A Squeal in the Night

This is one of those nights when I can remember what troubles me about this struggling, eventful kind of life. Day after day goes by, and I manage to convince myself that I'm making at least reasonable use of my time. I can go to work, fool around with my toys, have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with my wife, and feel, overall, as though my days are worthwhile.

The tree has woken up again, though. It has grown out, and, for the first time in nearly a year, it reaches the windowpane again.

Maybe it's a hard bud ready to break free, or maybe it's just a hard, dead twig, still hanging on from our odd, cold winter. Whatever the physical cause is, however, is not nearly as fascinating as the actual effect it is having.

You know that awful sound and feeling that comes when someone drags their fingernails down a chalkboard? This sound is a lot like that, except it's more like a tooth being dragged, and it's more like the chalkboard is made of glass. You know how your spine gets all twisted up when someone pulls that stunt? This is that same twisting of the spine, except that it has lasted all day, and shows every inclination of lasting through the night. Try to picture yourself taking that feeling home from school with you, and having it living in your spine all afternoon, evening and night. Your ears and head and back and bones are all cringing together at once, all day and night long. You are cringing while you're playing soccer. Your ears want to scream as you sit down to dinner. Your body writhes all evening as you try to watch TV. Then, as you're laying in bed, trying to sleep, that sound-feeling keeps going, all through the darkness, and all through your dreams.

If there were paper maps of our lives and minds, this one, instead of saying "Here be Dragons," would say, "Here be Insanity," for that's exactly what this would drive you to, without even stopping for burgers on the way.

Just when it's been quiet for a while, and I think that maybe it's tired, and given up, or realized that it won't get through to me, the wind brushes by, and the windowpane squeals again.

It's a reminder for me. I could ignore it easily enough - indeed, I've done so most of the day. Still, it's been there, all along, and I've never not heard it, at some level or another. We've played this game before, you and the wind and I, and once again, now that it's dark and late and lights are going out around the neighborhood, I toy with this demon, and listen to it toying with me. We're both smirking, I know, but which of us is really the cockiest? A big enough branch, a strong enough breeze, and the force of nature could send the shards of an entire window right through my throat, my eyes, my brain.

I am confident, though. I am calm, and content, and serene in the knowledge that my magic is stronger than nature's. I am of the race that can make it as bright as daytime, all night long. No longer do I scrawl on cave walls with the dead coals of a fire. I use the bones of creatures dead for millions of years to make my marks all over the world, in the minds of all people. What power can nature claim to top this?