Knock. Knock. Knock.

Trigger warning: This story contains themes related to mental health, physical abuse and mental abuse.

“I think someone’s listening. I think someone’s watching.”

The creak of The Man’s chair broke through the ambient silence as he shifted upright from his tranced slumber, ears straining to listen through the dark. Deep breaths. Deep. Trying to slow the sudden pounding of blood in his ears, the punching of his heart against his chest. Inflate. Breathe. Slow. The excitement had gotten the better of him. He’d let it. Let it slip. A shiver, the thrill of anticipation. But eventually he regained judgement and he listened, perched on the armchair. Waiting.

  He’d lost precious seconds, but he was sure now that there was nothing. The street was as quiet as ever. No cars. No hum from the streetlights. No dogs. The Fergusons had had a dog, a German Shepard. Lenny? Lester. It had howled when it died. A seeking sorrow. A seeking sorrow on a home that had already known loss. Their teenage daughter. Everyone around here had lost someone. Known loss. Known horror and horrible loss. They weren’t special. They no longer infected that home anyway. It had been purged of their sin years ago.

  The Man absent-mindedly scratched the arm of the chair as he waited, releasing trapped tobacco and rot from deep within, a rot that hung and wailed from every surface in this place. He counted to ten, deep breaths, tobacco and rot, listening and waiting. Nothing.

 He gritted his teeth. Furious. He’d hoped this would be it. Hoped it was finally over. His obsession with the finality of all this was bubbling past the surface, and he feared he would no more be able to contain it. It needed to be released soon. He’d invested too much. He traced a finger across his lips, smiling as he leaned back in the chair. He could almost laugh. The anticipation was getting too much. The roiling fury and anxious euphoria were getting harder and harder to differentiate.

  “I think someone’s listening.”

  He stood this time, straining to hear. This time, the excitement didn’t build. Personal feelings should never have been involved with his work in the first place. It’s how he’d made it as far as he had. The house shifted. The chair shifted. Creaked and settled. Silent again. And beyond that, still nothing. He tapped the wall just to be sure. Knock. Knock. Knock. He heard all three. Good. He still had his faculties. He waited in the darkness of the room. Counted to ten. Nothing. He hated waiting, had always hated waiting. It spoke of a reliance on other people. On an other. Spoke nothing of the self.

  Mother had bought this house years ago. Back when the Fergusons had a dog. Had a daughter. Back when silence on this street was the dirty little secret you knew about your neighbours but would never tell. There had been too much noise back then. The 80s altogether had been too colourful. Too exaggerated. The decade when the awareness of menial existence was finally starting to sink into the population and they overcompensated with a kaleidoscope of colour and convincing you that working 60-hour weeks was the way to distract from your shitty life. People would laugh a lot. Have barbeques. Affairs. Anything to distract.

 He forced himself to laugh. It was a sore bark in the darkness. His throat caught after a few seconds. There was that fury again. He spit. Shook his head. Tried again. It came through better this time. Convincing. He’d 47 years of anecdotal evidence that it was convincing. It was all fake, all bullshit. But he was just as fake and bullshit as everyone else around here. The difference was that he wasn’t using it to distract. That’s why he’d taken this job. To show them. To call them out for their hypocrisy. To teach them that they’d do just about anything to distract from the pain. The pain of our very existence. Even if it meant the pain of another. An other. An other in our stead. Nothing is for nothing. It all means nothing. Addicts, the lot of them. Addicted to the ignorance of it all. They craved it. Feared when they couldn’t shut off from the abject horror, seeking out their ignorance once again.

  He unbuttoned his shirt. It smelt like the chair. He’d burn it of course. He burnt them all. Sometimes he’d wished he’d burned this place down with them when he had the chance. He still could. Now. But that would defeat the purpose of all this. All his work. He needed to go to the hardware store. Three turns left, two right, one left. They played Blues music and the husband wasn’t horrible looking.

  “Slower than expected. These renovations will be the death of us, never let your wife convince you to start a DIY project,” he practised aloud. Felt his voice curl off the tongue. It sounded far away. Out of his control. He always practised it. They always asked the same thing. Every time. Addicts.

 “Slow than expected.” He repeated, staring out the window. Staring at nothingness. Listened for nothingness. Just a cold house on a dark street. The street with the Fergusons dog. The Fergusons daughter. The streets with the neighbours and the secrets and the colours. All dark and nothingness now. He watched the clouds roll over the yawning moon, imagined the feel of the breeze as it pushed against mounds of dead grass. He licked his gums, his teeth. Made sure he was still here.

Knock. Knock. Knock. Still here. Deep breath.

 “Yeah, work has been crazy.” He rubbed his tie. Power by association.

  The Man sighed. Leaning his forehead against the wall. It was cold. This whole house was cold. He breathed. Deep breaths. Trying to catch the whisps of a giggle he heard at the corners of his mind. A fleeting brushstroke. He’d lost her voice long ago. Ashley. But sometimes. Sometimes. In the quiet of the night, here, in this cold, forgotten house, he thought he could just about hear that laugh. That giggle. Her giggle. But she was lost now too. All dark and nothingness and loss. The house shifted again.

