Episode 12 - Sounds

(Music fades in)

So… last week, there was a package. A watch. Actually a gift for me after a long while of conversations with someone who helped me with my anxiety attacks. It was a beautiful watch. Delicately crafted with the love that someone earnestly wanted to give children but was never able to. But in that watch, in its presence, I knew there was danger to be had. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

A sense of dread would seep into my soul when I held it in my hands. And I held it frequently. Far too frequently… The only hope I had in avoiding the reckoning that was to come was to cast the watch aside. Get rid of the evidence, as it were, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know. Despite the overwhelming logic of the situation, I held onto that watch. I took that chance.

The ticking felt so loud sometimes that I could actually feel it. I could feel it in my head; it bounced against the walls of my skull, which was an incredibly painful sensation. That mixed with the sense of dread at what the ticking was counting down to. All of it was toxic to my system. Not lethal, per say, but certainly painful. And completely avoidable.

(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)

So I bought myself an eyeshadow palette this week. There is a part of me that wants to paint my face, not necessarily to appear more physically attractive because in many ways, I don’t care about that. It’s not even about the cliched and slightly snarky, ‘looks fade’ sort of comment. Rather, I picked a non-visual medium, so why does it matter? And while life can be very visual, I would rather sleep in then spend any extra time on my hair or face. So now, I wear my hair in a short bob and my face, makeupless. It works well for me.

But now, I have this fascination with makeup, particularly the bright colorful type, but this isn’t quite a peacock type thing. I just like the idea of painting another face over my own. Being someone else in a way… In a way that infiltrated my real life as well. Not just Twitter anymore. But I guess, it would mean that I could post selfies. Because with it on, you all or most of you all would not be able to recognize daily life me. To everyone else, I can’t fool you no matter what I do.

(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)

Tone can be incredibly important when it comes to conveying the intention behind a message. You learn that on the internet pretty quick. It’s not like when someone’s talking to you. On the internet, there’s no innate way to convey tone. While we’re working--collectively but informally--on text-based hints or clues for sarcasm or other cases that stray away from a straightforward interpretation of words, these shorthands take awhile to spread and then embed themselves into our relationship with language. Never mind translation issues. And by the time, they have even begun to set in, we’re starting to try something else.

And yet, I always felt like I knew exactly what tone Aishi was using when they sent me messages. I always seemed to know exactly what they meant when it would have otherwise been unclear. There was never any ambiguity is what I’m saying; none where some would have been expected. And I don’t know how.

Maybe I was just so reclusive that the language centers of my brain had completely shifted over, and I could now see the hidden lifts and falls of set text. It’s a nice thought, but it quickly loses merit when you think much more about it. It seems impossible. Improbable, you could also say, as a general phenomenon. It’s too intense of a demand, you would think. Even if my life was entirely online, which it wasn’t, and if all my communications--not just the good ones--were online, then there’s a small chance, I could have switched over: for the sake of my own survival. But no, it wasn’t like that. I still had a tether binding me to the physical world, so there was this sense that I couldn’t fully turn my brain over no matter what.

But Aishi had this hold over me, and from that grip came a telekinesis not fully understood. No matter what, I knew what they meant. Even when they couldn’t tell me. Or wouldn’t explicitly express something. I always felt like they were telling me something. Deliberately but in a way that I did not fully understand. In a way that wasn’t on display.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

At this point in the story, calendar-wise, it’s July. So I wasn’t at school and could spend more time online: playing the game, ignoring the game, chatting on the Forum, ignoring the Forum, listening to the ticking of this ill-advised watch, and talking to the Watchman. 

My aunt who wasn’t working at the time was lurking around the home too, but she spent most of her time in the garage. She couldn’t hold down a job, you see. And she wasn’t exactly trying that hard. It was more a matter of time type thing. There was an inevitability that she couldn’t do much about.

