A Song in Your Head

There is a certain eeriness to their building. Frank’s never been a huge fan of it. Pete only lives in this apartment because it’s an affordable price, and Frank only stays with him because he doesn’t have any more money than Pete does, and he also has nowhere else to stay.

He is not going back to his mother’s house. That would be demeaning. He couldn’t fathom ever having to go back there, because, to put it simply, he would rather fail on his own than succeed under that roof. It’s a very stifling place to live, as are most places, but extra so in his childhood home.

It’s not even because his mother is strict, though that does play a hand in it surely, it’s mostly because that house is where most of his dreams turned to dust in the first place. That’s where Frank’s love of everything was quashed before he ever had a chance to see it really fully bloom.

Frank was going to be a guitarist in a punk band. He was going to be Prince, except a little taller. He was going to be George Harrison, except a little shorter. He was going to be Slash but not so creepy and with a lot less hair. Maybe Frank Zappa except without the pervy moustache. Frank just really wanted to be a famous guitarist, that’s all.

He walks along the sidewalk, back to their building, mindlessly humming some song that’s been stuck in his head that he’d really rather not know at all. He’s pretty sure it’s by Michael Bublé which is the first reason why he wishes he doesn’t know it. Secondly, Frank doesn’t know what the hell it is, but there’s something really fucking charming about Michael Bublé. He’s the kind of guy you’d take home to your mom and be proud of, but your mom would eventually like him better than you, and Frank doesn’t know what it is about him that makes that so true, it just is. The song he’s humming is the only song that anyone actually knows by Bublé which is Haven't Met You Yet, and there’s definitely some irony there that he just isn’t sensing.

Frank’s mind is occupied with that and his curiosity as to what’s happening with Pete right now. Due to his incredible awkwardness, he would be very surprised if Patrick’s caught on to a fucking thing yet, but Pete’s probably over there making an idiot of himself. He might be trying to impress Patrick with that thoroughly unimpressive story about how Pete won a trophy for consuming the most amount of Oreos in under a minute at a fair. Frank keeps trying to tell him that there is nothing even the slightest bit sexy or alluring about that, but Pete insists that Frank just doesn’t get it. Maybe Frank doesn’t but the most likely option is that Pete is really really bad at flirting.

Frank hurries through the door to the building, the cold more evident as the wind hits his face, and he slouches his shoulders when he steps into the very unexciting entrance to the apartment building. He makes his way towards the steps, takes them two at a time, and very nearly trips on a couple steps.

Frank arrives on the landing where Pete’s apartment is and he’s making his way down the hall when he notices something’s wrong.

He looks up from where his eyes were focused on his feet and that’s when he notices that their door is ajar. Frank, knowing that they’ve only been gone for about twenty minutes, just assumes that one of them must have accidentally left the door open. He knows that nothing could have possibly happened in that short a time span, or at least, he doesn’t think something could have happened.

But then Frank steps a little closer and it’s like someone’s shot him in the forehead with the realization that strikes him in a matter of seconds.

Frank gets ever nearer to the door, even though time has literally come to stand still. Frank’s positive that the earth has slowed down, because there is no way that any of this is happening in real time. There’s no way his footsteps can actually be that loud, and there’s no way he can actually be hearing his own heart beat like it’s a huge clock tower chiming from outside the building. There’s no way any of this is real, because time does not work like this, he’s sure of it.

It’s when Frank is actually standing in the frame of the door when he realizes the entirety of this situation. The door’s been kicked in. Frank evaluates the lock, too nervous to turn and look inside the rest of the apartment, too terrified to even begin to think about it. The lock is broken, Frank’s sure of that. It’s hanging off its hinges like a gaping wound in the door. It looks like someone kicked at it, which, in all likelihood, is precisely what happened.

Frank then looks past the lock into the apartment, feeling his heart either stop, or beat as fast as the speed of light. He’s not sure which. It seems like both and neither at the same time. Either way, a medical professional would be severely confused.

