The street sign flickered again, casting the number 20th Ave in shades of blue and orange. It was the kind of flicker that made you think the wires were getting crossed somewhere, maybe in a sky box too high for me to see. I walked the other way, past the empty air conditioning unit humming with static. “Lost pets,” I muttered, looking at the vacant lot across the street. Not a dog in sight. Too bad.
The scent of something sour hung in the air, like old yogurt left out in the sun. I thought about the mussels, the scallops, but that didn’t help much. The feels plus 71 was just a number anyway. A number on a screen, a number in the air, a number that might as well be invisible when you’re standing here.
My house was quiet. Too quiet. The way the lights were off, the way the windows were boarded up. I pushed the screen door open with a creak that sounded like it was protesting. Inside, the silence was thicker than usual. Maybe it was the lack of Jordan. Maybe it was the way the moon was a pinprick in the ceiling fan. Either way, I wasn’t sleeping. And for some reason, that felt familiar.
The package from Amazon sat on the counter, its contents forgotten. Blue Buffalo, right? Wilderness Blend? I’d scrolled through it twice, then moved on. Nothing felt urgent. Nothing felt like me. I touched the surface, the cool wood beneath my fingers, and thought about the new moon outside. It was small as a fingernail in the sky, just a hint of white against the dark blue. A ghost of a moon.
Outside, someone was skipping rope. Or maybe it was just the wind. Hard to tell. I walked out to the driveway, the gravel crunching under my feet. The neighbor’s car was gone. The street was empty. A figure moved past a darkened storefront, but it was just a shadow. A glitch in the system.
I turned back inside. The silence followed me. The hum from the air conditioner was louder now, a constant drone in the quiet house. It reminded me of something, something about the machines, about the way they kept running even when you weren’t looking. Maybe it was time to stop pretending.
The fridge was empty. The dog bowl was clean. The whole thing felt… anticlimactic. Like a scene from a movie that never got to the good part. But here we were, anyway.
I opened a window. The air was warm, thick with the smell of dust and something metallic. A car passed, its headlights cutting through the darkness for a second. Then it was gone. Back to the empty street, the empty house, the empty space between. I stayed outside for a while, watching the shadows stretch and shrink against the wall. The silence felt like a language I didn’t know.
Finally, I went back inside. The silence was waiting, patient and still. The air conditioner kept humming. Outside, the moon was a tiny white lie. Inside, it was just me and the dark.
I don’t know what it means, this feeling of being watched. Or maybe it’s just the machine breathing. I don’t know.
Outside, the road was empty. The air conditioner hummed. I sat on the steps for a while, listening to the silence. It was real
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