house

I live in a neighborhood where one can hear the birds and insects. It is nice, among the trees, away from the dust and noise. Real peaceful. But sometimes it gets so quiet it is unsettling. It was like that that day.

It was day time and I was home alone. I had gone up to the kitchen to find food when the phone rang.  Now the kitchen is on the top most floor and opens into the rooftop. I picked up the phone and sat on the doorway so that I could get some sun on my back while conversing with my friend.

We talked about a lot of things and the conversation soon turned to boys and relationships. I had recently fought with my boyfriend, something to do about him and his female best friend. Get the idea? I was like complain complain.

It would be a lie to say I completely trusted their relationship but even if I did, the very fact that there is an unrelated someone as or more important to him than me, no matter in what way, someone who knew him so closely, someone he could be so carefree with or someone he gave as much importance to when allocating his time was so frustrating that I started to cry, loudly, like huhuhu…and someone started crying along.

I was surprised by how near it sounded. As if just behind me on the roof. Was that a child? But I didn’t hear it anymore. You know how fast thoughts are, so this was just a small pause before I started going uwauwa and there it was again. Somewhere close behind me, definitely on my roof, in a teasing child like voice. It stopped like half a second after I did. That was NOT an echo.

I waited, tense, straining to hear it again. Maybe some child crying somewhere in the distant? But it was quite. It was so quite I thought if I breath now, it would break this ‘stare contest’ like game and that ‘something’ would jump at me. Whatever! Let’s sprint.

It took a lot of courage but I finally threw the phone and ran on my shaky legs. Next thing I know I was on the ground floor. I don’t remember passing all the floors above and for the first time, running away from sunlight towards the darker parts of the house felt safer.

I was still quite shaken so I decided to call my parents to know when they’d be home but my friend was there, continuing with her words of comfort in her nonstop rapid way of talking. I hadn’t hanged the phone, I had thrown it. Wow!