Paul’s leg itched. His eyes were closed. He was meditating. A book on the subject, meditating, not itching, had been gifted to him by his longtime girlfriend. In the book it suggested that if your leg itched or anything else one should acknowledge that feeling and then move on. Ultimately, you are not to scratch the itch. Paul tried. The feeling was overwhelming. It was not a normal itch, no, it felt as if there was a tiny bug crawling through his leg hair. He restrained. Trying to clear his mind. It had been clear. Little white clouds floating along, making neighbors to the synapses in his mind. Now, tarnished. Paul gritted his teeth. Resist he repeated to himself; a new mantra. Resist. Resist. Resist. The hairs on his leg, tickled by an invisible foe. Paul finally opens his eyes and looks to his leg. There is nothing there. He can resist no more. He itches it.

–

Paul has broken his meditation for the morning. He would usually come out of it feeling a modicum of refreshment, a slightly clearer mind. He did not today. There was a dark cloud there instead. He frowns while he brushes his teeth. He feels upset while he dresses for work. In his dark brain fog, he forgot to eat breakfast. Now his teeth brushed, his mouth filled with the taste of mint, he cannot eat at home. Frustrated, he slams the few dishes in the sink around as he washes them. He is already thinking about getting in his car and putting on angry music. Something off The Fragile. Paul dries his hands on a dishcloth. He pauses. What is that? He thinks to himself. A tiny (drip). Like a leaky faucet. Paul is still. There it is. There it is again. He looks up at the ceiling. The noise is coming from the roof. Motherfucker he thinks. Again. (Drip). He follows it. Tracing it to its origins. He finds himself in the corner of his small sitting room. Paul stares at the ceiling. It doesn’t look like anything is pooling above him. Or does it. He can’t tell. He stares at the corner. Another (drip). He hears it. Louder than before. He has placed it. He leaves and retrieves a bucket. He clears off the small table that is beneath the suspected leak. On it he places the bucket. It is bright yellow and wildly out of place in the calming, neutral décor his girlfriend picked out for him.

–

Paul calls into work. He’s not feeling well. Mental health day. He does this while never losing focus on the bucket. The drip noise interrupts the phone message he is leaving. “This is Paul. I’m not feeling well. (drip) I’ll be available by email if there is an emergency.”

He hangs up, eyes fixed on the ceiling

(Drip).

(Drip).

(Drip).

Time passes.

A door in his house bursts open.

A shriek.

“Where is she?” his girlfriend yells. She is banging on things as she passes them. Pots, pans, cabinets, a metallic thwop. She has hit the fridge.

“You fuck.”

Paul wills himself to move from staring at the spot on the ceiling, but she beats him to it.

“What are you doing?” She eyes the bucket and then looks up at the ceiling. She sees nothing. “Why aren’t you at work? You fucking someone else?”

Paul had never known her to be jealous. She had always been very calm and rational. He had liked that about her.

“Absolutely not.”

“Yes you are. I can smell it on you.”

“Smell? No, no, I was just—I think I have a leak.”

“A fucking leak. Maybe in your dick you two-timer.”

“Jessica!”

“Don’t Jessica me. Think of all the shit we’ve been through and you go dip your dick in someone else. Where is she?”

Jessica leaves him and begins to tear through the house. She bangs the fridge again, which causes Paul to recoil.

He catches up with her in the living room. Jessica is sweeping her arm across a table. Picture frames and knick-knacks all fall to the ground breaking into smaller pieces. Paul can’t help but watch the destruction. Words are forming on his lips, but he swallows them, useless against the tide of Jessica. She moves to the couch now and begins pounding on it. “Cheater!” she screams. Still evidence less. Why wasn’t she at work, Paul wonders? Swiftly she moves into the kitchen and returns to the couch with a steak knife.

“You.” She stabs the couch. “Mother.” Stab. Stab. Stab. “Fucker.” The couch cushion is shredded now. She plunges it into the back of the couch now and harikaris it. Nothing spills out, just the shocking exposure of the cheap 2x4s that make up the frame. In the process she cuts her hand and an amazing amount of blood pours out. It splatters on the floor.

“Look what you made me do!” She shows her hand to Paul who looks away in disgust. The gash is deep and wide, the edges curling over on itself. Jessica clutches her hand to her chest in a quick compression.

“Aren’t you going to do anything?”

Paul moves to help her, but hears a (drip) and stops. He turns and faces back toward the room with the bucket like a dog when a rodent is present.

“What are you looking at? Aren’t you going to help me?”

Paul hears it again. The (drip).

