I always pee right before I get in the shower. I hear about a lot of people who just pee in the shower and, while I guess it makes sense, it seems dirty to me. To stand, even temporarily, in your own waste is…kinda gross. I mean, the shower water just MOVES the pee down the drain as it circles around the floor and grabs hold of your feet for dear life before falling in the endless pit of the drain. The water doesn't destroy the urine. It just gives it a RIDE. Yet, I bet those same people, even though they are wearing shoes, move their feet out of the way if they are pissing in public as it starts to trickle anywhere near them. The thought of these people came to mind because I wondered how far "getting a little piss on you" was ok when they were alone. And I thought this while staring at the packaged granola bar that I had just dropped in the toilet as I was pissing in it. I was gripping it with my mouth so I could use my hands to hold steady. I didn't want to reach in and grab my breakfast, let alone eat it afterward, but technically, it was fine. It was still wrapped in its safe, engineered vaccu-pack, only wearing a coat of urine that was so brightly yellowed since my body was in a state of shock and dehydration after the events of the last couple of hours. If I was one of those "piss" people, would I just reach in and grab it since I'm jumping in the shower afterward and not think twice about it? I don't know, but I decided not to worry about it just yet, since there was nothing to use to fish it out with. So I didn't flush. And I stepped in the shower.
About halfway through my shower, the lights in the other room flickered again. Not quite the same as when they did before the box ravaged me, and after all, the building I live in is pretty shitty, and lights flickering is just one of the repeated problems that occurs here. So I didn't really question it. And I closed my eyes to rinse the soap off of my face.
Unless you are in front of a heat lamp, the only way you can ever really FEEL light is when your eyes are closed. I can't explain it. It's like our eyes are light-antennas. They feel around their small territorial bubble and report back to the brain that there is some light around and, if our eyes are closed, we still need to KNOW that there is light around so they tell the brain to make us FEEL it. I'm sure it has something to do with light sensitivity and an overabundance of light to your optic nerve or something, but it makes me question the ability of my eyelids, which I assumed were used for protection, even from the light and other invisible enemies. I have thought this before, and, actually gone so far as to stretch out one of my eyelids far enough to shove the end of a penlight against it to see how much light penetrates my Great Wall of Eyelid. My eyelids are pussies. That's what I deducted from the experiment. So even if there's low lighting and my eyes are closed, the surface of my pupils are basking in radiance, and there is a warm sensation on my eyes. However, the opposite works too, and when there is sudden darkness, my eyes get a cold tingle.
Well, this cold tingle hit my eyes and immediately pinballed throughout my entire body as I realized it. And sure enough, when I opened my eyes, I was in complete darkness again. And the water ran cold.
As I fumbled in the darkness to find the faucet, a faint siren sounded from what seemed to be inside the building. As the siren's frequency increased, I noticed that the sound wasn't coming from inside the building. It was closer, and it wasn't a siren, like an ambulance or a fire truck, though it gave off that appearance, as to fool someone who is not paying close attention. Attention, and Patrick, however, are pretty much my only friends. As I put my ear to the cold linoleum, naked, shivering, and vulnerable, I listened. The siren was much more organic than that of a normal warning. It was as if it was a cry of pain from an actual Siren, one of the Sea-nymphs that I used to read about when I went through my brief Greek Mythology Addiction at the JC. And I was right. It wasn't in the building, it was in the WALL. The vibrations caused the tile to shake, which startled me and I jumped back, nearly slipping in the soap-lined basin, my eyes barely now adjusting to the darkness. I stared at the vicinity of the linoleum, not really sure what I was expecting to see, since blackness had still possessed my apartment. But the shaking of the tiles on the wall got more intense as the lurid scream from Greek bird-woman grew closer. Am I the only person in this whole building who can fucking hear this!? A tile rattled loose and fell from the wall, breaking the skin on my foot before shattering on the tub floor. I awkwardly stumbled out of the shower, soaking wet and blind, and tried to throw on my work clothes as quickly as I could muster as more tiles dropped. And seeing as how I never attempted to get dressed in a hurry as a mysterious noise grew louder in the dark, I think I fared pretty well.
The noise reached an almost deafening decibel. I felt a little blood run down and out of my left ear, which felt like a fly scampering down my sideburn, in search of something to vomit on.
Then, when I was sure that the noise was going to make my head explode, it stopped.
Silence.
The only sound was the trickle of the cold water as the final few drops committed suicide off of the end of the faucet. After the 3rd droplet disintegrated on the porcelain, the lights returned on, and, like before, I FELT the intensity of the light as the warmth spread out of my eyes and throughout the rest of my body. And that's when I heard perhaps the scariest noises I had ever experienced. If you had met me on the streets and asked me to write down the most frightening noise I have ever heard, and I wrote this down, you would think I was a coward. You would get furious that I wrote this down over the sounds of the bum getting ripped from life, or the sound of the sobs the first time a man gets told he has cancer. But I don't care, because at this moment, I would have rather heard the ringing in my ears from the explosions in Viet Nam than this sound. But it happened…
"KNOCK.
KNOCK.
KNOCK."
…