My neighbor, Mrs. Kellaway, knocked this morning. She wanted sugar. I opened the door holding a measuring tape. She didn't ask why. People don't ask why anymore. They've learned that the answer is either boring or terrifying. I gave her the sugar, then closed the door and measured the distance from the handle to the strike plate. 2.4 centimeters. It was 2.4 centimeters yesterday, too. I measured anyway.
The madness is that I will spend the next hour trying to figure out which one to remove. a kind of madness dthrip
It doesn't. I checked.
Yesterday, I rearranged the salt and pepper shakers on my kitchen table forty-three times. Not consecutively. Throughout the day. I would walk past, see that the pepper was on the left, and feel a small, exquisite violence in my chest. So I'd swap them. Then, ten minutes later, the salt would look wrong on the right. Swap again. By the sixth swap, I wasn't sure which arrangement I actually wanted. By the twelfth, I realized: there is no correct arrangement. The Hum knows this. It is not trying to help me find order. It is trying to exhaust me into a scream. My neighbor, Mrs
The problem is that the Hum is quiet now. And I know—I know —that means it's saving up. Tomorrow, it might decide that the shadows on the wall are wrong. That the light switch needs to be flipped exactly seventeen times before bed. That the word enough has one too many letters. I opened the door holding a measuring tape