 He searched for the anticipation again. But it was gone. He was too self-aware now, too awake. Too aware of the awareness of it all. The world was once again a reality. Sunken and grey and disappointing. They’d disappointed him. Again. And it was getting late. He needed to go to the hardware store. Three turns left, two right, one left. Knock. Knock. Knock.

  He walked around the room. Slow. One eye always on the window, one eye always on…

  He walked around the room. The dead filled the walls and their ghosts haunted the spaces in between. Pictures of blood relations long lost to time. The air hung heavy with oppression and loss and the keepsakes of a bye-gone generation. A sepia-tone generation, crippled by war. Addicts in their own way. Filth. Tobacco and cold and rot. He settled back by the window. He imagined burning the shirt again.

“I think someone’s listening. I think someone’s watching.”

  He turned and slammed his hands into the bars of the cage. “SHUT UP! No one is fucking listening! No one is watching! They should be, but they aren’t.” He spat. Betrayed. Exhausted.

 The girl, the woman, in the cage immediately threw herself back to the far wall, pressing her spine as hard as it could go into the long-aged concrete. It wasn’t far. The cage he’d built wasn’t that deep. He could still reach out and touch her. She’d been faster before. During the before. She was older now. Slower. She covered her face. Rocking slightly. Terrified. He was surprised she still felt terror.

 “I think someone’s listening,” she repeated.

 Broken clock. Still, a broken clock was right twice a day.

 “Ashley?’ The Man called to her. Low and sweet. She’d forgotten her own name years ago. Forgotten the Fergusons. They’d forgotten her too. Eventually. Not that they looked very hard. He’d left all the clues. Was still leaving them. And so, she’d forgotten, and he called her Ashley. A depressing imitation. A knock-off. In all that time, he’d never done anything to her. Never wanted to. He’d taken her to prove a point. For the exaltation of freedom. His freedom. For making the system work. He thought he’d have been caught long ago. Had hoped he’d have been caught long ago. But still, nothing. They were still too addicted.

 “Ashley, tonight was not that night, I’m sorry. You have to stay. A little longer.” He sighed. Not a real sigh, of course. He wasn’t sure she’d figured that out yet, so he kept it up. “They still haven’t found you. I’ve left so many clues. Hopefully, hopefully, soon, I’ll be caught and you’ll be free. We’ll both be free.”

 Then he left her. Left the cage, left the cold house. With each step towards the door, he reformed the shell he wore in the waking world, the shell that mirrored every other person in the world, every other person he saw day to day, on the street, where he worked.

 This is my real work. The thought came and then vanished, sealed off by the shell. The shell enjoyed numbers and spread sheets. Football games. Reading. Music. The shell knew his practised laugh. Knew his automatic responses. Slower than expected. Work has been crazy. The shell could shift and mould itself to the outside world. But most importantly, the shell could conceal. The shell could wait for them to figure it out. The shell could wait for them to be caught.

 It was only in these fleeting moments, this fleeting time, here, in the cold house, that The Man could feel the fury of his impatience growing.

 He closed the Mother’s door. Immediately pulled out his phone and dialed. Muscle memory. The shell was driving. Knock…knock…kno-. The echo was gone. The hum was gone. No longer himself. No longer there. He was now the Other. The Shell. Existing as an otherness. Otherness as, and of, all others. Generic and the same.

 “Psychic sisters!! So strange, I was literally just about to call you. Are you only finishing up now?” his husbands voice lilted through the phone as soon as he answered.

 “Yeah, work has been crazy.” He rubbed his tie. “I wanna stop at the hardware store first though, need anything while I’m on my way?”

 “Not a thing. My Mum dropped off a load of stuff earlier. Food mostly.” Pause. “For Saturday.”

 The memorial service. Ashley. He paused too. Genuine. The hint of a giggle ran through his mind.

  Another voice filtered through. “Hey Dad!”

 “Hey kiddo! How was school?”

  A laugh. A sad laugh. He noted to try that himself sometime. A sad laugh. “He’s already gone. He did spend forty minutes trying to find his earphones this morning, only to mysteriously find them under the couch after swearing he checked under there three times. I think someone is looking out for him.” A smile. A giggle. Ashley. “I think someone is watching.” He could feel his husbands smile burn through the phone. Warm and sad. Revolting.

 The shell smiled. An opposite smile. A smile laced with fury and pain and venom and forgotteness. A smile his husband could not see. Would not see. The Man smelt of cold and tobacco and rot, but the shell was a melted covering, a mask against the visceral disconnection to humanity. Addicts. He pulled off in his car. Away from the street. The street of dark and nothingness and loss. The street of the Fergusons and his Mother’s cold house and the lost daughter. He pulled away from his true self underneath, settling into his shell of a person, hoping that finally, tomorrow, might be the day.

 “Yeah. I think someone is watching.”