to bring it closer to the real thing! But, before he could decide, a sound interrupted his thoughts: loud knocking in short successions, evenly spaced apart. How can that be though, when the two apartments on either side of him have been vacant for nearly a year?

Bob paused his stirring, and tilted his head to pinpoint the direction of the sound. And then, quiet once again. "Has the landlord got one of his handymen doing something in one of these places?" he pondered. After a moment, a sudden, significantly louder sound broke the silence; much faster in its repetition. Bob threw his hands to his ears, covering them, eyes bulging outwards. "What the hell is that?! Can they ... have some ... consideration for a longtime paying customer?!", he shouted, but before he could even finish his rhetorical question, the noise halted.

He stood there frozen, glanced around at the walls and ceiling expecting round 3 before slowly moving his hands away from his ears, finally noticing the water boiling over the rim of his pot of ramen. He shrieked, and swatted the pot off the stovetop like a defensive cat. An impulsive decision, but that was Bob for you. Nothing else out of the ordinary occurred that day.

A week following the noisy incident, Bob awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of beeping, reminiscent to a large truck backing up. It was faint, and would have been a minor annoyance to Bob, considering he lived in a city. It would've been, if the sound wasn't coming from above him. Raising a hand to rub his eye, still half asleep, he questioned whether he was actually awake or not. "Do paralysis demons drive now...? Whatever, I'm going back to sleep." And so he did.

When morning came, while preparing his breakfast, Bob recalled a vivid dream he'd had of working on a construction site. It wouldn't have been as memorable if not for everyone working alongside him speaking in tongues. Complete gibberish, and, just as he was thinking of it, he heard it. "Maintenance again? But what is that strange language they're speaking.", and then a suspicion hit him; it was the sound of a voice in reverse. He ran to his phone to record it, then flipped the audio and played it back. "There were more deletions needed than originally estimated, sir, but we're expecting the damages to be repaired shortly." Odd, Bob thought to himself, did someone take the time to master this way of speaking, perhaps to hide something? But it was so clear, too audible to be coming from another apartment.

Just like the previous sounds, the voices, too, were coming from above him, and this time Bob was intent on finding the source. He arrived at the attic, certain someone or something was up there, and, slowly, he creaked open the door to confirm that. "Hello...?", he asked, poking his head up to survey the area before walking up the ladder leading into it. More sounds filled his ears now: large machinery, jackhammering, drilling, various chatter; all familiar to him yet warped in a way too. The voices weren't the only thing reversed. Everything was.

Bob convinced himself that some pest must've knocked something over, maybe an old MP3 player or phone, which caused it to play something contained on the device. A curious Stuart Little, looking for some entertainment up here, he joked to himself.

After hours of searching, he sat in the center of the attic, surrounded by towers of now empty boxes and crates; every one of them, inspected thoroughly, but for naught. It nearly drove him into a frenzy, being taunted by reversed noise all day, until, finally, his eyes rested on the coat rack hidden away in the darkest part of the room, just outside the lone light he had up there. "Aha!", he deduced, "the device must be in one of those suit pockets!"