Sounds of a Forbidden World

A Story by CristinaDM

I thought to write about what we imagine we could see rather than what is already there.

You gaze at the brick wall, fixed a meter from your grid-patterned window pane. You hear heavy rain drops to your far left, not falling from the sky but from the neighbours' rooftop (or so you assume you have a neigbour). The water drops of rain fall, if you prefer. The crimson coloured bricks glisten ever so slightly from the few rays of the fading sunlight that victoriously made it through the thick overcast clouds. You hear an electric saw in the distance and for some reason it brings you pleasure and relief (there are others beyond this place). Instantly you turn your head and hear an enraged male voice off to your right. You stare passively at the brick wall while your energy and mind work to figure out what he yells about or who he yells at. Could be anyone you decide – a disobedient child pedaling to quickly and gaining to much distance; a woman who brings to light a discussion which should have been left to be discussed in the security of his home; a stranger who so aggressively collides his shoulder and deserves nothing more than a foreign curse. You hear nothing for a long moment and decide that it was just another moment of frustration that is so easily discarded. You sit. You jolt back to the pane and listen. A screeching car makes its way east to your left (or so you assume it is east). You picture a young boy sitting in the driver’s seat holding a lit cigarette, leaning towards the door, cap pulled low. He doesn’t slow down for the warning speed bumps and you hear the scratch of metal on the wet concrete floor. Another car is turned on; it must have been parked along the road you have never seen before. It drives off. You wait another moment for another intriguing sound that will help you to define the work beyond the brick wall, but you hear nothing. You sit and wait as you have been doing forever (or so it seems). You hear a plane, you stand, you stare, you listen until all has gone quiet and sit again. This routine has become your only stories, your only knowledge of what was so generously given and harshly taken away. The world has become a brick wall and sometimes, water drops of rain.