A sound very similar to a handsaw getting pulled through a cinderblock ripped Alicia from her sleep, blowing away her dream like so much dandelion fluff on the wind. She froze, unwilling to move, gripping the sheets too tightly, clenching, clenching so hard, her dentist told her she needed the night guard and she never wore it and now some home intruder was going to-
The sound happened again, and Alicia felt equal parts relief and anger. It wasn’t an intruder. It was Gina. Her smoking hot wife. Who somehow managed to produce enough noise with that round nose of hers to wake the dead.
Or at least wake Alicia.
No intruder. The only thing she’d be getting robbed of was precious, precious sleep.
Alicia rolled onto her back with some force, not really expecting much. Gina woke up a little from the bed shaking and stopped snoring. But she was back to it in a matter of twenty seconds.
“Babe, just push me! I’ll roll over!” Gina would say in happier, sunlight-filled times. And yes, it was true that Gina would roll over. Usually after snapping something like, “Are you fucking kidding me? I just got to sleep.” And then instead of trying to sleep through an unholy sound somewhere in the vicinity of demon trucks downshifting constantly on the highway to hell, Alicia would have to try to sleep through guilt.
And sometimes also the demon trucks because even after turning over the snoring would come right back.
So, fine. Whatever. Alicia would be okay with this. She would force herself to be okay with this. Gina’s snoring usually only lasted thirty minutes. Maybe an hour. Maybe two. Whatever. She could lay there in the dark until it stopped, and then maybe eek out a few minutes past her alarm in the morning, and all would be-
There was a sound.
Of course there was a sound, Gina was still rattling the window frames next to her.
But, no, there had been another sound. Underneath the snoring. Deeper in the room. In the house, maybe. She hadn’t been able to make it out very well, it had been so quiet relative to the continuous explosions coming from next to her. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she was sure she had completely made it up. Or it was a mundane sound made odd by her wife trying to kill her with sound waves. The house settling. One of the cats sprinting down the hall. Hard to hear. Normal.
Forty-eight minutes later Gina finally fell deeper into sleep and stopped sounding like she was breathing through pudding. Alicia fell asleep five minutes later, having completely forgotten about the sound.
~
The next night Gina’s snoring was worse. Usually it was only this bad when she had been drinking at a party, but it was a Wednesday night and the only party they had had was sharing memes over dinner. They hadn’t even had wine at dinner. Just water. And still, Gina was snoring hard enough Alicia thought her face would rip in two.
Is a storm coming through? Is she getting sick? Does she secretly hate me and she’s doing this on purpose? Maybe I should go to the guest room tonight. I-
The sound again.
The smaller sound, somewhere deeper in the house.
Louder tonight.
Not loud enough to be heard fully over her wife.
Loud enough for Alicia to tell it was not normal.
If anyone had asked her to articulate why it wasn’t normal she would have fumbled around for words before quickly changing the subject. But there was something about what little she could hear of it that was distinctly foreign. You get used to the sounds of your home. Creaks in the wind. The air turning on and pulling the guest room door down the hall almost closed, but not quite, just enough for the lock to click on the doorframe latch. This sound was different than everything she had gotten used to. New. This sound…
Alicia groaned and put a hand to her face. On top of not being able to sleep, now something was breaking? That had to be what the sound was. She said it herself, it was new. Some process of the house had gone awry. Maybe in the walls. The ducts. That sound no longer sounded sinister. It sounded expensive. It-
It came again, and Alicia froze.
That’s someone walking around.
Except the thought wasn’t actually articulated. It was a desperate lean on the telegraph that connected her lizard brain to her monkey brain. Her eyes darted from shadow to shadow, daring any of them to move. She stared at the door, waiting for the second it would creak open.
The door creaked open.
In the same moment, Alicia screamed, reached for the lamp, and pushed herself up to sit against the headboard.
Next to her, Gina exploded in one last snore and then shot up in bed, eyes panicked and bloodshot.
“What the fuck?” came falling out of her mouth, half formed.
“The door…”
Butters in all his stupid, orange glory jumped up on the foot of the bed and slinked up her legs until he could shove his head into her still-shaking hand.
Gina rapidly blinked as she looked between Alicia and the cat, now completely upside down and purring hard enough to make the bed vibrate.
“What.”
“I heard something. It scared me.”
“You heard the cat.”
“No, it wasn’t the cat,” Alicia snapped.
“What was it, then?”
“I don’t know because I could barely hear it over your snoring.”
Gina rolled her eyes. “Is that what this is about?”
“No.”
“I told you already, just push me and I’ll roll over.”
“It’s not about that!”
Alicia didn’t want to have this fight again. Not now. Not when she was sure whatever had made that noise was still out there.
“Great,” Gina said. “Turn off that light.”
She rolled back over, pulling the blankets over her head. Alicia left the light on for another minute, watching the door. It was always kept slightly ajar for Butters and Henry to come and go as they pleased. Now, after Butters had shoved his way in, it was half open. The hallway beyond it was dark, but Alicia was convinced if she waited long enough she’d see it. Whatever was out there. Walking.
Nothing happened, and eventually exhaustion won out over terrified curiosity.
