The Lions Upstairs

There is the sound of footsteps present in my house at all times, even when I am in bed. Even when there are no visitors, at least none that I know of. Even when there are no animals loose – there could not be – I do not own any. But it does not matter what I do. I search every corner of my house, and the sound still goes on. I think they might be Rebecca's footsteps, but I always forget; she is not here anymore. 

I have called the police, I have gone to therapies, there is nothing much I can do. I take my medicine and yet, nothing improves. The sound is always there. It is more constant than the ringing of my doorbell. 

It has not always been here. It started not too long ago, perhaps only a week has passed, I am not sure. But it is painful to hear the noise when I do not know its source. 

My only problem is leaving. I can not leave. I will never leave. While the sounds inside may bother me, the sounds outside make my ears bleed. I hate chatter. I hate birds. I hate the sound of the wind. It sounds like someone screaming or crying, only far away, very far away. Why am I forbidden from knowing why? Are they being beaten? Are they mourning someone? Has their work been destroyed? 

I do not know, and that is just the thing that gets to me.

Maybe one day I will know. But until then, I am permanently locked in by the sounds of unknowing, and those sounds apparently include the torturous sound of footsteps, constantly. 

Today I tried to muffle them. I taped some pillows to the ceiling, the primary source of the sound. But when night came, the primary time when the sounds occur, nothing changed. The sounds were still there. 

I know Lucy Brannon was staring at me through the window. She is always there. She will tell the neighbors, she will bake cookies and settle down with them at a tea party. She will invite every soul except my own. She will buy new tea packets and new curtains and drapes. She will vacuum the whole house and raise hell, all for gossip. 

Then she will start the conversation, allowing her lips to sweat with lies and conspiracies, and once she's all dried out, she will gulp down a sip of her hibiscus tea, and she will ask if anyone wants more from her eternal well. They will say yes, and she will refill their miniscule cups, and they will keep up with the gossip. Then, eventually, when a conclusion arrives, the neighborhood will loathe me even more, all because of a fabricated truth.

I know, because she used to invite me too, before the thing happened. 

But today, another thing happened. Instead of the sole sound of footsteps, I began to hear pounding. Pounding on my front door, and screams outside. They demanded to see me. They clawed and roared. They were lions. 

"Go away!" I cried. 

Their ears were as clogged as mine. 

They simply remained in fury. 

Again, I didn't know why. 

"Please go away!" 

The screaming continued. They shouted out atrocities I can not repeat here. They demanded to see me, they offered to have me hung. I only said no. 

Then night came, and my house ceased its shaking. The door became silent, and I could no longer hear the screaming outside. The only sound, once again, was the sound of footsteps. It was heavy and brutal. The ceiling vibrated lightly, the floorboards creaked above. But I had checked the attic. I did it every night before going to bed. Somehow, I always missed them. Whoever it was. 

I leapt onto my bed, and buried myself into the cotton sheets, and I longed to drown in them. To wake up dead, with a bundle of cotton in my mouth, stuck between my teeth, rubbing against my rotten gums. I longed to feel the heat on my body as the days passed and it grew older and darker with decay. I longed to watch myself die from above, just like they would. Whoever it was. 

But I realized that death was not the only escape. I could move, I could run away. But I was scared. And I knew I was not scared of the sounds outside, but of the people. I had lied earlier. I had lied to myself, and I knew it. It was the people that terrified me, not the sounds outside. It was only one sound that terrified me as much as people did, and it came from above. 

If I moved, I would not hear it anymore. 

So I slid into the chair in front of my desk, and I turned on my computer, and I ordered a plane ticket. I would go across the United States. I would fly from California all the way to Maine, and I would do it the same day. I did not care much for my belongings. I did not have much in the first place. I had been a minimalist. I did not care if I had to sleep on the streets of Maine. They would be quieter than my street was, and they would not be home to the neighbors I loathed. 

    "Goodbye, Rebecca." I said. Then I went to my room, and I packed up the little things I had. While folding those breezy shirts with holes in them, I looked up at the ticking clock on the wall, the only other thing in the house that seemed to make a sound. It was the witching hour, of course it was. The witching hour always woke me up, if not the footsteps upstairs, which, at the moment, were still clawing at my ears. 

    I ripped away at one of my least desirable shirts, and I plugged my ears with two scraps of cloth, twirling them and twirling them until they settled into place and created a sort of cocoon. It housed my anger, an anger that could burst any second. 

    I stuffed my shoes into my suitcase, then what seemed to be hundreds of pictures of Rebecca, and my garments, piles upon piles upon piles. Clothing was the only thing I had much of, but most of it had been Rebecca's. 

    Finally, when it was half past the witching hour, I shut the case and locked it up, tagged it, and wrote my signature along it. I provided no address. I did not have one anymore. I gave my phone number instead, the only thing that seemed eternal. I rushed to the door and bid no farewell to my visitor, whoever it was. I ran out that door and shut it and locked it behind me. Whoever was visiting would stay visiting. 

     I gained the sleep I had missed on the five hour ride, and once it was morning, I found myself in an empty airport, adorned only by silence, the sound I had long awaited. 

    If I had been able to sleep there, I would have done so. I would have stretched my restless legs across the cold, smooth floor, and I would have allowed the cool air to infiltrate my nose. I would have covered my old body with my countless old jackets and Rebecca's scarves, but I was not allowed to. A police officer motioned at me, and he pointed at the airport doors, the ones that led outside, to the real world once again. 

