Becoming Sensitive

The other night, I think it was Saturday night or rather Sunday morning at 1:53a.m. I awoke to running in the hallway. I heard a man cry out, "No, no, no!" It was not the playful sound of people rough housing or chasing one another in good spirits. The man sounded frantic, pleading. A couple of seconds later, the foot falls collided with a woman's scream. Then it was quiet.

The eerie part is that it was quiet. There had been no slamming door, which seems impossible since there are three doors leaving the hallway. If they did not exit the hallway, then there should have been an apartment door closing. The only thing I have not ruled out is the elevator.

I was relieved that the screams were not terminated by a gunshot. I listened intently. Silence engulfed me. I could not even hear the sound of Ahi or Roady breathing next to me.

I wondered if I should do something. What could I do? I couldn't call the police, I hadn't witnessed anything. I didn't dare poke my head out into the hallway lest I invite the melee into my home. The next day I went to pay rent and was too embarrassed to inquire if anyone else had complained about late night running and yelling on our floor, in our building. I did happen to catch my neighbor leaving his apartment and I asked if he had heard anything akin to the strangeness in my ears. Nothing. Could I really have just imagined those sounds outside my door?

There are times when I have out of place thoughts that have no bearing on my reality, yet they come to fruition decades later. I've dreamt about people and places that I would not know until years later. I will think about a person far removed from my life and the next day they will pop back into my life in some form or another. I'll often think about a friend and when I contact them, they were ill or in emotional distress. But most of the time when I have the clearest sense of deja vu, it is about mundane things. Dreams that when described sound utterly inconsequential and don't even bear mentioning. My violent dreams never come true, not in my own life at least.

I was so distressed about the sounds, that I could not get to sleep the next night. I stayed up until 1:53a.m. Perhaps I thought that my imagination would recreate the spectral noises. The only tumult I heard that night were the pounding of the rain and the howling of the wind wrapping around our building. And somewhat comfortingly, the ragged breathing of Ahi and Roady.