The next morning they sat at their little dining room in comfortable silence, Gina carving a grapefruit up and Alicia staring into the steam rising from her coffee.
“I’m sorry I snapped last night,” Gina said.
“It’s fine.”
It always felt different in the daylight. A completely different world. One where all of the frustration and resentment felt like a bad dream. It wasn’t Gina’s fault she snored like that. She wasn’t doing it on purpose. It wasn’t really Gina’s fault she couldn’t sleep. If anything, it was Alicia’s. Why was she such a light sleeper? Why couldn’t she learn to deal with Gina’s snoring? She’d been trying to sleep through it for three years now, why hadn’t she gotten any better at it?
It wasn’t anyone’s fault, of course. Just a bad circumstance they had to find their way through. Together.
“I told you, though, a bunch of times,” Gina said, spearing the pink fruit with her spoon. “Just give me a little push and I’ll roll over and-”
“And you’ll snap at me is what you’ll do,” Alicia said. “It’s the angriest I ever hear you. And I don’t like getting snapped at.”
“I’m asleep and you’re waking me up! What else do you expect?” Gina asked, like this was still a joke.
But all those nighttime feelings were pushing their way into the day, where they didn’t belong.
“You tell me I can just push you, and then you snap at me.”
“I don’t mean anything by it.”
“Does it matter? It still hurts.”
“Well, how would you like to be woken up when you’ve finally fallen asleep?”
Alicia stared at her, mouth open. “Are…are you kidding? That’s what fucking happens to me when you start snoring!”
Gina pretended she hadn’t heard. “I already fucking told you. Just push me. You don’t have to go all drama queen on me and scream and turn the light on.”
“And I already fucking told you. I did that because I heard something in the hall, and then Butters pushed the door open and it startled me.”
“What did you hear?”
I couldn’t hear it over your snoring sounded like a great way to keep the fight going, so instead she shrugged.
“I don’t know. But it wasn’t a normal sound.”
Gina made a face. “You think something in the house is breaking?”
“Uh huh.”
“Great. Hopefully we can figure it out before we’re knee deep in water or something.”
Gina was snoring again.
The sound started almost immediately.
Well. Sounds.
Slow, so very slow. And almost rhythmic, but not quite. Every time she thought she had a pattern figured out, it would change again. Faster. Slower. Quieter. Louder.
She knew she should wake up Gina. Mostly to get the snoring to stop so she could clearly hear what was happening, but also a little so Gina could hear it, too. But there was a problem.
Alicia didn’t actually think it was the sound of something breaking in the house. Not anymore. It didn’t have anything to do with the air coming on and off. They weren’t using the water and it wasn’t regular enough to be a drip. And it wasn’t irregular enough to be some animal trapped in the walls or the crawl space, and anyway if it was Butters and Henry would have been following the sound intently and both of the idiots were fast asleep between her and Gina.
Besides all of that rational stuff, there was the slightly irrational.
Whatever the sound was, it sounded sneaky.
Obviously Gina’s snoring was not continuous. If it was, Alicia might have been able to learn to sleep through it by now, like an overly-loud white noise machine. No, she snored as she breathed in, and was quiet as she breathed out. Two or three seconds of noise, two or three seconds of quiet. Noise, quiet, noise, quiet, noise, quiet-
Whatever else she was hearing only ever happened during the noise.
If it happened once during the quiet, just once, she was convinced she would understand what the noise was. If it was loud enough to be heard at all while Gina was desperately trying to get air through her septum than it would be plenty loud enough to hear completely during the quiet.
But it never happened during the quiet. Not once. Because whatever that noise was, it didn’t want to happen during the quiet.
It didn’t want to be heard.
Alicia couldn’t tell where it was coming from, either. Either that or it was moving. Sometimes it seemed like it was coming from the bathroom. Sometimes the hall. Sometimes outside the window. Then back to the bathroom. Always during the noise. Always.
It doesn’t want me to hear.
A ridiculous thought, of course. One brought on by sleep deprivation. It wasn’t subterfuge. It was coincidence.
Nothing is coming for you.
But she couldn’t believe that. Not fully. Not functionally alone in the dark.
Gina’s rolled over onto her stomach, shifting her arms to her sides, and the snoring stopped.
That was quick.
But it wasn’t. Gina had been snoring for over an hour. Alicia had simply become so wrapped up in hearing that mystery sound she had completely lost track of time.
Alicia waited. And waited. And waited.
The sound did not come.
It was in the room. That should have meant that Alicia would be able to hear enough to know what it was, but she still couldn’t. A shifting mass. A foot step. A cat scratching at their ear except again tonight both were sleeping in the bed. Not moving. She watched them as Gina snored and the sound came from somewhere across the room, near the dresser.
It wasn’t just a sound anymore. Not a single sound. Maybe it never was. It had simply come close enough for Alicia to hear it. All of it.
Not all of it. Maddeningly, it still only happened at the height of Gina’s snoring, existing like some scarcely seen creature under the audial ocean emanating from her wife. Only when the waves were the highest did it dare creep to the surface.
It was muttering.
