I heard the bleeping in my dreams, that horrible siren of noise which washed over my entire being. Around and around my head it went. Around and around and around. Never ending.
Subconsciously, I reached over to where my alarm usually was and slammed down a hand hard to shut it up. But it refused to. In fury I pounded on it so hard something crunched angrily under my hand.
I opened my sleep heavy eyes to see the green clock mangled and sickly looking, wires sticking out of its bashed open head. I didn’t care though, it had always made a horrible noise and been one birthday present I’d definitely wished had come with the receipt. What I did care about, though, was the siren still echoing around my room.
It wasn’t my alarm clock. It wasn’t the fire alarm (my brother’s ‘skills’ in the kitchen had made me well acquainted with that particular noise). If I hadn’t been so dead tired I probably would have started to panic, wondering if I’d gone insane. That the noise was in fact not an audible noise at all but rather the clogs in my head spinning out of control and slowly breaking down.
Groggily, my body heaved out of bed to move along the landing then down the stairs. It was everywhere; I couldn’t even escape the noise in my bathroom.
“Jason!” I yelled out when the noise was becoming unbearable. “Where are the drugs in this joint? God, trust you to hide away the paracetamol!”
I wouldn’t have put it past my older brother to do just that. If it was possible, he’d have me at home 24/7 wrapped up in cotton wool and watching some innocent children’s programme on television. Everything seemed to pose a threat. A late night party on a Saturday night? Jamie assumed I’d be drinking myself into oblivion and sleeping with half the town.
Nobody replied to my calls.
“Oh for God’s sake,” I cursed as I abandoned the kitchen to rake through our small house for him.
In my desperate search for drugs to end my headache I’d not even realised that all usual signs of Jamie were missing. There was no burning toast in the toaster and the usual rock music channel on our kitchen television was eerily absent.
I was an independent girl of sixteen and I didn’t need anybody to hold my hand through our morning routine but it was strange that Jamie was missing. Sure, he liked to party sometimes and do all the things twenty-one year olds enjoy doing (well, twenty-one year olds who have to look after their not-yet-a-legal-adult sister) but he was very responsible.
Maybe it was just the strange noise making me paranoid.
“Stupid bloody brother,” I muttered angrily to myself as if I wasn’t obviously alone and as if everything wrong with my morning up to this point had been all Jamie’s fault. I swung my schoolbag over my shoulder and slammed the door behind me, trying to prove a point.
“If you want anything done you have to do it yourself.”
It didn’t come as a surprise that the piercing siren noise still sung sharply even when I was outside. My ears had become somewhat accustomed to it, passing it off as something like background noise.
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