The whistling would come and go, sometimes multiple times in a night, sometimes the soothing melodies wouldn’t return for several days.
At first, the whistling would scare me. I’d hide underneath the pillow or drape the blanket overhead, waiting until it passed. I knew I wasn’t crazy, I knew I wasn’t, the sweet little lady who lived next door in my apartment complex could hear the whistling too. She could hear it too.
Michelle could hear it, my dearest would flinch as the soft tune would pull us both into a silenced frenzy. We were both too scared, too scared to mention the whistling as its purveyor would stroll by our bedroom window. Not once did I see the shadow as they would meander on by.
Soon, however, the dread that came with these nighttime visits, these midnight tunes, became a welcome lullaby that helped us both drift to sleep.
I had never slept so soundly, so peacefully.
I recall a night some weeks ago, I could hear the shuffling of somebody’s feet as they passed by our home. A delicate, melodic hymn bounced and swirled and surrounded us, enveloping us so warmly, so tender and wholeheartedly.
It was as beautiful as it was distressing, knowing I would never hear something so ethereal again.
Whether it was for breakfast, for work, or any other activity that had once brought me joy, it had become increasingly difficult to leave my bed. Once my whistling-induced slumber had come to an end, my mind became frenzied, panicked… it was almost as though my mind had been reset, and my only instinct was to survive. I could never settle my aching, pounding heart, not until those soft tunes returned and contained my spiraling head.
Truthfully, it made me angry seeing Michelle go about her life as usual. How had the beauty, the calm and the peace that this whistling brought me not have any effect on her? I suppose she had never really been one to show her appreciation for the finer things.
For a few days, however, the whistling stopped.
I had never felt such madness, such anger or sorrow all bunched up into one. My neck became so tense that my head would tremble violently as I attempted to lie still in bed. I tried everything, I tried rubbing my temples until my fingers had left deep, purple bruises on either side of my head. I tried rubbing my feet against each other until the skin had become ragged and sloughed off.
The silence, or lack thereof, nearly pushed me to do the unthinkable… that was, until last night.
It was late when Michelle arrived home from her night out with friends. She stumbled in the bedroom, tripping over one of the heaps of dirty laundry on the floor.
Up until a month ago, I had never seen Michelle get so drunk, so hopelessly, disgustingly fucked up, but it had become a near-daily event. Shortly thereafter, she would begin to scream at me until she could no longer form coherent sentences.
Last night, however, after she hit the floor she simply began to sob. I could hear her pleading to me, calling me back home. For a moment, I felt as though my trance was about to snap.
Then, the whistling began.
The sound, this time, was indescribable. The noises which filled the room, which filled my head, were beautifully alien. Nothing so delicate and contagious could be of this Earth, the intricacies of these tunes were simply too complex for any human mind to conjure up.
Michelle rose from the floor and met me in the middle of our dingy bedroom. I pressed my hand into hers and wrapped my other around her waist as we twirled around the room, dancing so elegantly to the music.
Then, a knock came from the door.
Without hesitation, I untangled myself from Michelle and darted for the doorway, hoping the whistling creature would make itself apparent to me.
Instead, it was my old neighbor coming to complain about all the noise we were making. Though, no sooner had the words left her mouth did a warm, toothless smile stretch across her face.
I knew I wasnt crazy, they could hear it, too.
The skin at the corner of her mouth stretched so thin that it began to tear. Bits of blood began to bubble up from beneath the tears in her skin as she began to drool, to froth from the sloppy, gummy mess that was her mouth. Her irises vanished, and then her pupils.
She stared at me for a moment, the blood continuing to seep from her mouth as her smile only continued to stretch closer to either of her ears. Suddenly, she threw her head to the side, smashing it so hard into the doorway that it destroyed the trim surrounding it. She fell with a sickening, meaty thud.
The blood quickly pooled at my feet, surrounding me with red. The hole in her head was cavernous, exposing bits of her gelatinous brain and the very mechanisms of who she once was.
I returned to the bedroom to find Michelle in a similar trance. Her eyes displaying the same blank, idle stare. Her lips were drawn back so tightly against her skull that I could see the imprint of her teeth through her skin.
I could only stare as I watched her draw a small pool of water in the bathroom sink, I could only stare as I watched her plunge her face beneath the surface until she fell limp. It was as though every part of her primal mind told her to stop, but a greater force had been calling her.
A greater force that now called me.
I made my way outside, rounding the corner of our complex and I walked off into the listless night.
As I passed by our window, as I passed by the blinds that concealed the carnage behind it. All I could do was whistle a soft tune.