Awake

THREE

It doesn't take long to break a habit, even a lifetime habit of ignoring the things at the corner of your eye, of not looking closely enough, of ignoring the pieces of the puzzle that don't quite fit.

I haven't got many friends. Maybe you've picked that up from my posts so far. I'm not sociable. I'm not like the girls you see on TV. Spoken words, they don't come easily to me. At least, not to strangers.

Maybe this...maybe this disintegration of the world around me is a reason – is one of the reasons I've never quite fit in. These gaps in the logic, in the science of everything – maybe I've lived in one of those gaps my entire life.

There was a fog this morning.

I catch the ferry to uni. There'd never been a fog before. I could see it on the horizon, this thick wall of white – so still, it was almost like it was being held back by a glass wall.

The captain made an announcement over the speaker, telling us we were going to be late.

Then we entered it, like breaking into a cloud.

It was so thick we couldn't see more than a metre around the ferry. The water around the hull was absolutely still. And that wasn't right, because the ferry crosses the harbour and goes past the heads, which lead into the open ocean, so there's always small waves – sometimes swell of more than a few metres. This mirror-like stillness was unnatural. Bizarre. And there was that thick fog, so impenetrable that we couldn't see the shore. It was like we were somewhere else entirely. Like we could be anywhere in the world.

The foghorn split through the air, and it felt like the sound shattered my eardrums. The foghorns of the other boats, invisible and distant on the water, were like an immense, haphazard orchestra warming up.

I looked around, smiling a bit, wondering whether the other passengers had also jumped, but then I froze.

Because everyone had gone. I was alone, on the deck. The sound of the engine had stopped. There was nothing but the eerie sounds of the horns in the distance.

That's when I heard the scream.

My entire body tightened up at the sound, doubled over – like a convulsion. Like one of those insects, slate bugs, curling up when you poke them. I didn't even think before completing the movement and crouching down on the ground, out of sight of the windows that connected the open deck and the interior of the boat.

Every single one of my senses strained towards the sounds inside.

I heard raised voices. I crept closer to the windows – so I'd be out of immediate view – and peeked up over the edge of the sill, but couldn't see anything.  I heard a woman speaking. She had a rough voice.

" – there'd be one. First run of the day. He's got to be a... " Her voice trailed away as she moved further from my hidden position, though I lowered my head and held my breath trying to catch more.

The second voice made me jerk, it was so close. Less than a meter away. A male voice. "Nothing here."

It took every bit of discipline I had to keep from scrabbling away. It was coming from directly above me – as though he was standing on the other side of the window I had just been peering through. He must have been walking along the inside wall, out of my line of sight. I was swearing fluently and silently inside my head, though I probably should have counted myself lucky that I'd ducked back down behind the window when I had. Just one more second, and he would have seen me.

I didn't know what it was about these strangers that sent such an immense feeling of fear through me. The scream probably helped. I wondered who had made the sound.