Inevitable sirens

SE appendix

Echoes from hidden places. Different sounds. What was it that was following me? What was it that didn’t allow me to escape into some form of silence? The perfect time of night for these ricochets of sound to embed fear. All the right elements in place for the noises to harbour ambiguities. And the array of the head-turning clangs and booms appeared to be growing, with new ones threatening the senses as fewer and fewer night wanderers scuttled around deadly lanes. Occasionally I thought that I had captured the exact source of the noise – a commuter locking their bike to the railings, the waitress flinging a bin bag or empty bottles into the alleyway, some tourists rejoicing in a timely joke or victorious adventure. Cheering and hollering. But then, swiftly, the gathering clearness broke up as the wind shifted, and the inevitable sirens overpowered all the other sounds forcing them to sink and, with them, any opportunities to decipher the multitude of the obscured cacophonies were lost too. I now accept that the city will take away more than it will give so I don’t strain my ears anymore to hear, as I once would have. I revel in the truth that I get only a brief glimpse of clarity, and the sense that those fleeting unbroken sounds quickly get devoured. It means I have to sharpen my hearing and focus on the teensy dribbles I do catch, to make sure I grab the smallest of identifiers to enable to me to hurriedly scribble down the notion. It all amplifies the energy and gives the impression that something lurks close but invisible. A tantalising presence destined to be consigned to the zones just out of eye-shot. Sometimes I want a bit more. Sometimes I want to be free. But, underneath the gripes, I feast on the night snippets, despite my barren returns when it comes to succeeding in knowing what it is that I wish to find. Is another night wanderer, himself obscured, listening for my footsteps as I try to evade gazing eyes? I try not to but must make a sound – Chelsea boots on the raw concrete. I cling to the fantasy that this other wanderer is watching me, relying on me like the lodestar. And this is because I was threatened with another thought: that I needed a totem because all other allies had departed the scene. Was I entering madness? I was obsessively hanging to this notion that this being would act as my guiding star. Yet that wanderer was only as invisible as everyone else had become, so maybe it wasn’t so preposterous to believe. At least there was a disclaimer from myself in the fact I acknowledged it could have been an invention, and in turn that meant the resentment I felt towards others’ distance could be reduced towards this being, and as I conceded this was a head-held companion only. And another sensation: that the more I was searching for the otherworld, the more I was myself taking on the qualities of an apparition. Did anyone try to seek me out? Maybe the ricochets they heard, or thought they heard, were mine as I too attempted to escape into the abyss. This reciprocal sound spinning around the space so that no one could ever get a proper handle on things – it was all second-guessing and looking over shoulders, with that speck of dread in the eyes. Bells ringing, reverberating. Blushes of pin streetlamps like micro-suns, half-secrets glistening out of the skinny side-lanes. Lush, rich colours. Brickwork looming under illumination. I felt miniscule and, within the extreme clutter, I knew that as the bignight closed in around my scrunched-up body I was shrinking further.