Untamed

Last night had to be one of the most unpleasant nights of sleep that I have ever experienced in my entire stay in this country. It wasn’t so much the constant sounds of the house moving, shifting in the breeze and adjusting to the temperature, because I had gotten used to the way wood moaned slowly during nights. Instead, I could swear on the life of my third grandmother that I heard the shrill sounds of a young child screaming and crying. It was unlike the sounds of a young child crying when it wanted something, or an infant piercing the night with its deathly whine. This child screamed and cried in the way that could only be perceived as being in pain.

Periodically the voice would echo through the quiet Paris air, through the small lanes and between the gaps of any building in its way, into the open window I deliberately let open in attempt to get some form of airflow in the stuffy, small room. It echoed through the night, and right into my ears, ringing more deafeningly than a church bell being struck directly beside me. Usually I am the type of person who wouldn’t care so much about the problems of other people, because I typically believe things happen purely because one asked for it to happen. However, there was something different flowing in my veins last night – compassion, perhaps. A feeling I hadn’t allowed myself to feel for a long time, to say the least, but that was purely to protect my heart.

No, we won’t be going into that.

In any case, I got up from the mattress that had been thrown onto the floor and looked out of the little window that has the cheap, wooden French doors on it. There wasn’t a soul to be seen at all, not in the other buildings, not in the streets, no where – if I didn’t know better, I would have said that I was the only person who resided in the entire area. Still the echoed cries of a small child, a boy I assumed, skimmed the air and filled my ear canals with screams that made the hair on my body stand on end. With a child, they usually don’t ask for the kind of pain this kid sounded as though he were in and I suppose it made it easier (or harder, depending on how one chooses to look at this predicament) for me to feel sorry.

I actually took to the streets last night, very shortly after looking out that window. I was determined to locate the source of the voice, to find what it was keeping me awake, chilling me so far that night. Very seldom it is that I am scared or chilled by anything that is heard or seen by me, but this seemed to be an exception – as a writer it seems amusing that I can be horrified so easily by the call of a small voice, yet I could create plenty of things that would be deemed far more horrible than that. Perhaps it is that I have become immune to any disgusting, frightening idea I could ever conjure up and so now it is the smaller, less thought of things that will now make my blood turn cold.

Twenty minutes passed with me roaming the streets barefooted, trying desperately to follow the sound completely by guessing that I was hearing from the right direction. Of course, it was a little difficult to follow an echo that seemed to fill my ears loudly, but I tried as best as one can in such a situation. Closed café’s came an went, locked stores that sold wonderful fragrances for both men and women passed me on my left, while shoe stores passed me on my right. A fabrics maker just ahead, and a seedy little lane that led to the more secluded parts of the area, where the more dilapidated buildings resided, where the even less fortunate came to live; the place was always abundant in drugs, and illicit sex.

That child I heard was never located by me and I never found out what caused such an awful sound from such a small throat, and I don’t believe it is something one wishes to imagine or spend too long thinking about, either. The whole thing was so surreal, so real that I was certain it wasn’t me hearing things, so certain that it wasn’t my mind playing tricks on me as payback for dousing it in liquor so often. Nevertheless, I returned back home and sat down on the bed, listening, expecting to hear the sound once more. “Lisa!” a muffled voice yelled at the front door, with the sound of fists pounding against it, “Lisa, open the door!”

I sat bolt upright in my bed on the floor and looked around – I was still as naked as I were when I went to sleep earlier, the blanket still laying, if not a little tangled, on my legs. The watch on the table said that it was ten in the morning, but I didn’t understand how that could be – I had only just returned home from searching for the little kid, I was certain of it. “It’s me, Lisa, hurry and wake up, will you?” the voice yelled again as fists whacked away at the wood of the door. I answered that door, being too lazy and distracted to find myself some clothes and dress myself; there was nothing a blanket wrapped around my slender frame wouldn’t solve and I had learned how to tie a blanket wonderfully at the chest, anyway.

It was Andrew; he had come over as he had said to discuss the details of my new job. Apparently he had been knocking on my door for the past twenty-five minutes and knew I was home because he called Lina earlier this morning to make sure I’d be around. It took a bit of convincing on his part, because I still swore on my life that it was only minutes ago that I had stepped back in the door and sat on the end of the bed. The entire details of the voice I heard screaming was being recounted to him by me and he laughed openly at me. It was then that I realised the entire story I had been telling him, the entire story that I had been convinced actually happened and was as real as this very moment, had all been a dream.