I’m not one hundred percent sure where to start this. It’s recent and it’s the last… maybe fifteen years. It’s always been weird. This year especially.
My girlfriend and I moved. We found a nice place. Like my home before last (rent, right?), our bedroom window happens to face some bright-ass light that stays on all night. This white light. Not symbolism. Just a harsh illumination that fills the room after sunset. Blinds, curtains, nothing does shit. What, I tape cardboard over the window, make it look like I’m sketching out all day in here?
So sleep gets a little fucked. I’m up every hour and a few times between. I mention this only because I’ve heard that a good night’s sleep can have a lasting impact on a person’s life.
The neighborhood’s not bad. It’s not great either, but I’ve for sure been in worse places. There’s an old alcoholic who lives next door. Says every animal that’s ever died in his presence, he loves too much to throw away (what?) and so, naturally, keeps in a freezer in his basement. He says cats back to his childhood are down there. It’s a chest freezer. He wants me to come build a platform so the freezer won’t put so much pressure on the floor underneath it. But he’s a mostly harmless guy. Jaundiced, forgetful, but neighborly for the most part.
So we move to this new place and my job fell through, I’m looking at what carpentry shit is local. Go to work with a crew doing renovation work about an hour away. One day, we’re framing in this bathroom. One guy’s up on a ladder. Another guy, next to it, asks for his knife. It’s this little utility knife, right? Like an 18mm blade, it’s small. Anyway, the guy’s a bit angry, so he reaches for it like he’s going to rip it out of buddy’s hand, and right then, this little air compressor we’re using lets off some extra air to regulate pressure, right? Like this abrupt “PST” sound. All of a sudden, the guy who asked for the knife is holding it, and the guy who handed it to him… there’s just this dark red blood fucking flying down his arm. It’s not spraying, but holy fuck is it running. It’s all over the ladder, it’s all over the floor. I don’t understand how the knife went upward with buddy up on the ladder, but I wasn’t thinking about that then.
We’re on the second floor. He bleeds out on his way to the truck for first aid shit.
The job’s kind of fucked in general, so I keep it moving and go to work with another crew. My sleep is fucked, this light is in our bedroom, and a man died at work. Day in the life, you know?
I’m working with a crew an hour west. More kinds of things on rooftops. Boss is always there. He’s big on emphasizing safety, being tied off. I appreciate that. One day, a few of us are up on the roof. Sometimes, the rope to your harness maxes out before you can quite reach where you need to be. You either move this locking mechanism down the rope to get more distance, or you tie off to something close to you (two ropes on you now), unlatch the first rope, bring that rope to a new anchor point, and undo that rope you used to keep yourself safe in the meantime. We’re not doing this all day, but that’s how you safely switch from, say, one side of a roof to the other if you’re up there all day.
We have a few tools going, you know? But we have stable footing and harnesses, we make sure new guys tie off to something that won’t rip out when your body weight goes off of the roof. Shit like that. It’s a safe environment as far as the fall risks go. So there’s this new kid, he’s maybe seventeen. It might be a summer job for him. He’s dedicated - shows up on time, works consistently, he’s not an idiot. But this one day, something happens with a framing nailer, this nail gun that shoots 3” nails. Goes off fucking straight through the bone on his knuckle. I don’t know what the fuck happened. The shot sounded bad, I turned, and he’s bleeding. He gets up, I hear the air compressor let off a little sound - “PST” - and this kid kind of trips a bit. Like he’d been crouching and his body got used to his center of gravity in one place? Maybe he’s dizzy? He stands up and basically goes sideways. And as he falls, I expect to see his line go taut - he’s wearing his harness, he’s clipped in - but the end of the line follows him off of the roof. Like he had gone to switch between anchor points and got sidetracked. We wrapped up for the day. Ministry shit, health shit, insurance shit, these guys I call Safety Cops, all of this kind of took over the job site. Bit weird for a minute, say the least.
I come home and my girlfriend asks me if I ever come home during the day. I tell her I don’t, no. “Do you ever just come home for a minute, but realize you forgot your keys, so you just go back to work? Like maybe for lunch or something?” I bring lunch every morning. I don’t. She tells me she hears footsteps come up our porch every day. They come to the door - sometimes, she thinks she might hear the knob rattle, but she has it locked - and no one ever knocks. I don’t know what that’s about.
We have a dog. Very good boy. Will bark at something suspicious, but fuck, I’m not above doing that myself half the time.
So one day, I leave for work around 5 AM and I know my girlfriend’s got a busy day, so I figure I’ll bring pup to a daycare out by the job site. We get in the car, he’s in the backseat in this whole doggy rig we’ve got set up back there, when all of a sudden, he’s losing his fucking mind at something at the end of the driveway. It’s not a “that’s something I want” bark like he might do at a rabbit. It’s not a “please play with me” bark like if he sees another dog when we’re on a walk. It’s a full out “get the fuck away from my family” bark. Not something you hear from him too often at all. It’s not fear. It’s pure defending the house. I see two (three?) long, long skinny shadows against the brick up at the front of the driveway, maybe just across the street. They’re right there. I try not to throw on my headlights until the car’s moving - not light up other people’s homes the way our bedroom always has too much light when it’s supposed to be dark - but at this point, if some motherfuckers are standing in front of my car with some malicious shit, let’s see ‘em, right? Flip on the headlights and there is fucking nothing there. Dog will not let it go. Absolutely losing his mind. I pull out the driveway and turn around at the end of the street, double back. All empty. Silent, still street. Dog won’t let it go. I hear my air compressor in the shed let off a bit of pressure - “PST”. I didn’t even realize I had left it on.
Sometimes, I wake up and hear something like dishes moving downstairs. I go down and there’s nothing, door locked. The other day, I watched a car ease off the road, end up sideways in a ditch. Another car swings around to help and goes in too. A guy at work with one of those lifted trucks checked his phone at a light, drove over a car in the opposite lane. I get that weird shit, bad shit, strange shit happens. I saw a woman at a bus stop and a half block away, the same woman’s in the back seat of a cab. At the next set of lights, she’s driving a Camry. I get that weird shit happens. It’s just that I still can’t get a good night’s sleep. People seem to disappear sometimes. I guess I’m just looking for a clearer picture. I want to see what’s going on. I want to see what I’m missing. I want to stop hearing somebody in the house in the middle of the night. I want to stop seeing patterns on the road. I don’t know what to make of any of it. I’m tired. And my neighbor wants me to build a door into his fence before winter.