An Interruption

By Aisea Solidum

No one had told me that when you finally leave your home for a new one that those who had housed you wouldn’t bother to ask how healthy you are anymore, or even how many hours of sleep you even get. It’s not that they turn apathetic or don’t care because they don’t love you anymore ; It’s because they don’t have to care about you anymore. 

I would find myself in waiting rooms, empty parking lots, at sunsets and dawns, wondering whether those whom I have estranged myself from would call me — then I feel like I am at fault for why they never had. The worst hits when after such a long time you are suddenly jolted by remembering that even those you have been housed by didn’t even mind either. And then they finally did.

3:12 a.m. For once in my new found life, a piece of the old one before had come back at the most peculiar hour. No reason in particular was I awake at the “witching hour” as no one came into my bedroom to scold me for staying up that late anymore, but how odd of it for someone to be calling at three in the morning. The ringtone I no longer recognized from my landline hadn’t chimed in so long. I was somewhat startled by it as an empty room like this would sing no sound but the occasional creak of the futon. The room lifted its sound as I paced toward the phone, apprehensive to answer as I did not recognize the number at first. “Scam,” I muttered with no one to hear. And with a pivot I returned to the state I was before just as the chimes of the phone had exited the air. Undisturbed like that telephone had once been.

3:19 a.m. A monotone hum delivered itself from the air conditioning unit which outside of that noise — outside the room itself — foreign sounds of an outside world dwelled. As for all other familiar noises, there was just the ringing in my ears which harmonized to the ticks of the wall clock. I was at peace in just some due time after the sharp tones of the landline that ran through the air to hit me. Although peace for some would dress up as a shore in the Maldives or the zen of a tea garden, mine wasn’t of what could be dreamt, but it was of what I could get. I seemed content with the fact that there was no one anymore because I forced myself to think it was peaceful being all alone. Of course, it wasn’t my choice to be like this but I made it work, convincing myself to be content with whatever I had in reach.

And just like that, the fragile peace, like a spider web, was rocked by the wind of a now familiar chime — something I can add to the regular collection sounds. A trill of sorts found me after an intense silence. Deja vu, it seemed like, though this second time a single something felt off about this call. Again I asked myself, why would anyone be calling at this hour? Why would anyone be calling me at this hour? For a single second, I seemed to believe that someone was intentionally calling to talk but then again I remembered that the only two people I really had in my life didn’t miss seeing me anymore. 

My thoughts and doubts were then interrupted by my mind being soaked back into reality as I heard the telephone grow louder. No one hears this telephone except me, I thought. It was true, I was the only person to hear this rare sound. Surely, the intention of whoever is on the end of the line would be meant for me to hear. 

Soon, the soles of my feet felt the gray of the floor. I lost contact with the couch, and with that, time seemed to slow with each footstep I placed along my path to the landline. An uneventful walk just across the room, though this time I felt a readiness to choose to answer whomever was on the incoming line. Each step I took, I guessed and wondered who it could be. No matter who, I wouldn’t mind the person, except if it were my parents, who’ve become so estranged. Just as long as it were anybody else, I have no reason to fear or anticipate their simple greeting. By now, the telephone had rung for possibly fifthteen seconds which prompted me to pick up the pace for a call at this time would have been considered urgent. In the worst case scenario, I could have possibly missed the call after those fifteen seconds because of how I couldn’t stow away the apprehensive thoughts that kept me moving quicker with the intention to answer the ringing telephone. And yet, in the worst case scenario, that did exactly happen in my reality. I had, in fact, missed another opportunity to answer. The state of solitude began to return with a dead chime as the reality sank in that I needed to anticipate another call in order to uncover whatever was on the other side — the single person that has talked to me with intention since I owned this place that I am obligated to call home. So there, I sat and waited with only my thoughts to accompany me.

3:28 a.m. I started to converse with myself because there was no one to listen to my words and no one to reply. My mind began to wander, reminiscing of time before this mundane, unmoving period. Sometimes I would become so lost within these four muted walls that I would forget there were such places besides what is contained in them. Such a place as this that I now call home holds no bodies except the one who christened it their own, lonesome. The home I had before held souls. The home I had before witnessed love. The home I had before had color. How radical of a difference the soundscapes are between the two atmospheres. It makes all the difference living in a new place without carpeted floors because the warmth of my feet could substitute what comfort I found in socializing with a friend, or even my parents.

There, the clock hung from one of the four walls — as invasive as it was — with a perpetual rhythm that would inevitably end with silence once it gives up on an untimely day. It was across the room from where I sat and it looked down at me from where I slouched as I had raised my head, much like a painting on the wall of a gallery, I observed it with its accompanying noise. I watched the second hand very slowly crawl along the surface of its face with each tick. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

3:29 a.m. I counted it. A single minute crawled off the face on the wall. How excruciating it was to wait those few minutes hoping for a call to be delivered, seeking to fill a void in my life. Even if some deem it pointless to wait, it was something only I could understand and therefore I had required myself to know the reason, the answer to all these late night calls. 3:30 a.m. I sat and waited on the couch facing the wall clock where the next minute had fallen onto the floor in front of me. My anticipation manifested itself within each excruciating minute that fell past me. Like an impending doom — and almost like approaching wind — I grew anxious with each doubt I intrusively scared myself with.

3:31 a.m.   My leg began to bounce as the third minute I deliberately waited for began to drag each single footstep across the floor of the room towards where I was. By now I can almost hear the incoming telephone ring that would soon arrive. The clock stared me down as the next minute steadily approached alongside the perpetual ticks of the wall clock, where, on the same wall, the telephone that had rung twice resided — an inevitable ring would arrive.

3:32 a.m. In the final moments of silence that would come to be interrupted by a single foreign sound, I watched the final minute I counted stand in front of me. Too bothered to waste my effort upon waiting for nothing, each second I sat with till the telephone rang, I had my mind clear for what was to arrive. The final seconds of the last minute rushed to me like an air gust, hitting my face. The black hole that I encompassed myself within a familiar silence had been interrupted by a supernova that was that landline that hung from the wall. A terrible ring alarmed itself from where it resided.

My body took no chance to waste this kind of opportunity as I leapt across the floor where both the clock and the telephone occupied. I stood there, bewildered by what I had twice dismissed — now speculating who took such effort to contact me. Thrice it rang before me until I let go of all that held me back, excited for the first time within these four gray walls to be acknowledged by another being. I picked up the phone.

“Hello? I answered.

“I'm sorry to call you at this hour—” they began.

“Wait, who is this?” I interrupted, craving the answer I wanted over those excruciating first minutes.

“My name is Sarah Dover. I’m a neighbor of Brennan and Rue. Your name was the only one on their emergency contact list.”

“What would they want with me? And why are you the one calling me?”

“Look, hun. I’m terribly sorry to tell you this ...” There was a long pause. “Brennan and Rue were murdered a few hours ago. A theft gone wrong, they say.”

She continued on but I didn’t pay my ear to the rest of what she told me as I looked up at the clock as the second hand passed the minute onto 3:33, now in denial to the fact that my parents were dead.