Maybe it’s an illusion, or maybe Frank is completely correct, but it feels like its several degrees colder in the apartment than it is in the hall. It feels like Antarctica. It’s far too cold for it to be at this time of the year. Also, it’s much darker than Frank can imagine it to be when he realizes that the lights are on. The main light, the one that hangs in the dank little living room, is on, and it’s illuminating most of the front room, which includes the kitchen and the hall that’s barely even classifiable as a hall, leading down to the bathroom.

For a moment, the too-small apartment seems like the biggest place in the world. It seems like the Roman Colosseum, vast and wonderful. It seems like the best home in the world, the only one Frank’s ever lived in and ever loved. It feels like everything, and that’s because it is everything. It’s not the grandest place in the world, but this is still his home.

Frank’s breathing is out of control now. He can’t find his breath. He feels like a three hundred year old asthmatic smoker being choked to death. He can’t fill his lungs. It’s as if someone took a vacuum cleaner and sucked up all the air in the room, leaving Frank purple in the face and dying.

Then, it’s as if the time that had all slowed down is put into fast forward. First, Frank’s slamming the broken door shut behind him, wedging a chair underneath it so that it’s a semblance of closed, and then he’s throwing things everywhere, trying to figure out what’s gone. Obviously the first thing he notices is gone is the Wii. That’s livable, not ideal, but at least he doesn’t need it to live. Secondly, their TV is still there, not surprising, it’d be a hell of a burglar who knows how to steal a TV in under fifteen minutes with that much precision.

Frank’s biggest fear is proved correctly though when he looks literally everywhere, the coffee table, the couch, underneath every item of furniture, even the dishwasher, and that’s when he realizes his laptop is gone. Frank quickly walks over to Pete’s room, makes quick effort of searching everywhere that Pete would likely keep his own laptop, and that’s when he comes up empty for both of their computers. Their laptops are gone.

Frank sort of just collapses on the floor of Pete’s room, his head in his hands, not even bothering to try to remember that he’s a twenty year old man who’s not supposed to cry. Sometimes though, he just doesn’t fucking care. This is one of those times.

He can’t even begin to describe what he’s feeling. Stupidity. Humility. Desperation. Petrification. Most of all, a freezing cold, incomprehensible, all-consuming sensation of pure dread.

Frank feels like someone’s just diagnosed him with a terminal illness. He can’t even begin to describe it. It kills him, it’s not even believable.

Everything important to him in the world was on that computer. Everything he needed. Every tiny little thing that Frank depended on is gone.

Fuck, Frank thinks, literally everything he knew was in the hard drive of that stupid fucking laptop. He actually has a document with all of his passwords on it because he’s bad at remembering them. And it’s gone. All of it. Nearly four years of building up his entire life around that tiny little thing is just gone because some bastard decided to ruin his life.

Frank’s finding it impossible to come up with a single silver lining here. All he can focus on is this guttural horror. He doesn’t keep a surplus of money in the apartment, no money hidden in the sock drawer, but he’s not finding that to be much of a comfort. He had his phone on him when he left so he has that, but that doesn’t help him feel any better either. There’s just nothing. Nothing but grief and fear and loathing of whomever has done this.

It’s just that, no one ever expects to be the victim. No one ever thinks that they’re going to be the one who’s victimized by anything. As far as people are concerned, we’re all untouchable, invincible, impossible to hurt. No one would ever dream of robbing you, no one would ever dream of kidnapping, maiming, murdering, blackmailing, or anything else to you. No one would ever dream of messing with you.

That’s how it feels. That’s how people feel about the world. Frank never could have thought it possible to be the one who was hurt by something like this, because he never thought it possible that it would happen to him.

This kind of thing happens to other people. Other people get robbed. Other people have their valuables stolen. Other people have their apartments burgled or their laptops taken, it doesn’t happen to you. It can’t have happened to him.

But it has. That fear is crippling to Frank and that’s one of the reasons why he feels like someone rerouted Niagara Falls to come out of his eyes.

