the drilling sounds

The drilling sounds persisted. They ran through his skull badly, left his rudiments shaken, it seemed. He felt them all about his person, like blood in his veins, in his bowels and also in other physical locations he preferred not to mention. He presumed them the result of microwaves or radiation or one of what he termed the “modern phenomena”, although this was a term meaningless to the description of such occurrences or notions. They were at their grave worst when he sought the solace of sleep as he did daily. The silence of the dark room was an environment especially conducive to the drilling sounds, and their oppressiveness at such times was unbearable and relieved only – and only some – by his screaming into the night, which he did reliably, and to the consternation of his neighbours.

He eyed technology with suspicion for its almost certain role in the commencement some months earlier of the drilling sounds that now tormented him, and shunned the varying devices of convenience and modernity that were so prevalent in the lives of his peers. He had until such time owned one device relating to processes of the most basic telephony, but as the drilling sounds worsened had deconstructed its casing and interior assembly with a variety of tools and implements until he was as certain as he could be that the emission of microwaves or radiation from the device were minimal if not non-existent. He left the fundamental components – as broken down as had been possible in the circumstances to their most basic aspect – at a variety of strategic locations around the city, each a minimum distance from his own residence to, he hoped, negate the impact of any residual microwaves of radiation that might still be emitted from the device and into his own head and thereby responsible for the perpetuation of the drilling sounds. He performed similar acts of disruption to the handful of other electrical items he kept in his lodging until a sufficiently primitive state was attained, but still the drilling sounds persisted. He was acutely aware of the continuing presence of significant electricals within bare metres of his own lodging and which it was simply impossible to avoid within an urban environment such as the one in which he resided, and he felt hopeless and even desperate towards his plight and unable to conceptualise relief of any kind for as long as society proceeded on its present trajectory, in thrall – as it was – to technology and purported “advancement”, when these two "benefits" had such severe impacts on the physiological and psychological processes of the human person, even if such impacts were unproven and ignored as, he knew, was so often the case with facts before they become so.

He had on one or two occasions mentioned to his neighbours the drilling sounds and his hypothesis pertaining to the harmful microwaves or radiation from the myriad devices that were so common at that time and that caused them, which is to say the drilling sounds, and proposed an amnesty, of sorts, in which those devices were safely destroyed at a site chosen by him of adequate and safe distance from their own lodging, but his neighbours observed him cautiously as though he were in some way faulty and suggested he sought assistance from a kind of trained counsel either medical, psychiatric or both, and asserted their wish to not speak to him at any length or for any reason until such assistance had been sought. “One cannot judge an orange by its segments,” he said certainly, but they had each dispersed before the words were emerged. He had imagined similar but felt pessimistic at their ignorance, such was the lot of the chosen and the great, who throughout all human endeavour felt great scorn from the fearful masses who yearned only for constancy. Exhausted, he clutched at his head upon both of its sides and gripped with what little might he could muster from his tiredness, and dug his fingertips into his scalp in great grindings until the discomfort was tangible, as though the pressure applied might relieve the drilling sounds within, and his eyes watered as he dug and his nails cut into the pale skin and the drilling sounds abated not at all and in fact if anything worsened as the pain subsided and his scalp was tacky with some slight blood of his own hand. He presently began to punch and hurt himself in other ways in myriad failed attempts to distract from the drilling sounds that made sleep impossible and that had become already inevitable. His bruises were a source of great wonder when the drilling sounds permitted.

Badly sleep deprived he devoted many hours to the building of microwave and radiation detectors from solely organic products: sticks, mud, grasses and foliage, the like, to capture and reprocess and somehow soften the intensity of the waves about him, but these constructions were futile.

Over time he may come to cherish or comprehend the drilling sounds, of this he assured himself. He could not foresee such a time, he accepted, but it may come, it may.