A hollow drum beat echoes in my head, and the wood of the stairs is slick against my shoes. Putting my hand on the rail I can see that the blinds are drawn, but open enough so that the interior light glows onto the porch. Other than that the night is black out here, and it’s getting to me. Fallen, crushed berries are staining the deck as I tiptoe towards the back door.
She’s in there and the television is pale blue. My brow begins to sweat. I notice that my breathing is quick, shallow, catching the heavy air that surrounds me. Leather gloves on my hands make my palms too warm. I stop for a moment to take them off and let my hands feel how cold the air is tonight. My eyes are dry so I close them and massage them with my naked fists. When I open them again the television is off.
I tell myself I have to put the gloves back on. I can’t do this without the gloves on. An owl hoo-hoots in the trees beyond the second level of the backyard. There is a forest back there, and that’s where I will hide when this is all over with.
If I hadn’t cut the power, there would also be light coming from the pool that sits right below this deck. It’s a beautiful pool in the daytime, but at night its underwater lights come on, and I can’t stand the way it looks. As the light drowns I can hear it moan, and what little escapes is disgusting for me to look at; it reminds me of ghosts, hovering. I am pale just thinking about it.
Angry, I pinch the skin on the underside of my wrist. I’m losing my focus, and when I move my tongue across the undulations of my teeth I taste my mouth and it is foreign.
I see her; head tilted back, mouth open, on the couch. This is the way she falls asleep after watching whatever movie she rents on a Friday night. It used to annoy me. She would never turn the television off, leaving the DVD menu repeating on the screen, with its looping title song on until I came downstairs. Now she lays there with the microwave clock going to 1:47 with its digital, Listerine green. She was thinking of me when she pressed the off button on the remote. I know it. I shake out the stiff blood in my veins and put my gloves back on.
As I put my hand on the doorknob the sound of the world around me fades out, but the drum beat still throbs inside my skull. I can’t get it out. It’s fake, mechanized, digitized, but soft enough to have been born, which confuses and excites me. How it came to be; how it found its place in my head; why it plays on; I have no answers to these questions. It just plays. Twisting the knob, the drum beat forces my motion. My hand shakes a little and I wonder if I can go through with it. The endless beat tells me that I can. That I will. It drives me forward, and I am helpless to its control.
On the downbeat of the newest measure I slowly open the door, and the now freezing outside air whirls past me and makes my neck hairs stand up. Standing in the doorway I see flashes of the hundreds of times I’ve walked through it before. It’s a rush that throws me off balance, and my nostalgia colors the room gold as I snap my gaze to her. I rub my eyes again – gloves on – and the sparkles and stripes that stay in my vision make her magic. I want to find out if she really is, so I walk towards the couch and stand directly over her. Staring into her soft open mouth I ask myself, again, if I can still go through with it?
I don’t have a chance to answer. The beat has turned the room red, and tells me I must. I whisper something private to her, and head towards the upstairs bedroom. That is where I will find the man who put this incessant beat in my head.
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