Litany in G major

Snoring.
Snoring and snoring and snoring.
And every snore takes a new shape. First the phone on the nightstand, bzzz, bzzz, a notification that doesn’t exist. Then a truck in the street, but there is no street. A dog barking, but I have no dog. The snores are animals I’ve never seen: a pig with no eyes, a cow walking upside down. They are a capital G, guttural. Like an Arab or a Hebrew throat trying to start a phrase.
G. G. G. G.

Silicone plugs.
Headphones.
Fake rain on the phone.
The rain turns into blood dripping down the windows. The music breaks apart, each note becomes snore, snore, snore.

Three nights, four, twenty. It doesn’t matter. Time is a clock with no hands. I am inside the belly of the clock, and every breath of the old man is the pendulum. The world is his throat.
G. G. G. G.

I see the vibration. I don’t hear it, I see it. Waves crossing through the ceiling, descending like invisible cords wrapping my ankles, shaking my occipital bones, letting me see the ceiling with the lights off. The snores speak. Words.
—Come.
—Open.
—Finish it.

Amazon. Lockpicks¹. The red box arrives and the box itself tells me: “I am the solution.” A sheet of instructions, and then opening a lock is the simplest thing in the world. The tools shine like a dentist’s instruments, like a surgeon’s kit.

Opening the door is like opening a giant eye. The house is an old lung breathing slowly. Walls swelling, ceilings sinking, everything throbbing with him.
G. G. G. G.

I watch him: apnea. Please stop breathing.
G. G. G. G.

They are back again. He's sleeping. Or not. Maybe it's not him. Maybe it’s a huge animal, a beast under the sheets, a trembling mountain. Like a domestic Smaug. The open mouth is a black tunnel. Snores roll out like train cars, like soldiers, like furious bees swarming my skull.

Hands on his throat. I sit on the old man. And I press. I press hard. He opens his eyes and looks at me. But he can’t do anything. He thrashes, suffocates, and every time he growls, the house growls with him. The walls shake, the furniture crashes, the world collapses. The G’s turn into harsh H’s. Then into silent h’s. I go on, go on, go on.

And then nothing.
No sound.
A void so vast it hurts my ears.

…

Silence.

I go back home.
I close my eyes.
I smile like a child.
I sleep.