A Voice Outside

Leonard plucks a cheese ball from under the front right leg of his chair. It’s stale, dusty, and he doesn’t think twice about putting it in his mouth.

At some point in the last few years, time ceased having any significance to Leonard. Hours drift by without acknowledgement. Most people would say that Leonard spends these hours doing literally nothing at all, although most of it is devoted to video games and surfing the internet. If you ask him, he probably wouldn’t be able to tell you how long it had been since he’d last turned away from the glowing monitor.

But one night, a voice just outside Leonard’s window, a voice from the cold midnight streets, grabs his attention.

“Who are you?” it says, punctuated by a drawn-out gasp.

Leonard freezes in his chair; muscles he had forgotten in his thighs and buttocks stiffen and heat spreads through his body. His eyes detach from the glare of the computer screen to fix on the window across his one-bedroom apartment. Orange lights from the complex across the street flicker on as the sound of a struggles commences outside.

A woman suddenly howls... in pain?

“Go away!” she pleads. “I don’t know you!”

Leonard is utterly entranced. He can’t bear to hear her without putting a face to the voice, so he imagines her in her early twenties, a university student walking home from a late shift at a restaurant or bar. Her voice is deep and rough so he pictures her with short, crimson hair and a Ramones shirt. She is a casual punker rocker; she loves the Ramones, the Misfits, some of the newer bands too but is not fully dedicated to punk’s ideologies. No wild piercings or disastrous makeup for this girl. His girl to create.

She screams out again, louder this time: “Help me, please! He’s got a knife!” and Leonard’s fantasy bursts like a soap bubble. More and more lights come on from across the street as her voice gets louder, but Leonard sits back in the dark as his imagination flares up again. In his mind she moves through the street while the assailant, in jeans, a black leather jacket and mask, grabs at her. She is good; she worms herself out of most of his attacks but every now and then she trips and he gets her.

The hollow twang of a lamppost being struck rips through the street like a vicious bat tearing the night in half. There is a cry and the sound of more struggling before something heavy hits the pavement.

Leonard gets up and throws the light switch on, erasing the darkness with more decisiveness than is characteristic of him. Summoning thunder in his vocal chords, he leans out the window and yells: “Hey! You down there! Get off her and get moving! I called the police; they know what you look like and they’re on their way here. Don’t you waste another minute, just drop her and leave!” And the man is, indeed, off; chasing the bat through the night. Leonard rushes down the fire stairs two steps at a time and finds the girl sprawled on the concrete. There are a few cuts in her leather jacket that managed to graze her skin, but nothing serious. With delicate fingers, Leonard pulls her eyelids open and examines her under the warm glow of the streetlight. She is struggling out of a minor concussion, nothing more. Her lips, dry and swollen from breathing so hard, open enough to let a groan through.

“Shh…” he comforts her. “You’re alright. I don’t think he got you bad.”

“Help me,” she moans.

Leonard’s breath catches in his throat and he racks his brain for what to say.

“Help me, please. Somebody.”

“I’m… I am helping you. I told you you’re going to be alright.”

“Please. Please, he’s hurting me. He’s on top of me.”

“N-no he isn’t, it’s just me. My name’s…”

But her anguish pulls Leonard away from his fantasy and back into his apartment. It’s small and tired now but her voice reaches his window. Other muscles reacquaint themselves with him as anxiety and helplessness gnaw at every corner of his mind. He runs a hand through his thinning hair, trading salt and crumbs for sweat and oil, and he finds his heart beating so fast it sends ripples across his body.

Reassurance presents itself in the warm glow of the computer screen and the cushion of the chair against his thighs and buttocks until, finally, his heart races just a little slower. Of course, like always, there are thoughts:

Look down. See if she’s alright.

Get up and turn the light on.

You are a useless sack of crap.

Do something.

These are old friends whom he will hear from again and again for the rest of his life. What Leonard hears down there in the glow of the streetlight beneath his window probably won’t be forgotten, either. It won’t haunt him every day. He might even go weeks, or months, without thinking about it, and the thoughts that are his life-long companions will leave alone for a while. He’s good that way. But they always come back at some point. Every now and then. Just to remind him of who he is. Of what he does. Always.

Nothing.