Journal entry

I’ve most certainly written about this in past postings but it just never ceases to conjure-up thoughts of a trivial nature which in turn develop into something more sinister. A noise in the nothing. A sound that one can not quite identify in the silence of a dark three am. It wakes and flips open the eyes in a millisecond. The need for light is glaringly obvious but somehow, it does not surpass the need to be perfectly still.

My eyes move of their own volition around the room and steal glances around me as if they could see in the dense of the dark room. They then settle on Oz who has also heard the sound but is being uncharacteristically still.

Within a spurt of bravura my hand leaves the safety of my side beneath the blanket, beneath the sheet, and reaches out toward the lamp. Quickly the room floods with a soft glow of illumination and the arm retreats into its safe place. We lay without movement, Oz and I, for what seems an hour but in reality the number on the illuminated face of the clock has yet to click over once let alone 60 times.

I do not like the tick, tick I am hearing. A tick, tick that gets louder and louder echoing and pinging off the walls. My adrenaline alerts Oz who looks over at me with caution. We are alone on this night. On this morning of the witching hour.

Somehow my feet have found their way into my slippers and I step out of my comfort zone into a dark kitchen. I stand. I am motionless. Nothing. I walk through the house. Not upstairs. No. Not upstairs. I flip on lights as I go, checking doors. Slowly. The front of the house remains in shadows. I look out the window.

There is a man walking briskly, nervously, in the wet street outside. Clearly a man who has a schedule. At 3 am? In the rain? He is familiar. He rounds the corner. Ah yes, I realize he is the cook at the Diner. But he was not the noise in the nothing.

Perhaps the sound was inside my head.

 An impulse within a waking dream?

After all, Oz did not follow me and has already returned to his snoring.

 Was he only reacting to my reaction?

 To the nothing?

To the darkness?

To the silence?

Of course.

 Trivialities.

~