Shifting against the walls and talking to itself. At least, Alicia assumed it was talking to itself. What could it have to say to someone like her? Cowering in the dark, under the blankets despite the heat, the sweat rolling off her neck and pooling behind her knees.
Maybe it’s apologizing, she thought, as another rumble from her wife was paired with the sound of something heavy shifting across the carpet and disconnected glottals and sybilants hitting the sound barrier and dying before Alicia could determine meaning. Yes, that’s it. Whatever it is, it doesn’t mean any harm. It’s lost. It’s stuck. It needs my help but doesn’t know how to ask in a way that doesn’t scare. It doesn’t want me to be scared. It doesn’t.
For a few short seconds she could believe it. And then the next snore. The shifting weight. And edges of words. She could not catch meaning.
But she could catch tone.
Alicia threw the blanket over her head and wished Gina would stop stop stop already.
“…ssssssstop-”
Alicia was screaming too loud to hear the rest.
“I have a doctor’s appointment. Are you going to ask me why?”
Alicia looked up from her dinner plate and stared at her wife, confused. Of course she would ask why, if only she had been given the time.
But then Alicia saw it all again. Gina had told her she had a doctor’s appointment, and had paused for the appropriate response. And waited. And waited. And waited. Probably two or three minutes Alicia had simply stared at her food, knowing Gina had said something but not having the energy to respond. Had she even been eating? The food on her plate was untouched.
“I’m sorry,” she said after another long pause. “I haven’t been sleeping.”
It whispers, she left unsaid. It whispers all night long and I can’t hear it.
“I know. That’s why I made the appointment.”
Gina smiled at her look of confusion.
“I was talking to my mom on the phone the other day, and I told her about the snoring. Apparently I was diagnosed with a deviated septum when I was, like, eight. They didn’t have the money to do anything about it so they just…didn’t.”
Maybe it was the sleep deprivation. Alicia still wasn’t following.
“Deviated septums can cause snoring,” Gina explained. “Bad snoring. And a bunch of other breathing problems, I don’t think I’ve ever actually been able to breath through the right side of my nose. But the point is, it’s a simple surgery to fix.”
For the first time in what felt like weeks, Alicia perked up.
“Yeah?”
Gina nodded. “I don’t even need to go to the hospital. One of those day surgery places. In and out in a few hours.”
Alicia slumped back in her chair. “Even something that small…I can’t make you do a surgery just for me.”
“I think you can,” Gina said. “Look at you. You’re not sleeping. You’ve woken me up screaming three times now. Obviously something is not working. And I’d rather get a surgery than be that weird couple sleeping in different bedrooms. Or…”
Gina trailed off, but the rest was in her eyes.
Not a couple at all.
Alicia swallowed. It was certainly a thought she’d had, late at night, surrounded by the snoring and whatever now lived under her bed. The thought of both sounds, gone forever, able to sleep uninterrupted through the night unless a cat decided it want snuggles at two in the morning.
Alicia beamed, and it was all the confirmation Gina needed.
It took until the third night after the surgery. The swelling had to go down. The pain meds had to wear off. For two nights the snoring was worse, worse, so bad Alicia finally gave up and went to their awful guest bed. Still she could hear the snoring from the other room. She could not hear the thing under the bed. It did not follow her. Or maybe it did. It’s movement under the bed had taken weeks. Perhaps by the second night it was back across the bedroom, toward the door, coming for her.
Or, she thought, lying there on that second night, staring at the ceiling and feeling the springs of the old guest bed poking into her back, there had never been any sounds or whispers at all.
It was a thought she had in the daylight, of course, every day, wondering if she had made the whole thing up. But the middle of the night and the day were two different universes. It was easy to deny the reality of one when sunk into the middle of the other. She would spend a day wondering if she had made the whole thing up, talking herself into it, and as soon as evening would come she would remember the truth.
But now, awake at night, finally without some sound or another crawling into her ear and rattling her brain, she could think it, and believe it.
It wasn’t real. None of it was. Not the sounds. Not the whispers. Her snoring was literally driving me crazy.
Crazy. There was no other word for it. Something had hidden underneath her wife’s snoring to crawl into their bedroom and whisper…what? Stuff she couldn’t even understand? Why? Just to scare her? It was ghost story logic. The ghosts opened up all the cabinets in the kitchen! Oh no! Why? Who cares! Crazy. The snoring had driven her crazy. If the surgery didn’t work, they would be those people sleeping in separate bedrooms, because Alicia couldn’t go back to that.
~
Alicia didn’t have to. The surgery was a success. The third night, the first she tried to sleep in the same room as Gina again, Alicia fell into a deep, cold sleep, undisturbed by dreams. For the first time in her life, Gina breathed deep through her nose, the rushing of the air quiet. It was as though she had never snored in her life.
Alicia didn’t hear Gina snoring.
She also didn’t hear the whispers of the thing under the bed, but she was listening. Unimpeded by the cover of snores no longer, the thing could talk and talk and talk into Alicia’s ear, telling her of all the things they would do together, all the things she would do for it, and Alicia slept, it’s singular rapt audience.
High Urban Fantasy Jazz 