I remember, throughout this week in question, wondering if we were going to move again. I mean, of course we were going to move again. That’s what always happened, but I wondered if that was going to happen before the new school year started. I was mostly indifferent about that. I did not really have friends there as I never did. And in some ways, moving during the summer was the ideal. A new school year is a time of new starts for everyone, so you won’t be all that different. 

But that’s only part of the act of relocating a family, right? I’ve never told you what the other side of it was. And I still won’t.

(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)

If I told Aishi about the watch, everything would fall apart. If I omitted that when they asked me about my day, they would figure it out and everything would fall apart. This unique brand of telekinesis worked both ways. But while Aishi could somehow filter out their thoughts, I couldn’t. Aishi never told me all their thoughts, but they always seemed to know mine. I thought my only hope was to give them something else to think about, something else to fill the air of conversation. Like a development in the Funhouse Hallway. 

But alas, there had been no new developments. Not for a while. Not since the whole screaming incident as I thought of it. There wasn’t even a name for it. There was no one to come up with one. Or almost no one. The Forum was clearing out, growing more and more sparse by the day. It was hard to notice at first. There were no formal goodbyes. There were no grand announcements. People just fell off the radar as they lost interest. 

And as an unintended result of that, I grew more alone. And more determined to hold onto Aishi and the Watchman. Both of them. I wanted both of them, but that seemed impossible. Remember the Queen? There was a lesson in that. I could never have my cake and eat it too.

But I kept playing the game. I started it up again and wandered through the hallways I had spent so much time in already. I took what were considered both right and wrong turns, staying alert, desperate for some sort of change, a sign, any kind of sign. 

It was hyper-fixation at its best, some would say, but I hesitate to say that. I don’t know how well that term matches with extreme desperation. Without any doubts, I had the latter, and I didn’t know what to do about that. Or about anything. 

At least, this way, if Aishi asked me why I was so silent, I had a genuine excuse. That I was doing nothing but investigating the Funhouse Hallway, a course of action that was a bit concerning in and of itself, particularly if I offered myself no break for conversation, which I was not doing, I would tell. I don’t know how concerned Aishi was for me, but this concern for my welfare, however much they might have had, could easily mask my own deceptions. So I had that going for me. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

But for this plan to truly work, I would need to find something new. I needed to be able to bring evidence back to them. Aishi would only believe me for so long. 

All the while, the watch was ticking in the background of my life. It was so loud. I didn’t know where in the world Aishi was, but I was ready to swear that they could hear it. They could hear it as clear as day, as clear as I could. Think of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Telltale Heart” as a way of indulging me in this metaphor because I know it was irrational, on some fronts to think or feel that way.. It was just my anxiety finding some other way to make its presence known. I know, and on that front, it worked very well. I knew my fear was there, and I couldn’t even consider denying it. At that point, it was just about holding on to my grip of the real world, holding on to my course of action despite the urge to turn away, just to make the sound stop.

Rather than beneath the floorboards, the telltale watch was tucked away under my mattress, in the upper corner of the bed where no weight would push down to potentially break it. And I felt a bit guilty about that. About hiding it away so secretively. Because it was a beautifully crafted object that deserved to be displayed and admired. But it could not be displayed. Not right then and not ever. And if I tried, that would just make everything worse.

So I was making the most of a bad situation. At least that way I could hold onto it, right?

(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)

I’m starting to feel like a real part of the podcasting community. I mean, I was always a real part but also not… There’s a sense of honesty and self-disclosure in that space that I just can’t… that I just can’t seem in muster. I have tried, but it hasn’t worked out for me. I only kept deleting all potential tweets to that effect, sometimes deleting ones recently sent as well. 

Maybe having a picture of a face to the account would help, but still, that would mean… That would mean I have to make it my account now. Not Delphi’s. It’s still her name on the account, and so when I interact with people, there’s confusion… A lot of it. They call me Delphi or think of me as that. Not as me. And I liked that. For me. For my benefit. For my peace of mind. But really, I hate lying. And that’s what I’m doing, right? It feels like a matter of necessity, but it’s a necessity I also can’t disclose. So I’m stuck. Still. Just in a different spot. 