“Areennnnn’t youuuuu goingggg to hellllppppppppppppppppppppp meeee?” Jessica’s voice has slowed. Everything has for Paul. Only a small, but perceptible (drip) is running at normal time. Normal pace. Normal speed. 1x.

“Yooouuuuu MOTHERFUCKER.”

Slow to fast. Everything is back now. Jessica smears her bloody hand on Paul’s white walls and leaves the house in the same whirlwind she flew in on.

Paul watches the blood drip in cascading lines. Racing each other to the floor where they will pool and eventually dry.

The (drip) distracts him.

–

Paul is back in the room with the (drip), but this time with a step ladder. He’s moved all sorts of things out of the way so that he can get his ear as close to the corner as possible. The (drip) has changed cadence. When he first heard it, it went (drip)… (drip)… (drip). Now it goes: (drip) (drip) (drip).

He paws a bit at the ceiling, unsure of why he does it. He feels drawn to the (drip). Paul moved the bucket to get up, but now looks in it. He plants his palm in the bottom of it and fans his hands around. It’s dry. He can find no perceptible water. He moves the step ladder and puts the bucket back under the (drip) where he had it.

He can no longer hear the (drip).

Paul leaves the room.

In the kitchen he looks over the destruction caused by Jessica; baffled by how she flipped on him. She didn’t even give him a good chance to explain his reason to be home. He gets a glass of water, then sips in silence, listening for anymore (drip). He hears none. Paul opens his laptop and checks his work email. Nothing. No response from his voicemail either.

Curiously, we walks back into the room with the bucket. It is filled. Filled to the brim with crystal clear water.

“What?” He says to no one.

He dips his finger in the water. It’s cold. Ice cold. Looking at the ceiling, he sees no perceptible leak. Nothing to indicate that a liquid fell from anywhere to land in the bucket. He does the dance again, moving the filled bucket aside, careful not to spill, and sets the step ladder back up. He places his hands all over the walls, fondling and molesting them. He feels nothing. No wetness. (drip).

It is mocking him. He scrambles down the ladder and out of the room. Paul returns with a hammer. He climbs the step ladder and lays into the ceiling, each swing with the claw end connecting and then he rips. Opening the room to the empty spaces that make up a home. One, two, three strikes. He continues until a large hold has formed. He climbs to the tallest rung on his small ladder, sticking his head into the hole.

Silence.

He waits.

(drip).

It’s beneath him now. He drops out of the hole. (drip).

(drip).

(drip).

It’s coming from the walls.

Hammer in hand he strikes the wall, breaking it quicker and easier than the roof. Each strike a thud, then a rip. The wall tears away easy until he has a hole the size of a manhole cover. It’s a little higher than Paul’s waist. He peers inside and is surprised to find that there are no slats. There is no actual wall here. He tore into something else.

“Hello?”

The blackness is deep and infinite. Staring into the cosmos.

“Hello?” He asks again. No answer. No echo. His voice sucked into the deep vacuum of infinite space.

He feels alone. Too alone. Cold shivers. He’d even ask for Jessica to be back. Bloody hand and screaming.

Paul wants to turn away, but he can’t. He needs to pull himself away. The dark feeling like it is eating him from the inside out. As if his soul is tiny bits and is fading one by one.

There is no (drip).

There is nothing.

“Hello?” He whispers; barely audible. Paul is shaking.

The ping of an email received breaks his stare. His trance. Like a spooked cat, he shoots from the room. He wakes his computer, eager to read the email, no matter what it entails, it’s a sign of life outside of the infinite darkness inside of his home.

SENDER: UNKNOWN

SUBJECT: NOTHING

NOTHING.

SINCERELY,

NOBODY.

Paul rereads the message a few times. Someone must have been playing a trick on him. This is all a game. He goes back into the room with the hole. It’s gone. Disappeared. The previously destroyed wall fixed. As if nothing had ever happened. His step ladder put away. Hammer back in the tool box. No sign that there was ever a struggle between him and the home.

“Hello?”

There is no one here Paul.

He turns to move back to the kitchen, back to his laptop that is tethered by invisible waves to the outside world. His tiny, imperceptible tendrils to humanity. Instead, the wall behind him is now the hole. It’s grown, larger, deeper, and improbably emptier. He stares at it a moment. He feels drawn to it. So he climbs in.

–

The darkness of the hole. To move is to wade through black Jell-o. Paul is both stuck and free. His ears feel pressure as if underwater. He cannot speak. He can only wade forward, inching on his tip toes, each movement labored and difficult. He could turn back, but the opening to his home is gone. Swallowed up. No light. He is alone.

