The Buzzer

The apartment where she was starting her life over had one of those outdated intercom systems with a loud, jarring buzzer that always made her heart jump and her skin itch. Her cats hated it too, always scattering when the noise rang through her apartment, sprinting for that dark, enclosed space under her bed that made them both impossible to find. She wondered, as that buzzer echoed through her apartment and her breath caught in her chest and her cats' claws slid over the hardwood floor as they ran for cover, if it would still make her feel that way if she wasn't now built out of anxiety and PTSD. But there was no point in what ifs and maybes in this brave new world.

She hurried over to the intercom as the second buzz began and pressed the 'Talk' button.

"Hello?"

After swapping to the 'Listen' button, she waited. That damn buzzer always made this faceless, nameless exchange feel worse. More stressful. Like she was still a child answering the front door when neither of her parents were home.

The response took long enough that she'd nearly removed her finger from the 'Listen' button by the time it crackled over the speaker, staticky and full of nightmares.

"Hey. It's me." And just like that, her stress kicked up into a full-blown panic. Because that voice? She knew it was him. The man who used to be her favorite person. Her best friend. The man whose love had filled the spaces between her ribs and changed the air in her lungs into flowers and magic. The warm, kind man who'd disappeared overnight, replaced by a new person who shared his face but nothing else.

She could still recognize the quirk of his lips and every freckle on his wrist, but it was impossible to reconcile his disrespect, his cruelty and cold inhumanity, with that man she'd loved. And this new man, he'd decimated her. Left her in bits and pieces that were scattered in the gutter like soggy trash.

How? How did he find her? This new apartment in this new neighborhood was her safe haven, her sanctum against the fear she now felt at shadows in corners and silhouettes under streetlamps.

Her hand was numb as it slipped away from the intercom, but she clenched her jaw. No. She'd be damned if she let that man steal her safety ever again. He was separated from her by two locked doors and one flight of stairs, and she wasn't about to change that.

The buzzer went off again. She forced down the panic and turned away, her couch beckoning. The television was still paused on an episode of One Tree Hill. It was just the thing to forget the man who was still buzzing over her intercom.

As she returned to her cozy nest of fuzzy green blankets and cream pillows and overly expensive ottomans, she pretended. There was a make-believe world where some version of her stood at that intercom, held the 'Talk' button, and yelled at him. Called him every mean name she'd ever thought over the speaker. Forced him to actually understand the pain he caused her. And maybe in that world, he'd feel some of that pain himself. And the guilt and horror of realizing what he'd done would eat him alive.

But that world didn't exist. She knew there was no point in trying to make him hear what he'd done because he never would. A man so horrible will tell himself any lie to never face the truth.

So, she sat on her couch, listening to the buzzer, and she built herself new bones made of concrete and skin made of steel. She turned those shadows in corners that used to scare her into armor. The silhouettes under the streetlamps became her own personal army, another wall between her and him.

Eventually, he left. But she could still hear that loud, jarring buzzer echoing in the hollow shell of her body all night long.