(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)

To his credit, the Watchman never asked me what I was doing with his gift, like if I used it or  had it displayed prominently. I mean, when you give someone a pocket watch in this millenium, there’s only so much they can do with it. Modern living has just moved on without leaving a spot for these objects, so he must have crafted his expectations appropriately. Or maybe to him, it was just about the act of giving a gift, of showing care for someone else. 

Honestly, I like the idea that it was the latter. There’s something comforting for me about that. For thinking someone just wanted to show me that they cared just because they cared. That the act of caring for me was a good in and of itself. An end not a means to an end. It feels good to think that someone cares about you like that. That wasn’t something I got to feel all that often. Or ever. That was the first time. Not even Aishi gave me that. But Aishi gave me other things. Things that… (sigh) It’s hard to explain.

(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)

Aishi was the one to have the idea. And there was a sense of dread that I met with it because I took it to me they were growing impatient with my lack of progress. Which they hadn’t normally cared about, but considering the work I was supposedly putting into exploring the Funhouse Hallway and not talking to them, there was this expectation that something would come of it. Which had not happened. Which never happened, and maybe never could.

It didn’t help that this was conveyed to me as a post on the Forum. Something Aishi had increasingly refused to do. It wasn’t an invasion. Aishi was welcomed there. Aishi could be there if they wanted to be. But it felt like one. It felt like an invasion to me. Like I was being attacked.

“Headphones?” they asked. “For sounds…”

And that was sound logic, no pun intended, but I wasn’t sure if I could do it. Sure I had headphones and my computer had a headphone jack. And listening with headphones preserved the silence of my domain, but it also left me more vulnerable. 

When I saw that message, I glanced towards my door. There was no lock on the door. Not anymore. But the need hadn’t gone away. In fact, it intensified right then. Normally, I would not even have considered it, but I was so desperate to please Aishi, to give them something to hold onto, to buy the Watchman time, to still the ticking of the countdown clock. My breath caught, and because thinking things through in a logical and rational manner had never been my strongest suit, I jumped into action instead. 

I took the chair I had been sitting on and pushed it against the door, like I had seen on television. But I did it with absolutely no idea whether or not it would work. Quite the contrary, I was more inclined to be pessimistic about it, but I couldn’t think through the science of chair-door bonding right then. I positioned it and held my breath for a moment at the door. The chair did not fall. So I backed away, staring intently, and with every step, the chair did not fall.

My headphones were in the desk drawer, tucked away beneath all the random paper that I tucked away instead of throwing out. Mostly the Sunday comics, that my dad would pull from the paper for me each week. It seemed so silly to hold onto them, but I could never bear to throw them away. So I shoved them into a drawer instead, and now when I opened the drawer, it smelled strongly of newspaper and the related ink. But that’s the sort of smell that doesn’t bother me. It’s when you get to more metallic, copper or zinc smells that I lose myself in a bit of a panic.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

I plugged them in and ran the game. It seemed like a bit of a longshot because--like I keep saying--adding sound was a step beyond what we thought could happen. But maybe not. Maybe that wasn’t a fair assumption, at all.

Besides, this would get Aishi off of my back, right? Or so I hoped. So I started playing.

Forward. “Your eyes are greatly uneven.”

Right. “The room is quiet.”

My breath caught. This felt… right. This felt like the right thing to do. (inhale). It felt like I was onto something. I felt a lurching in my mind and heart. My gut twisted. And then I got the line, a now infamous line: “You are sitting in the corner. You cannot move. You should not move.”

Audience, I should tell you that I did not move. “You hear the screaming. You should not move.”

Audience, I tell you I did not move. And then… Oh then… I heard the knocking. Rapid and frenzied. The knocking was. And my heartbeat. And the clock. Everything. Rapid, frenzied, and life defining. All in one moment.

(Music gradually fades out)

Aishi Online is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, produced, performed, and edited by MJ Bailey with music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. If you like the show, please leave a review, tell a friend, or donate to the show’s Ko-Fi account.