Whispers of a Former Life: Episode 37

Charity didn’t remember falling asleep. She only remembered waking — again and again — each time to a new noise that made her heart leap against her ribs like a trapped rabbit. 

She lay curled deep in the crook of Alejandra’s hoodie, swaddled in cotton that still held a fading warmth from Alejandra’s skin. But it wasn’t enough to keep the cold at bay, or the noise out, or her thoughts quiet. 

Outside the thin walls and rattling window, the city pressed close, alive at an hour that should have been dead quiet. Distant traffic hummed endlessly — cars, trucks, the occasional groan of a city bus pulling away from the curb. Somewhere far off, a siren sang its lonely wail through the concrete canyons, punctuated by the shriek of brakes and a barked curse that bounced up from the street to rattle the pane of glass inches from Alejandra’s bed. 

Charity buried her face deeper into the fabric but could not block it out. 

Closer still were the noises inside Alejandra’s tiny apartment — noises Charity never would have tolerated, never would have even noticed, in her real life, her old life. 

Water, trickling then roaring through ancient pipes in the walls each time some neighbor flushed or washed or ran a tap. A drip, drip, drip from the kitchen faucet that landed on metal with the same piercing clarity as a hammer on a bell. A soft scuttle in a ceiling corner that Charity refused to name or picture for fear her imagination would conjure an enormous roach inches from her fragile face. 

But worst of all,  worst by far,  were the sounds that belonged to Alejandra herself. 

Charity could hear her breathing. Not just the gentle rise and fall she’d once found reassuring in the presence of another person, but the raw, unpolished reality of human sleep. The muffled snore that would break off halfway through an exhale only to be replaced by a soft grunt. A rustle of sheets as Alejandra shifted on the thin mattress, chasing a warm spot. A sleepy cough that shook the whole bedframe, vibrating through the floorboards and into the hoodie where Charity lay huddled like a mouse. 

Each tiny noise cut into the fragile silence Charity’s mind craved. Back in her father’s house, her bedroom had been a fortress of layered drapes and thick walls, tucked far from the street. She’d slept with climate control humming low and white noise carefully tuned to mask any hint of the world outside. No dripping faucets. No city breath. No snoring servant within arm’s reach. 

Here? Here there was no buffer. Alejandra breathed and the room heard it. Alejandra turned over and the floorboards moaned. The window rattled in its warped frame with every truck that lumbered by three stories down. Charity lay pinned by all of it, every sound magnified by her new scale, vibrating inside her tiny bones like an unwelcome lullaby she could not escape. 

She flipped onto her other side, hoping the new position might quiet her racing mind. It didn’t. Instead her eyes fixed on a sliver of yellow streetlight leaking through the folded hoodie, a crack in her cotton fortress she could do nothing to seal. 

A deep, wet sniffle came from the bed above her. Then silence,  for a second, before Alejandra snorted softly, shifted again, and sighed into her pillow. Charity squeezed her eyes shut, hot tears pressing at the corners. 

How does she sleep through all this? 

She pictured Alejandra sprawled under a thin blanket, oblivious to the squealing pipes and barking dogs outside. It struck her like a slap that this was normal for Alejandra. Expected. The girl probably hadn’t slept in perfect hush for years, maybe her whole life. 

Charity envied it for one bitter heartbeat,  that ability to let it all fade into a dreamless dark. Then she hated herself for the envy. 

She pulled her knees tighter, making herself small inside the hoodie, trying to mimic the way she used to nestle under Egyptian cotton duvets in a bed that could have slept four. Her fingers traced a seam in the fabric, finding a loose thread and worrying it with her nail until it split into two. 

Alejandra’s cough rumbled again. A truck rumbled past outside. A neighbor’s toilet flushed. 

Charity clenched her teeth and cursed them all in her mind. Cursed the hoodie for being scratchy and faintly damp where it pressed against her shin. Cursed the cheap floor that creaked and the city that roared and the girl,  the girl,  who now owned the roof over her head. 

She didn’t remember dozing off this time either. She only remembered the shock of her eyes snapping open when Alejandra shifted too close and the bedframe thudded softly. 

Wide awake again. Trembling. Listening. 

The hoodie rustled around her like a giant heartbeat. The city whispered its endless secrets through the cracked window. Alejandra slept on, breathing deep and oblivious. 

And Charity lay there beneath it all,  a speck in the quiet roar of a life that would never again bend to hers. 

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