Paul moves forward for a time. Taking a break at home point. He was not out of breath, but his muscles ached. He continues.

A light. On the other side now. He continues. Claustrophobia setting him, he moves faster. The darkness hugging him, squeezing him. He can barely breathe. Reaching the light, he stretches his hand, gripping the edges around it. The darkness wants him. Wants to hold him there. Wants to devour him. He braces himself and pulls hard. He tears through the blackness and out the other side. Paul is dry and laying on the floor in his sitting room, the place where the first (drip) was heard. He takes a moment to gather himself. He looks around. The room is immaculate. Just as it was when he was meditating this morning.

Paul gets to his feet. His house is silent. He treads carefully out to the kitchen. His laptop is waiting for him. Open. But something is off. It’s a different color? The laptop. Instead of black, it is a deep blue. It is barely perceptible but he knows it. His email address in the open app, same as before, except, a tiny dot, a period in-between his first and last name.

There is an unread email.

SENDER: FRIEND

SUBJECT: EVERYTHING

EVERYTHING

SINCERELY,

FRIEND

Paul closes the lap top and looks toward the bloody wall. It’s clean now. Now a noise, a key in the door handle. The telltale turn. The front door opens Jessica walks in smiling.

“Jessica.” He says as a statement.

“Who’s Jessica?”

Paul looks at her. She is smiling back, unperturbed. None the wiser.

“You’re not Jessica?”

“Is this some kind of sex thing? Random girl enters apartment and you fuck her?”

Paul doesn’t answer.

“I’m down.”

She has a bag with her but sets it down. She kisses Paul. Her lips feel odd. Cold? Rough too. Does not feel like Jessica.

“Do you want to fuck me, baby?”

“I don’t know you.” Paul says. It’s the truth.

She lets out a loud breath. She is into this.

“Who do you want to be?”

“I’m Paul.”

“Okay, Paul.” She whispers in his ear.

Paul is not his name.

“No. I want to be me.”

“Okay, James.” She whispers in the other ear.

James? Who is James?

“Go back to the bedroom. I’ll meet you there, Jessica.”

She gives him a sultry blink before leaving the kitchen. James breaths a moment, collecting thoughts like leaves in the wind. There might be only one he can grasp. He hears her lay on the bed, the mattress welcoming her small body.

“Jessica is ready for you.” She calls from the room. James wonders what her real name is.

(drip).

He jerks his head.

(drip).

The sitting room. He rushes back in and pushes his ear against the wall where he had once tore a hole.

(drip).

It was back.

“Everything okay?”

James doesn’t respond. He runs to the kitchen and grabs the hammer from this toolbox. The handle is different. A different grain of wood. It doesn’t stop him. Back in the sitting room. He is laying into the wall.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Jessica screams from the bedroom. James continues to hammer away. Opening the hole just as before. The inside, deep and black, just as before. Jessica is by him now, naked. She looks good. James doesn’t want to go. He must go.

“What are you doing?”

He sticks a leg into the hole using it to hoist the rest of him in.

“James are you fucking crazy?”

James turns from her and into the black gel. She is screaming at him now, but it is muffled. His ears filled with the space of nothing.

James moves just as before, steady, but he is tired. This trip is not easy, less so a second time around.

The light again. He moves toward it and just as before ends up on his back in his sitting room.

But everything is a disjointed mess. Where right angles should be, nothing fits. He has no name, this much he knows.

“Alkjf;lajsdf;lkjaaojjda;ljdaksd HELLO aklsdjf;asdjf;jlajdf??”

He isn’t making sense. This much he knows.

“Asdfasdfas JESSICA? Ientoauigankl;sduafjajsd;”

“aijao;j;ajiragbnbklp’qpojp OR ,mnz,.zovauiwef”

“qwern,.nasdf OTHER? Poijkn;zsdf;oi;uq”

Nothing. He is nothing. He moves toward the wall. Hammer in hand. How did it get there and why is it a spike? Rhino?

Caving in the walls.

The hits sound hollow.

“Meow.”

A hole again. He climbs through. The same as before. Third time. Rinse and repeat.

The wall color is different.

He lies on the floor. Listening. It would appear that he is alone.

(drip.)

Again.

He picks himself up slowly, his body racked.

The kitchen is lit different. LEDs instead of fluorescents. His hammer, now a mallet. He retrieves it nonetheless and begins the hole in the wall the same as before.

(drip.)

He hits the wall, breaking through, except this time, exposing the wood beneath.

(drip.)

A pipe, revealed, a tiny drip. The leak had been found.