"I heard it without realizing I was hearing it"

“Perk of a Deaf school, I guess,” I said

Ready to continue the fiction adventure into the original novel, “Senseless”?

These were yesterday’s words… or you can go back to the beginning here.

Thank you for being willing to go off on a new and unexpected journey and for gifting me this recovery time!

And hopefully you enjoy the special glimpse at a book I otherwise never would have shared?

I will return to my normal style of essayist writing and real time rambles and Every Weekday Promises but…

Maybe this is an experiment worth taking?

Please share. Consider supporting an independent writer. And let me know if you wish you could turn the page (fingers crossed, but I’m not editing this to perfection before sharing… I’m just willing myself to be vulnerable and share in all its imperfection).

See you tomorrow for more!

SIX [sort of]

It was probably about three in the morning when they arrived.

I heard it without realizing I was hearing it, then snapped abruptly out of bed. Nothing can be done hastily any more- always aware of what skin is exposed, what friction could happen– but instincts took over and I was in the hallway before I could think.

“I think…” I said out loud to the shadow across from me, “I think it’s something different.”

Janette was about to rub her eyes sleepily, squinting through the darkness, but stopped herself millimeters from her lids; squinting hard at her firsts. We never know what to touch any more… what could be the last second we feel something before it’s all we ever feel again.

“You don’t think it’s just another wave of them?” she asked, grabbing a pair of dishwasher-looking gloves from the inside of her room before reappearing.

“Could be,” I said, “But it’s never sounded like that before.”

“Think it’ll wake the others?” she asked, suddenly a lot taller and tighter.

“Perk of a Deaf school, I guess,” I said, no time to shrug, “Maybe Pearl?”

I glanced to make sure her door was closed and saw it was. There was no way her window would be open because we’d all become accustomed to frantically locking and keeping airways shut. We didn’t know how this could pass from one to another. Not really. Or, at least in the back of my mind, what might come crawling through while I slept.

I know the third floor is an unbelievable height to be hearing something from down below, yet we could. And that meant this was something we hadn’t dealt with before. This was something new.

“Shit. The kids…” I found myself saying before I noticed it was me saying it. She knew exactly what I meant.

Two of our five had reallocated downstairs in the last few weeks after the elevator stopped working. For the first day or so, we tried to haul them up and down two flights of stairs by hand, certain sleeping in their old dorms would do something for their psyche. But by the third day we realized we were all too weak from eating canned tomatoes and evaporated milk as rations for so long, and decided to take over my old office instead, as well as the audiologist’s.

Frankly, this meant that Monica was sitting pretty these days, since Regina Kampar’s old office was one of the biggest in the building. But I honestly liked the fact that my dorm split on the smaller side. Less shadows to look curiously towards; less space to play with my eyes.

“I’ll go make sure Monica and PJ are okay,” I said, “Maybe they’re still asleep.”

“What do I do?” Janette was asking.

I want to say figure it out for yourself but I didn’t. I’d gotten used to this. Adjusting is what I do… I just didn’t realize everyone else was so bad at it.

“Wake Huxley,” I answered quickly, but I’d already started moving down the hall.

I could hear it coming from the north-side entrance, louder and louder. I didn’t have to know what the sound was to know what the sound was… it was gunshots. Two of them… now four. Again, five. I hadn’t heard that many in my life but I felt it somewhere deep in my sternum anyways.

I had no time to think about who was alive enough to hold a gun before I was moving. I raced down the hall at full speed, feeling my layered socks trip and grip the floor.

I lost my shoes when I lost Theo, but there wasn’t time to think about that. I was moving, still moving. Trying not to slide on the slick linoleum. I crashed through the right-side stairwell and took them two at a time, barely holding the rail, down, down. I remember wanting to throw myself down this expanse some days prior but there wasn’t time to think about that now either.

Bursting through the first floor door, I could feel my breath collecting in my throat somewhere, bubbling in my esophagus like tar. I hadn’t run like that in days and getting down two flights at full speed felt more like mindful falling than detailed descent. 

The main hallway was like an echo chamber of sound from where I stood, panting, still but for a moment. It was voices for sure, in addition to the shots already fired. Voices. Loud ones. More than one. Coming from the right. Maybe some to my left.

Nothing inside but so close, so consuming, it felt like I was the epistemic bubble and they were the shout. But before I could really detect the source or process anything at all, something crashed through my dormancy and everything shook.

A window somewhere, down the hall. Something large. My brain registered the sounds of breaking glass, gunfire and explosive propulsion instantly, but my body didn’t have time to react.

I was moving again. Away from the sound. Towards the rooms where the students were stowed, maybe safe.

“Breach!” I yelled as loudly as I could, knowing that this didn’t matter to those that were Deaf.

“Breach!”

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……pause mid-chapter…..

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Continued Tomorrow.

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