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Whisper-Whisper-Whisper-Whisper

 Flick the lights on. 


Flick the lights off. 


Flick the lights on. 


Flick the lights off. 


He stands in the doorway of the kitchen. His kitchen. Ugly, half-sterile faded white and outdated yellows that make everything seem smeared. Fuzzy. The faucet leaks. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. It’s dark out. Night. Chilly, too, with tendrils of frost on the window as eerie, clawing fingers splayed. 


Flick the lights on.


Flick the lights off. 


Flick the lights—


Jennifer’s voice splits the silence and shatters the faint rhythm of the drip-drip-drip. Her voice is all craggy, irritable topography marred by too many cigarettes, split between nasally whine and roughness. It sounds like a voice that cracks the words it wants to say. Makes mountains out of molehills. She’s somewhere upstairs away from this kitchen. He shrinks from it, presses to the wall. Silence returns shortly. He doesn’t even know what she said. 


He waits. 


Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. 


On.


Off.


On—


The kitchen is gone. Jennifer is gone. The drip-drip-drip-drip, all of it— gone. Just darkness. Just the Moon, slivered and thin and sharp, surveying from on high. A cool wind blows. Tussles evergreen branches in soft, whispering tones. There are voices. Words. Pure, burrowing meaning that shivers and splits, blooms, even if it’s almost entirely unheard. Soft, hissing words like an endless rain turned down to near-silence. Whisper. Whisper. Whisper. Whisper. 


He looks. His heart is slowly crawling up his throat. Pounding. 


There are no stars in the sky. Just pristine, primordial blackness and the sickle Moon. Trees cut by sharp moonlight into twisted leering shapes. 


Buildings far away. Tall. Monolithic. They are all shadow, all depth. All alien, inhumane. The buildings look back. The whisper-whisper-whisper-whisper originates there, hissing unsettling silence-without-silence. 


Watching. 


Off.


The ugly, fading kitchen. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Back again. He closes his eyes. Feels something crawling up his neck, sliding down his ear. Back to Jennifer. Back to bed.

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