Decibel 110 by Eri Neal

The metallic crow of an alarm clock at her bedside roused Mildred from the foggy void  of sleep. As her mind began working, she settled into the static hum of music in her ears. Sound  was an ever-present companion, one she could hardly separate herself from. One hand lazily  brushed over the seashell in her right ear and it fell out, and its stream of music flowed into the  empty air. She wondered when she had gotten these seashells.

It doesn’t matter, an oppressive thought interrupted, more a feeling than an idea. It  pressed down on her, immobilizing her will. It was well past noon before she rose from bed,  though she couldn’t understand why. The worn-out rhythm of her routine, though pervasively  familiar, somehow seemed discordant.  

Guy had left early that morning. Mildred glared at his empty bed, separate from hers,  neatly made up with crisp edges and barren sheets. She rose and raked out the creases of her own  bed, the fabric straining under her grasping fingertips. With quick, bursting motions, she puffed  her pillows and flung them back upon the mattress, an involuntary huff escaping her. 

The wall-TVs blared with sound and color and motion as Mildred drifted absently into  the kitchen. The Family was all there. All of them laughing at one another, barking insults and  stirring up arguments. Mildred attempted a crooked smile at their meaningless squabbles,  watching their flat shapes traverse across the parlor with a twitching gaze. No one character  could hold her attention for long. They were all competing, with her wristwatch, with the toaster  before her, with the seashells on the counter beckoning for her. Static. An earthquake. 

After a dull silence, Mildred found herself sitting on the couch in the center of the parlor,  enveloped by The Family. Sound cut in, the conversations different than they had been. She 

couldn’t follow what had just happened. She was unsure when she sat down. Unease stirred  within her, which she tried to crush down. There wasn’t any reason for that, she tried to reassure  herself. Nothing was different than it normally was. 

She stirred uncomfortably, tucking her feet up beneath her and smoothing the wrinkles on  her dress. Her eyes jerked from wall to wall. One of the walls didn’t have anything on it at all,  just a blank, still wall. Mildred stared at it longer than she did The Family, and a pain crept up  inside. A pain like a dull awl trying to poke through fabric, not yet sharp enough to part the  fibers. She wanted more, she realized. More of what? That, she couldn’t figure. Perhaps she  could ask Guy for the fourth wall-TV to be installed. That way, she wouldn’t be stuck staring at  this boring, blank, unmoving, unfeeling one. She looked down and found her fists were clutching her skirt. Slowly, she unclenched them, wondering when they had gotten like that in the first  place. 

She noticed Guy was late. Must be quite a bit to burn. Ah, but she  had much to burn herself. Mildred flitted around the house, humming along to the buzzing in her  ears and responding to The Family when they left gaps for her. She needed to fill that space. What would happen if there was no one to speak into that silence? An anxious, bubbling laugh  escaped her which she tried to find some amusement in. 

The evening crept on in a dizzying swirl that left Mildred not a moment to get her  bearings. She never knew quite what time it was, quite what she was feeling, quite what she  would do next. “That’s just fine,” she kept assuring herself during the family’s silence. What else  could she say?

Another blur. Mildred found herself lying in bed. Her gaze followed the shadows as they  crept across the ceiling. Once or twice, the sky was split by the sounds of jet engines. In those  moments, Mildred closed her eyes and chased the tune that was still humming somewhere  beneath all that sound. 

Irritation seized her after hours of lying there waiting for sleep. Something else lay  beneath it, but she couldn’t reach it. Something she used to know but became stranger to her  every day. If she couldn’t have that, she would find something else to suffice. She rose and  stepped lightly to the washroom, lifting weightless arms to the bottle in the cabinet. 

“Just one or two will do it,” she whispered, the sound of her voice strange and halting.  One. Two. She brought the bottle to her bedside. 

She waited for a long time again, but sleep wouldn’t take her. Her chest ached with a  native anxiety. Just one or two more, and it would go away. Three, four. Five. 

Moments later, Mildred startled awake to her heart racing, mind spinning. She couldn’t  remember the day, what she had done, or who she was missing. Hadn’t she taken pills to fall  asleep? She must have imagined that. That was dangerous stuff. One. Two. Three. 

Sleep was all she really wanted to do. Was that wrong? She couldn’t remember a reason  for wanting anything else. Everyone was a stranger, even herself. So, what was the point of  knowing any of it? All she wanted to do was sleep. 

Soon, the bottle was empty. It fell to the floor with a hollow thump. But the music kept  buzzing on and on in that cavernous space, washing away the echo of a scream.