Alarming

It was the smoke alarm going off. Her going off on him for hearing it and doing nothing about it. Him saying he was barely noticing it as he was reading and drinking coffee. The alarm going off over their heads and her saying how this was just his way of being. Him yanking the thing. Their listening and staring at each other, then hearing it again. He was still explaining it could be the batteries dying, not quite dead, as she walked away, fuming.

The waiting was the worst part. Unbelieving the next chirp would come, believing maybe that extra conclusive second had passed, and it was therefore stopped. Then the shrilling. The electrician was coming and going the entire weekend, puzzling over it, and finally leaving for good with a wild terror in his eyes when the noise kept on going even after shutting off the breaker.

It was just one night, he kept saying. In the darkness, she was lying there, thinking, Can’t you see I’m dying here while you’re sleeping? In the morning, moving appeared to be the only option. Although not moving, to him, could also work out in the end. All of a sudden, she heard herself shouting, “Don’t you see something strange is happening?” It had a silencing effect on him. Silence, and then more silence. Then a chirping. Ok, they agreed, we’re looking for a new place.

She only realized how bad it was on the walk to work. A windswept street, sprouted blossoms, burnt-out stoplight, a crushed can of Sunkist. How nice. Without that beeping. That missing beeping. Soon, the thought about its absence reoccurring at the same frequency until everything wasn’t pleasant, but once again alarming.

For him, it was easier when he was in the apartment. The faulty detector was there, and, the way he saw it, whatever hidden batteries would die out sooner or later. The situation was in the process of resolving. At the office, the first smoke alarm sounding off made him laugh. “You’re never going to believe this,” he said to a coworker, “I had a smoke alarm going off all weekend. I tried everything to get the thing to shut up, but nothing doing. And now this.”

The coworker told him he didn’t hear anything. He pointed out every chirp until the man promised he was not fucking with him. In the calming parking lot, as he considered whether he was experiencing a psychotic break or not, it wasn’t the thought of calling his wife to share the revelation that struck him, but a van.

He’s lollygagging, she was thinking in the car outside their house. Her plan was to pack up and stay at her parents’ house until everything was fixed. It was silent when she walked in—softly, as if it would start again if it heard her coming. She passed the first room. Stillness. She dared to hope. Then she saw the intruder at the table sitting. Making only the slightest movements to indicate he was breathing. Mangled. His back to her pointing, as she came up alongside him turning. She peered around to look at him: a face like nothing she’d ever seen. Pale skin melting over a jaw, eye-sockets sagging off fish-hook pupils, shooting streaks of jet-black hair, bones jutting, skin coagulating. Suddenly opened, suddenly screaming, that same warning, the eyes brightening, again and again that same Ing! I am dreaming, she was screaming, running, crying.

On another street, he was still deciding which direction to take. One side was the tunnel emitting a comforting light. Down the other was another tunnel entrance, this one echoing the sound of his coworkers crying over him, asking him to keep fighting. This devotion had him venturing his foot into the land of the living. But then again, he thought and paced back to take in another dose of that light. He made the trek a few times and reckoned it was a greater distance than necessary. He felt the stress of walking around the grocery store for too long. All that banal moving and time rushing. I’m waffling, he thought, I can’t stand all this waffling…You know, I bet there are no more decisions to be made in the afterlife. He was walking to the light. Then again, that’s just one man’s ideology. What did the Greeks think? They were pretty smart…

Then God groaned, rattling the plane of existence and deciding for him.

He gasped and came to in the back of an ambulance. Through bleary eyes, he could see that his vitals looked good, his limbs intact, his toes wiggled for him. He wasn’t alarmed until it hit him. He shouted to the paramedic to turn the siren off. She didn’t. He waited. They pulled into the hospital garage. The sound of radio static, doors opened, his cart rolled, and there it was. Silence. Silence. And he didn’t know how but he knew, their time had run out finally.