"there's something in here. do you hear it?"
"i don't hear anything, babe," i say, but something in the air is uneasy. and something inside me and outside her is troubled. we lay without moving, hardly breathing.
"it was in my dream," she whispers, "but then i woke up and i could still hear it. it's a 'scraaaaaaaape, fra-thump!' sound. something like someone dragging their leg on the floor and thumping along with the other. where are my clothes?"
she's in secret hysterics. i can't see them, but i know her lips are tense and eyes wide, as if to take in as much of the darkness as possible, to read the shadows that aren't there. i stand on the bed, pull the light switch on from the ceiling fan and just as i step down-
SCRAAAAAAAAAPE, fra-THUMP!
there it was! we freeze. her dream is real and my unsettled something becomes tangibly uncomfortable. my eyes meet hers- giant. our bodies uncontrollably become super sensitive to my bedroom's every subtlety. the quiet is deafening. i swear i can hear a dry leaf dancing along the street out front on the arm of a light breeze. it's death quiet.
SCRAAAAAAAAAPE, fra-THUMP!
it's coming from behind my bed. it's coming from INSIDE the wall behind my bed!! it happens several more times. convinced she's not haunted, but realizing the creature in the wall makes fewer disruptions if the light is on, i leave the light on and we lie back down, arms in arms, legs wound and wrapped. she's clutching me tighter than necessary and i'm holding her closer than i think. we both pretend there's not something stuck inches from our heads and pretend to sleep three more hours.
after showering that morning and readying myself to leave, i stand motionless next to my bed and let the room settle. as stillness sets, the tiny beast in the wall has maneuvered his way down to the bottom corner of the wall and is scratching tiny scrapey-scrips at the base, trying to etch his way through. concerned that he may succeed, i lay a glass bottle in front of where i imagine he may emerge. a glass bottle i use for two ridiculous reasons:
1. if he gains access into my room and can peak his beady little eye out, i'm hoping the translucent-ness of the glass bottle will fool him into crawling directly into it
2. once tricking him into my crystalline live-trap, i will be able to swiftly cap the top and free him into the out-of-doors from whence he must certainly have come
confident in both the resilient efforts of beast-unknown and trap-preposterous, i head for work. because i have a mostly inane, mind-numbing job, i spend a great deal of my day considering the critter stuck within the confines of my wall. i wonder first how he could have gotten there? my bedroom is on the bottom floor of a two story house, basement level. the bedroom wall trapping the rodent is literally in the middle of the house, not directly connected to any exterior wall. that he should have arrived directly next to our heads in the middle of last evening seems too impossible to be real. it makes so little sense, in fact, a growing piece of me begins believing maybe the whole event never took place and i somehow dreamt the whole thing, including sleep-placing the clear bottle expectantly in front of where his claws might breach the wall.
the day passes dully and i return home. i am filled with apprehension for what i might find when i walk into my bedroom.
alas, the bottle remains empty, vigilant. in fact, there is no hole to be found anywhere. i shut the curtains, by which i mean hang my mexican fish blanket in front of my window, making the room as dark as possible. i go into full stealth mode, breathing only on the tops of my lungs and moving not so much as a shift in my thoughts, ear pressed to the prison-wall.
nothing.
either i dreamt it, or my mystery creature followed the light to his own freedom, proverbial or otherwise. just as i'm pulling away from the wall, a distant screet-scratching tears through the silence. he lives!!!
it's higher on the wall. he has somehow made progress upwards. i imagine him pulling himself up among the skeletal wiring and fatty stuffing of the wall innards. i see him through the wall, pressed skillfully between the sheetrock and the backwork of my light switch. he's industrious, this one. his wall clawings are waning, however. the fervid insistence of his scraping is lacking, tired. i get the impression he's been doing this all day and his limbs are sore, nevermind the bruising from whatever fall he must have taken to find himself in such dire circumstances. he makes no vocal noises. what a proud beast he must be! to have fallen all this way, to be in such a place, and retain the stubbornness of a mule and not make a peep to call out to a distant friend; though i can hardly imagine a mule making such a foolish mistake as to fall into the middle of a wall in the darkest part of the night. and i'm all but certain mules sleep at night and wouldn't be out wandering foxily to begin with. indeed, this is no mule in my wall.
i spend a large portion of my afternoon with him, set on my bed, reading the news, chipping away at angry birds, eating soup. he scrapes limpily now and then. we're close. creepily close. but we are worlds apart. he a tiny beast of wild proclivity and i, his unintentional captor.
i get up for dinner.
when i return to my room the creature has fallen to the bottom of the wall and is scratching again, trying to get into my bottled freedom i assume. though he stole my sleep from me and i dragged myself hazily through my day as a result, i cannot help but feel sorry for him. surely he's self-aware enough to realize he could die here. does he fear his demise? does he grasp death as an idea? can he feel himself slipping into that muddy funnel?
it's dark and i sleep on the couch rather than in my bed, which is too close to that world behind my walls where hope is dim and despair mighty. also, it seems inhumane to be able to hear him and do nothing. i contacted my landlord via text regarding the situation:
me: matt, there's some kind of rodent stuck in the wall behind my bed. do i just let it die in there? i'm in the basement of 702 spruce, bedroom on east side of house
matt: that sucks, maybe just a mouse trap would work, otherwise yea, it may die, hopefully not smell
matt: it may go out at nite too
gee, thanks. clearly he doesn't grasp the severity of this little creature's situation.
i dream horribly that night. i'm being chased through the walls of my apartment by a mouse king. i can peak through electrical sockets and the gaps between the wall and floorboards into the freedom of my room, but i can't scratch or kick hard enough to break through the wall. i am fast, but the mouse king is much faster. tchaikovsky has penned a dreamy score for the chase. we are enchanted in the land behind my walls. it ends with me finally breaking free into daylight, only to find myself trapped in a glass bottle inside my room. the mouse king cackles, caps my prison and rolls me aside and he scurries to liberation.
as i dress for work the next morning i can hear my tiny friend so very faintly. his scratching is little more than a time-passer now. it comes weakly. he must be so hungry.
i jump into my glass-domed liberation-mobile and drive to work. i can't keep my mind from my wall dweller. what IS he? is he afraid of me? does he view me his captor or savior? is he afraid?
will he smell?
i can't help but think of how close our worlds are, yet how tragically distant we are. it's like the young couple who runs their car off the road two miles from home in the middle of a horrible winter storm without the proper winter attire on and freeze to death. they're so close to civilization, so close to safety and everything they know as comfort, love, family, warmth, and safety. but these circumstances, this time, it's so impossible. it's too much. this time the circumstances will conquer.
work.
home. for unknown reasons, i am quiet as possible as i slip the key into my front door and gently urge the door open. i softly remove my sneakers and place my bag on the ground with extraneous care. i hush my dog and usher her outside, noiselessly. my movements are fluid and reverent. easy. nearly careless, if they weren't so perfectly exact. i walk to my room and break the clamorless reticence spilling out in pillow clouds from the doorway.
it's deathly quiet.
