S.L. Kletz

When the ringing started, I thought it was in my own ears – that occasional bout of tinnitus that always creeps in at the most inopportune and annoying of moments. However, when I observed the senses of those around me also tuning in to the tinny pitch, I sighed with the relief that I wasn’t going crazy. The person behind me in line at the coffee shop squinted at nothing in particular. My landlord shook his head as he repainted my front door. The girl on the train rubbed her ears all the way to her destination.

I couldn’t place where the sound was coming from. It seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. When I pressed my ears to the walls, the sound never ceased nor did it grow louder. I tried the floor. I even climbed up onto the roof through the fire escape to see if it was coming from the sky, but then all I could hear were the planes carrying the bombs off to the cities across the water to keep us safe. I went back inside.

I was on the phone with my mother when I noticed the sounds growing more acute. I thought it might have been that the reception was quite poor in the phone booth or perhaps the wires had been somehow damaged from overuse. But as she chatted about the rotten vegetables at the grocery store in her neighborhood, I heard a distinct filter over he voice – a whiny, shrill sound layering each word she spoke. It wasn’t just that particular phone booth. The one on the corner by the deli had the same noise when I called the number for the lost dog I’d found.

It was oddly curious to see everyone around me perceive this sound – it was just subtle enough that it wasn’t overtly obvious, but not quiet enough that one could fully tune it out. No one mentioned it. I don’t think anyone wanted to seem bothered by a silly old ringing when everyone knew their lives were good here in the city. There were better, more positive things to be thinking about.

But, I have trouble claiming that I wasn’t bothered by the ringing. I ran the shower one morning before the streets began to bustle with commuters to try to drown out the sound. You see, it had a tendency awhile after it began to keep me up at night. As I searched for silence in the air or the quiet recesses of my mind, I could never quite locate a place where the sound fully ceased. It seemed too, if I managed to fall asleep, I would wake with a vague memory of having heard the sound in my dreams.

As the water plucked at the blue tiles and guzzled down the hungry drain, I searched for a respite from the ringing. Each moment when I convinced myself the water had masked the sound, I’d hear the most faint instance of it at the very edges of my hearing and I wondered if it was really that persistent or I had grown so used to it that, in its absence, my imagination conjured it up to maintain its stasis. To test this theory, I tried instead plugging the drain and filling the tub to dunk my head under the water, but the ringing followed me there too, however muffled. It was then I thought I might be going crazy.

I heard the sound in the birds chirping at the park, in the mother’s song to her newborn in the stroller. I’d massage my temples to try to work the sound out of my head, but it only grew louder the more I acknowledged its irritation. It seemed everyone else, too, was growing more irritable by the day – all eyes occupied and all nostrils flared with the quiet annoyance of suffering too subtle to announce its grief.

When I pulled out my notebook to write, hoping to be caught by a wind of inspiration and any thought not occupied by the ringing, I pressed my pen down to the page. When the ink met the paper, I recoiled at once upon a sharp stabbing inside my eardrums. I looked horrified upon the single slash of black on the paper. I could not recall what letter it was intended to form – my ears aching from the sound it made. I threw all of my writing supplies into my bureau drawer and slammed it shut.

I am not crazy to confess the sound has gotten louder. As winter creeps into the city, I hear it cracking in the ice, jingling in the snow, and whistling past my earmuffs that do nothing to cover the pain of the noise. All the people, too, look so pained. The condensation of each breath into frozen air cries with silence. I don’t think they can bear to speak of it. It’s all one can do to take their mind off the noise. To talk about it would make it louder than it needs to be – give it power it doesn’t deserve to have. After all, it is just sound.

We don’t ride the trains anymore. The screech of the wheels on the track is far too unbearable. The people hardly venture down the sidewalks either. The crunch of feet in the snow sounds far too much like giants crushing cities in a single step. I get a headache just thinking about it and then my headache sounds like a scream.

We get an announcement to tune into the national address tonight. The television sounds like crying babies and when the president opens his mouth, all I hear are explosions.