    Luckily, I realized there was now nothing to fear. So I grabbed my things and walked towards those doors, praying that nothing would grab at me during those weak hours of the morning when the sun was just awakening. 

    I looked to my left, and then my right, but the street held no cabs. There was not a single car, not a single soul. I was the only one. 

    But there was a bridge, and it was long and wide, and sturdy. And the clouds up above were most definitely rain filled. 

    I hurried through the streets, crossed railroads, hoped to God a train would not stop me, and God did not allow them to. 

    I slid against the cool, concrete pillars which held up the bridge with their hands. I allowed my head to fall back, and I closed my eyes, hoping to get just a few moments, just a few, before someone would run me off again. 

    But as soon as my eyes began to wink off into the darkness I longed, the sun broke in, and the sounds reappeared. Pit-pat, pit-pat, they said, just above me, just once again. 

    Pit-pat, pit-pat, they kept on. I hid in the corner of the bridge. The thing almost seemed alive, as if it wanted to protect me. I could almost see it move its own concrete walls, luring me to security. 

    I prayed again, for God to protect me. But then I heard a thud, and I looked to my left to see someone staring right back at me. It was Lucy Brannon, her wild eyes targeted me as though I was prey. Her hair was a large, scrambled mess, and it looked like the other lions had gotten to her. They had been hungry. 

    "Finally!" She cried with a great, dry breath. "I've found you! Oh, where did you go?" She said with a chuckle. She smiled and twirled. "Oh God, I've missed you, Mr. Sin!" 

    "You know my name is not Mr. Sin." I said. 

    "Oh, but I've decided to call you that, because you know you've committed a lot of them." Her eyes became sharper. She wanted to know something. "You know I've been listening. You've suspected me. You know I can't keep away from my curiosity." 

    "I thought there was something else in my attic." 

    "What? What was it that you thought was up there?" 

    "I don't know, rats maybe. Or lions." 

    She laughed again. Everything was a joke to her. I settled deeper into the crest of the bridge. Her nonchalant air bothered me more than anything else ever had. 

    "Please, let me know. What happened to Rebecca?" She asked. "Let me know." 

    "That is not anything that pertains to you." I said. I scowled at her. She looked disgusting now. She looked slime-covered. Something had changed. She was no longer the neighborhood reporter. She was something else. 

    "I have a right to know!" She cried. "We all do! You live with us." 

    "No I do not. I live in the neighborhood." 

    She came closer. 

    "If you don't tell me, I'll have the cops search your house." 

    "And I will tell them that you have done plenty of that already. Do not act foolish, Lucy. You know what happened to Rebecca. Why else would you suggest that the cops search my house? You know I killed her. And you also know that if I had the chance to take it back, I very well would." 

    "Thank you. All I needed to record." She slipped a hand out of her jacket pocket, and opened it up. "I was recording." 

    "I know. I do not care." I said. 

    "So where is her corpse?" She asked. 

    "I do not remember, Lucy." 

    "Don't lie." She said.  

    "I am not lying. It has been years since I have seen her body outside of her grave." 

    "So you admit she is buried somewhere." Lucy rubbed her lips with a finger. She always did this when she felt that she had cracked the code. 

    "I do not admit. I only assume." 

    "You know Rebecca was my friend!" Her eyes began to leak the things I never thought them capable of leaking; real, actual tears. 

    She rubbed at her eyes and ran off someplace. For a moment, I did not see her. I turned my head, and then I heard the sound again, the footsteps, except they were not coming from above. 

    I turned back, and witnessed the weight of a massive rock hovering above my head, and her droopy, sleepless eyes, red and empty. They only housed a sort of tired anger, as if she had long awaited the end of my story. 

    "Please," I said. "I'll turn myself in." 

    "That's not good enough! I want you to feel what she felt!" 

    A car was coming, and it was black. And it held two sirens above its head. "Me! Me! Arrest me!" I rose my two hands, pushing away the rock. "I promise," I said quietly. She grabbed at my arm and dragged me down to the road. 

    "Yes! Take him!" She screamed. She jumped up and down wildly, still holding onto my hand, and she leaned a little too far into the clearing of that road, that black lagoon. 

    All I felt was a weight carrying me down, deep into it. But I landed on the breeches of her soft skin and flesh, and I remembered that she too, had a soul. A dirtied, lying, rotten soul, but it was much like mine. Only now, her flesh was blood covered and mine was not. She had been run over, and she had softened my fall. Her dead hand was still intertwined in mine, and for a moment, that silence was back. Only now, it was awful, eternally awful. 

    I arose, and I met the eyes of a bawling sheriff, and I confessed. He led me into the blackness of his car, and sat me down, my hands locked up behind me. It was my last oath, I assume. My last promise held true. And I believe it was not only for Lucy but for Rebecca too. 

    The ears of my neighbors would no longer be infiltrated with lies and conspiracies, but the silence would haunt them as now it would haunt me.

   And it has haunted me. I miss the footsteps. I miss the freedom of being able to hear something. Now I am in a cell as silent as death. No one speaks, no one talks. And sometimes, you simply miss the lions in your life. I miss them both. 

    I miss the lions.