Everything seems cold now. Everything seems fallible. It’s like someone flipped a switch in Frank’s mind, because, yesterday, this apartment felt safe. It’s not that it particularly is safe, but he felt immortal. Frank never thought about himself ever being hurt, because he’d never had to deal with it. Never had to even wonder what it was like to have someone tear your place apart, stealing everything of value. He never had to worry about it.

Now though, he looks around and everything seems spoiled. Everything about this apartment is scary. Frank could sleep on that couch outside of this door and he could feel untouchable, but now, he sits on the floor and he’s afraid. He’s afraid of what’s happened. He’s afraid of the fact that someone victimized this apartment, and it feels as though someone victimized him personally. It feels like someone took a knife and carved out scars all over his body. It feels like Frank was personally assaulted.

Sure this place isn’t the Buckingham Palace or anything of the sort, but as much as he’d try to deny it, its home. Frank lives here. He’s lived here for a good chunk of a year. This is where he comes home every night, takes a shower, and eats his dinner. This is it. This is where he lives.

Now there’s a big blemish on it. It’s not the fact that the door is broken in, it’s not the fact that their most important possessions are missing, it’s the fact that someone came in here unannounced, unwelcomed, and they took. They took, and they stole, and they left. Just like that. They stole everything that Frank is now finding it unfathomable to live without. Most importantly, they’ve now taken away Frank’s sense of security.

His built-in sense that everything will be okay, it’s gone. Now all he sees when he looks around him, looks around at Pete’s room, he sees spoiled items. He sees spoiled clothes, a spoiled mattress, spoiled floors, spoiled everything. Everything looks vile and putrid to him now, and that only makes him feel worse.

Frank’s never played the victim. He’s used to playing the role of the broken, but never has this coincided with feeling like he’s been personally wronged.

So Frank just sits there, his knees pressed against his chest, his heart beating at a sporadic rate, his eyes feeling heavy and stinging, and he feels the whole world crumble down into the bowels of the earth, leaving everything in black and white. He feels his entire worth fall down a drain, like his entire life is amounted simply in the place he lives, and it’s awful. They say that home is where the heart is, and Frank suddenly feels like that’s the truest thing to ever have been said. He’s hated this place for as long as he’s lived here, but it’s his home and it’s where he lives, and it’s now been tarnished. He doesn’t know how to handle this feeling. He hates it and he wants it to go away, but it’s not leaving him.

Frank feels alone. He feels his age catching up to him, even though he’s not that old. He feels his body grow tired like an old man. Most of all, he feels scared and afraid of his own home. The one place, the one place in the world where he’s supposed to feel safe, it’s been taken away from him now. All he feels is horror at his own home, and that’s a feeling no one deserves.

All Frank can think is that this could have happened to anyone else. It should’ve happened to anyone else. He doesn’t even care if he’s being selfish right now, he doesn’t care, this should have been anyone else in the entire world. It should’ve been their neighbors, or the people who live upstairs. It should have been some famous celebrity, or his weird aunt that lives in upstate New York. It should’ve been his future brother in law, or his boss. This should have been literally anyone but him and Pete. This is all just some big mistake, whoever did this, they meant to attack someone else’s home.

Except they didn’t. They attacked Frank’s home. They annihilated his sense of comfort in his own home for a couple of bucks. Why’d it have to be Frank?

Frank wants to be mad at everyone and everything all at the same time. He wants to blame the world and everyone in it. He wants his stuff back. He wants to scrub this entire place down with soap to clean up any trace of whoever was in here. He wants to rewind time and stop this ever happening.

Honestly, he doesn’t even care so much about the stuff on his laptop right now. He just doesn’t. Sure it sucks, but that’s not what he hates most about this, because, really, what he wants most of all, he just wants to stop feeling so scummy and broken in his own home. He just wants that to go away. He wants that feeling of safety back. But it’s gone, and now he’s afraid it will never return to him.