A cry, a scream, dealing with the turmoil of what The Noise means. Am I Alone, a short story of mine on Hypnopomp.
I was twenty-two when I first acknowledged you. When I first understood the noise is a part of everything I did and didn’t hope to experience, dream, succeed and fail at. It was a great awakening realising I had always been accompanied by a hateful friend, joined for all my life. I lay there in my sweat-soaked bedclothes thinking, turning, and finally seething at the injustice of a till then unnoticed but now accepted always aural scream. At least that’s how I’ve come to remember it. How I’ve reconstructed that night trying to figure out why.
I lay there thinking some electronics – whining through the night like a kitten, a cub destined to be a hunter of large prey now away from her mother – was keeping me from sleep. I clamoured from my bed, unplugged computers, took batteries from what I could, and eventually unscrewed a light bulb. Yet your howl persisted.