The Silence Between Objects

The room does not announce that it is about to turn against me. It never does. It simply pauses—just long enough for me to notice the space between one breath and the next.

I am sitting on the sofa, hands folded, trying to remember what I was doing before the pause arrived. The mug on the armrest leans slightly, its dark ring of tea dried into a crescent moon. Across from me, the bookcase stands in its usual posture of quiet Judgment, rows of spines waiting to be chosen, or forgiven. Nothing is wrong. That is the problem.

The clock ticks, but the sound feels distant, as though it is happening in another apartment, in another version of my life. I stare at the wall, at a small crack that runs from the corner of the ceiling down toward the door frame, and I cannot remember when it appeared. It feels new. Or perhaps I am.

My breath shortens. Not dramatically—there is no cinematic gasp—but subtly, like a tide pulling back further than it should. I stand, then sit again, unsure why I moved at all. The air thickens. The room grows louder without making a sound.

I focus on the objects, because they are solid and obedient, because they have not yet learned how to betray me.

The lamp. The rug. The photograph on the shelf of a beach I once stood on, smiling as though the world had made sense then. I name them silently, as if they might vanish if I do not. Between each object, there is a gap—an invisible seam where something waits. That silence presses in, elastic and patient.

The refrigerator hums from the kitchen, a low mechanical reassurance. Then it stops.

The sudden absence of sound hits harder than noise ever could. My heart stutters, confused by the quiet. I feel it then: the sensation that I am slipping slightly out of alignment, like a painting knocked askew but not yet fallen.

I walk to the window. Outside, the street exists without me. A car passes. A dog pulls against its leash. Somewhere, someone laughs, the sound thin and unreal through the glass. I press my hand to the windowpane. It is cold, grounding, proof. For a moment, I think I am safe.

Then my reflection catches my eye.

There is nothing monstrous there—no hollow eyes, no dramatic fracture—but the familiarity feels wrong, as though I am looking at a stranger who happens to know my face. The silence deepens, pooling behind my ribs. I wonder, briefly and irrationally, if I might dissolve into it, if the space between things is wide enough to swallow a person whole.

My thoughts begin to scatter. Words arrive without context. What if this never stops? What if this is the moment everything finally comes undone? The questions pile up, urgent and sharp, each one nudging me closer to the edge of something I cannot see.

I grip the back of a chair. The wood is solid, ridged beneath my fingers. I name it. Chair. Floor. Wall. My voice does not leave my throat, but the act of naming steadies me, stitches me loosely back into place.

The refrigerator hums again. The sound is ordinary, almost insulting in its normalcy, but relief floods me all the same. My breathing slows, reluctantly at first, then with growing confidence. The room eases its grip. Objects resume their quiet watch, no longer conspiring, merely existing.

The silence does not vanish. It never does. But it retreats to where it belongs—in the spaces between things, where it can no longer hurt me.

I sit back down on the sofa. The mug still leans. The crack in the wall remains. The world has not changed. Only my place within it has.