Hurricane

Thrumming

Here I stand, battle ready, in a darkened room. Nothing is coming and it is nothing I am ready for as the silence ticks like a broken clock.

My eyes close against what little light the window provides as I inhale the scent of disturbance. Nothing is coming, but something has been. I can feel it in the air, the dust still settling around a ghostly presence that can't be seen nor heard; the thrumming in my bones stutters like a blown stereo and there is still nothing here.

I open my eyes and exhale, searching the room to determine what is amiss. Nothing. Nothing but the dust and the air.

And yet, something lingers, something unsettling and alarming and indistinct all at the same time.

I move, silent as can be across a wooden floor, and open the double doors leading to my bathroom - I don't enter, but I leave them like that and watch them. There is no movement, no wind. I move to the large walk in wardrobe, do the same, get the same results.

I open all of the drawers and cupboards and cabinets and windows but still nothing changes. The disturbance still lingers but still, nothing appears.

I chalk it down to paranoia and put everything back, ignoring the prickling of unease down my spine as I allow my guard to drop. This isn't the first time I'd come home to a feeling like this; in a city like New York, robberies and burglaries weren't exactly uncommon, but the first time I actually had been robbed. The building I live in, for all of its glory and upperclass-ness, has a shitty security system.

Last time I was lucky, in my line of work you learn to hide things - lies, secrets, money, drugs - pretty easily, and the invaders hadn't managed to find my hidden cash or other things hidden in my apartment. This time, nothing has been taken or even broken, but it feels unlucky. It feels wrong.

-

I wake up to the buzzing feeling in my bones thrumming and fizzing like a horde of angry bees. The unease feels stronger than ever before and I sit up.

I breathe the silence in, deep and cold.

My clock reads 3:33, the glowing red letters screaming at me in the pitch darkness of my bedroom. I feel the disturbance from earlier had grown, like a dark stain on my mind - like a dropped coffee mug on an early morning, like thick blood on a late night.

I reach over and touch the lamp on my bedside table, flinching away from the harsh light it emits at the tap of my fingers. I look around my room and, still, nothing is amiss - nothing except the air; the way it presses against my skin, leaving goosebumps on my bare chest and arms, the way it feels in my throat with every breath, sticking to the roof of my mouth like slime.

Suddenly, something strong hits against the door on the other side of the room, the dark wood shaking in the corner of my vision. I sit up straighter, flinging the covers from my legs and bracing myself to run at any moment - you learn from growing up on the streets, living on the rough like I had my whole life.

Another two knocks startle me into standing, and then there is nothing.

The silence is loud, rushing through my ears like the waves in a conch.

After some moments of nothing but the sound of my shallow breathing, I approach the door, checking through the peep hole to make sure whoever was there had gone, and - seeing the hallway outside deserted - opening it with a tiny metallic click as the lock disengages itself.

My breath is steady as I look from left to right, checking for any sign that the visitor had stayed behind to catch me unawares. There is nobody in sight, not a soul.