White Noise

Dissonance. The neighbours are screaming  about a burnt pot, an unmade bed and a red bra that isn’t hers. The pot hits the brick and drywall divider between Unit 11 and Unit 12. Noise. Downstairs, an Etv Will Smith festival means an alien aircraft is hovering above my stove. A charismatic relationship expert is perched on the edge of my ceramic toilet seat, preaching to my shower curtain about how to win friends and influence people, and get laid in the process. Khumbulekhaya tells me to go home.

I can’t think. I can’t write. Sounds are a murky disembowelment of thought,swimming amongst themselves; broken, slimy, violent. Today, I am the girl the who is raped. Screaming. Today, I am the girl who was raped. Muffled.

Silence is revenge. Wild West Will sits in the corner of my room, polishing an engraved Smith a Wesson revolver. He turns it carefully in his hands, handing it to me by its shiny wooden handle.  A pistol to the head. A wordless invitation. To come with him to a world where the noise can be muted with one loud final bang. Khumbulekhaya tells me to go home.

The racket is brown. The racket is blue. The racket is a bomb embedded in my brain. Somewhere in my cerebral cortex, a tick-tick-ticking counts down the days of my life. I have a deadline. A story to write. The somewhat fictional account of a girl who can never wash off the semen spewed into her crack; the slightly honest story of a psyche that broke when a hymen did. The racket is blood-red and new. Will gingerly fingers three silver bullets, rolling them over each other in the palm of his calloused hand. One copper. One silver. One gold.  One night spent awake, wrestling the covers for sleep. One brain mechanically churning out pre-programmed responses. Brain says lie here. Brain says slide your fingers into the hollow of your thighs. Sex is revenge, even if it’s with yourself.

And then the waves, lazily at first, tease. Insinuating pleasure. Nuances of release.  Compounding pressure and rapid-fire heartbeat.  Heat. Folding itself into itself, becoming compact, and tight. A finite micro-atom of energy and then, implosion. Still no words, no rest for the wicked and weary. No sleep. Just a damp spot in over-priced panties no man will ever see.

Now the neighbours are making up. Making out.  Banging, and now banging against the cheaply plastered wall.  Fucking and now fucking with already fucked out sleep. Wolf-howling in between my sheets. I imagine his rotund belly flapping loudly against her back. Squelching as she squeels in practised response. That is not 

what feeling good sounds like.

Feeling good sounds like nothing. Silence is revenge. Sleep and sex , brief respite. The stillness of death is the first place trophy. One gold medal. One gold bullet passed from Hologram Will’s hand to mine, and if I don’t fall asleep tonight, I’m going to have to take matters into my own hand.