Blurred Lines

“I hate Wednesdays. But it’s a self-inflicted hatred, so I could fix it, I just… don’t.’’

Miles put on his headphones and turned the music up. Anything that would block out the sound of the outside world before he headed out into it. It didn’t matter how loud the music was though, whenever he got close enough to a person, he would hear what they were thinking.

Over the years, he’d learnt to ignore most of it, but it was always there. A whisper in the background of whatever he listened to, and if more than four people stood around him while he waited to cross a street, or in a line somewhere, it would start to become too much. The staff at his local grocery store, had often seen him step out of line if it got too busy. He’d pick up his basket and go reinvestigate the veggie aisle again, or peruse the butchery window, wherever had the least amount of people is where you would find Miles.

He hadn’t always been that way, but, as he had gotten older, and the voices had gotten louder, he had begun to spend more and more time locked away. But he liked people, or at least the idea of people, so he tried to stay in touch with his family and his best friend Gilbert, but only via computers or phone. He liked to communicate that way. He liked not knowing what people thought. Even though it was digital, and he often couldn’t see the people he was talking to. To him it felt more organic, more real.

***

Miles stood in the bread aisle and stared at nothing. If he could distance himself physically and mentally, he could sometimes get control of the sounds in his head. Not make it go away exactly but find his specific voice and focus on it so that it felt like the loudest in the crowd. And if that didn’t work, he would wait until the beat dropped in the song he was listening to and focus his full attention on that. Then he could try and go back to shopping. And if that didn’t work, he’d have to go home.

“You know I hate this song; please change it?”

Liz’s voice was annoyed and it made Miles jaw tighten. He turned to look at the imaginary girl who was standing next to him. Then he pressed a button on his headphones and the next song started.

“Better?” he whispered.

“Yes, thank you. I don’t understand why you still have that song on the playlist, I complain every time and it annoys you every time.”

“You used to love that song.”

“Things change. Now it just irritates me and makes me think of that girl you were chatting with, what’s her name? … Janet.”

“Could we not.” hissed Miles. He wanted to say more, but Liz once again had him over a barrel. She knew that he couldn’t really argue too intensely or risk being seen talking to himself in public, again.

“I’m just saying, I knew she was going to be a meeter right from the first message.”

A meeter, was Liz’s favourite term for the people Miles met online. It was used to describe the women who would quickly decide they wanted to meet him in person and then abruptly disappear after a few too many of his excuses. He didn’t exactly like the way she used the term, but it had become part of their lexicon.

Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Rose was Miles’s high school girlfriend, and the only woman he had ever slept with. Once had been enough to absorb an entire copy of every thought and experience, she’d ever had. And now, those memories lived in his head and manifested as the hallucination of the teenage girl who followed him around. His own imaginary friend, who he’d trapped in his head, and who loved to torment him when she knew he couldn’t talk back because he’d look about as crazy as he probably was.

The store had started to fill up and the voices of the strangers in his head had begun to get louder and out of control. Which meant he either needed to finish, pay and go, or abandon his basket and just leave. Luckily Liz noticed in time.

“Just breathe, we just need to get milk and you wanted some chocolate and then we can go. By the time those guys get through the first few aisles we’ll already be on our way home, this place is pretty big.”

Miles did as he was told, and quickly made his way through the store. As predicted, he was half way out the door before most of the new customers had reached the check out. On his way home, he turned down an empty sidewalk and switched off his music. He wanted to get his head clear, or as clear as it could be in that part of the city. There was always a bit of background noise, that he’d gotten pretty good at ignoring, but something felt different this time. After a minute, Liz appeared next to him and said in a much softer voice.

“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to pick a fight. I just think you keep that song there because you liked her, which is sweet, but now it just hurts you.”

“I did like her, but you’re probably right. I should change up my…”

But he stopped mid-sentence and a cold shiver ran down his spine, followed by an eruption of goosebumps over his entire body. Liz’s face contorted in confusion.

“What is it?”

“Shhh…”

“Miles, what’s wrong?”

“Shut up!”

Miles closed his eyes and tried to feel out what was happening to him. There was a build-up of tension at the base of his neck, and for a moment he flashed back to his final seconds with the real Liz, just before his break down, and his heart started to beat faster. And then he heard it, crystal clear, a single voice through the noise, clearer than his own thoughts.

A single, frantic, desperate, piercing scream for help.

“Miles?”

The sound filled his mind and made his vision blur. As the pressure grew it felt as though his head might explode. Sweat beaded on his forehead and then ran freely down his face. As he tried and seemingly failed to take a breath, he felt his stomach start to convulse and random points of tension erupt over his body.

“Miles! Miles! What’s going on?”

Liz’s voice echoed in his mind like a distant whisper in a deep cave, drowned out by the scream. Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. The sick and frantic sound, the panic and the fear vanished. Fresh, cold air finally filled his lungs, and a still silence settled around him for the first time in years, but it only lasted a few seconds before the voices started to come back.

What’s wrong with that guy?

Fucking junkies, I wish someone would do something about them.

Don’t make eye contact, don’t make eye contact.

“What the fuck is going on,” screamed Liz, suddenly very loud and very clear.

“Just…just give me a minute.”

After a few more deep breaths he looked up to see the faces of the people who stood at the top of the street and stared.

Oh God, he looked right at me, time to go.

Someone should help him.

He tensed up to try and rally himself, smiled as best he could, grabbed his grocery bags and quickly started to walk away in almost the direction of his home. The image of Liz walked with him bursting with nervous curiosity. She was desperate to know what had just happened, but knew that to ask again wouldn’t actually help.

Miles all but slammed the door shut as he fell through it, dropped his grocery bags and only just managed to catch himself on the wall. Then, he slowly slid down to the floor, where he spent a minute or two waiting for the world to get quiet again, so that he could put his thoughts in clear order. While Liz stood patiently in the corner and watched. Her eyes had a distant quality, but her face was contorted in fear and concern. Eventually though, his shoulders dropped and his breath became steady and she spoke up.

“What just happened?”

“Damnit, I was kind of hoping that you might have heard it too.”

“No. Hear what?”

Miles didn’t want to remember, but it rushed back into his mind anyway, and sent a wave of goosebumps over his body.

“There was a scream, someone screamed for help.Someone, is screaming for help. It was so loud and so clear, that I could barely hear anything else, outside or inside my head.”

“Oh my god. Coming from where? From who?”

He ran his hand over his face and through his hair.

“I don’t know. It wasn’t like…normal; it sounded both really far away and everywhere.”

“We’ve going to try find them though, right? Like, that sounds important if you could hear it so clearly.”

Miles started at the floor and tried not to think of anything.

“Right? Like, we’ve got to do something!”

The memory of the sound echoed through his head again and, after a moment of strain, he wretched and vomited. The mess spilled out of his mouth and nose as the world around him went black. And in the distance, he could hear the sound of Liz’s panicked questions.