He awoke in panic, wondering why he couldn’t feel his legs. He couldn’t recall anything beyond what happened after the door swung open behind him. He knew that she was on her way up the stairwell. This time he didn’t see her, more than feel her presence, and then hear her. The animalistic howls. Something had enraged her, and those cries of indignation had worked their way up towards him with such frightening speed and intensity that he had released his grip on the handrail and taken three or four large steps back until he had come to rest against the door. No sooner had he done so than it swung back and admitted him. He awoke before he hit the floor, yet still thought he was in the dream. Darkness. He heard a shrill voice cry out, frighteningly close. Terror gripped him until he realised it was him.
He fell again, hitting the floor by way of the chair that was still beside the couch on which he had fallen asleep. His upper body made contact with it and pushed it away towards the table where it dislodged something unseen that also fell to the floor.
His left shoulder took most of the impact and he cried out again, this time the sound resolutely coming from his own vocal chords now that he had been thrown firmly from the world of his subconscious. The pain rocketed across his shoulder and down his back, and he rolled over on to his back.
I can’t feel my legs.
Of course you can’t.
Of course he couldn’t. This wasn’t there.
He lay in the dark, catching his breath, massaging his shoulder with his other arm. He should have just gone to bed, yet he had honestly thought that he wasn’t tired. There was no way he would sleep. He hadn’t had much say in the matter, as it turned out. Sleep came for him whether he was ready or not, whether he needed it or not. How long had it been like this now. Since the phone call? Before? He had been drinking more then. Had he been drinking because of this, or in spite of it?
When he had been younger he had gotten a part time job in a bar, just while he was studying. He had some bursaries that helped towards his living costs but shit wasn’t cheap, and he liked the lifestyle that went with being a student a little too much. The clubs. The parties. The booze.
Sure he liked to drink, they all did. They were young though, so who cares. That kind of thing doesn’t matter. Even when he would go to The Blackbird (or just The Black as it was known locally) for his shift and serve those twenty, thirty and forty years his elder. Those who still lived the life. Those who still drank in a fashion that he was becoming accustomed to. He had a handle on it. He was just young and who cares about that? That wouldn’t be him. No way.
And it hadn’t been. He’d cut down the drinking moving towards his final years, and never really picked it back up.
When he had picked it back up though. He had made up for all those dry years. Those sober years. His work had been going well. Too well. His personal life wasn’t shoddy either. He had officially made it. He had won. He had grafted and played the dating game and he had hit the jackpot on all fronts. What else to do with his free time then than toast his success?
He wasn’t going to become one of those guys though. The regulars of The Black. Those guys would drink too much too quickly. Those guys would start an argument over the colour of another man’s shirt. Those guys would throw punches if they felt the argument wasn’t going their way. Those guys would get beat on by the door staff and thrown out into the gutter.
Those guys would be back the following day, week, month and do it all again.
Those guys.
He had become one of those guys.
Yet he had stopped again. After. After it all went to shit. He had stopped again. Then the dreams had begun. Then he had started again. Or had he started first?
He was lying on the floor in front of his couch debating with himself. He could be a little bit more proactive. He could get to bed for one.
Not a bad idea Adam.
Pulling himself upright, he reached out for his chair in the darkness and pulled it closer before heaving himself up on to the couch and then over on to the chair in one practice move. It helped of course that it was never completely dark, and the glow from the city outside punctuated the interior of the flat, allowing him to see what he was doing to a certain extent. It was as he was setting down in his chair when the phone rang, the screen suddenly bursting to life and filling the underneath of the table with it’s blueish light. It caused him to start suddenly. He pushed himself across to it and picked it up, the call ending before he could get a proper look at the number. No matter, he thought, as he could simply search the recent calls list, yet when he did so, something distracted him before he could check.
A sound, emanating from the far wall, opposite the window. From beyond the wall. It sounded like muffled voices. Adam glanced at the phone screen, noticing that it was three o’clock in the morning. Denys would be back from work a few hours ago. It as their apartment that was through that wall, Adam’s living room partitioned from their own by a thin internal wall. Even though it would be a supporting wall, it was still thin enough so he could hear most things from next door, and vice versa, owing to the fact that Denys had visited the day before.
The tone of the voices was quiet enough, at first, and Adam forgot all about the phone call as he moved closer to the wall, attempting to listen in. The old Adam wouldn’t have bothered to. The old Adam would have had better things to do that attempt to spy on his neighbours. He wasn’t one of those people.
Those guys.
Yet the new Adam, the person he was now, the one who didn’t leave his apartment unless absolutely necessary. This guy. He was the type to listen in on his neighbours.
Yet he couldn’t do, no matter how much he tried. The voices weren’t loud enough to be distinct. The words all merging together, indiscernible. It sounded as though a low and urgent conversation was taking place, right behind the wall, yet in such low voices that Adam couldn’t make them out. He did something then that he had never done before, never considered before. He did something that, when he thought about it the following morning, he was a little bit ashamed. He moved into the kitchen and got a glass from the draining board, the one that he had used the previous evening for his liquid dinner. Moving back into the living room, he placed it against the wall. An old trick that he had seen done on television and film, but not one that he had tried himself. Why would he? The old Adam didn’t eavesdrop.
Turns out, the new one does.
He leaned into the wall, ear against the glass. The conversations remained muted and muffled and he was still unable to make anything out clearly. It seemed to be mainly Denys talking, his lower toned rise and urgent. It dawned on Adam then that the reason he wouldn’t have been able to make anything out was because they would be speaking in heir own language. Even so, he couldn’t make out anything remotely recognisable. The tone was what concerned him however. It was quiet, yet urgent. Every so often, he heard a female voice, Yana’s, and equally as unintelligible.
Adam sat there for moments that could have been minutes, and could have been less, his body leaning across at an unnatural angle. The shoulder that he had landed on when falling from the couch earlier had begun to protest, as did the arm that was holding the glass. The voices had begun to diminish, as though those who were talking were moving away from the wall. Adam sat there a moment longer, beginning to lower the glass, when there came an almighty thump against the wall from the other side. So loud and violent that he dropped the glass, barely noticing as it shattered upon the floor. It sounded as though either something incredibly heavy had been thrown against it with almost supernatural force, or it had been impacted with a sledgehammer. He heard the telltale rattle of plaster dust falling between the partitions. He moved back in his chair, heart racing, and waited. There came no other bang, nor any more voices. The apartment, and the one beyond the wall were in silence.
He breathed out slowly. He would make a note to speak to Denys of it the next time he saw him. He would obviously leave the part out about him leaning against the wall with a glass to his ear, but he would definitely bring up the horrendously loud bang that he was sure would have woken him had he been sleeping in his room along the hall, such was the volume.
Taking this as a sign that he should go to bed, he elected to clean up the broken glass in the morning, worried that he would cut himself due to the fact he was tired and more than a little shaken.
Tomorrow. It could wait.
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