The Hum

The Hum

The hum had always been there. Low, distant, a tremor in the bones of the world. It was a presence, yet for years, Thomas had learned to ignore it. To let it fade, just at the edges of his awareness, like a hum from a far-off machine. He could hear it if he focused, pressing against his skull, curling beneath his thoughts. But most of the time, it was enough to leave it be. If he paid too much attention, it would consume him.

Still, there were moments—brief and fleeting—when the hum grew louder, as though it were vibrating through the air itself, shifting the very fabric of the world around him. He felt it behind his eyes, a deep pressure, like his vision was stretching too thin, tearing at the seams of something he couldn’t quite grasp. In those moments, on the verge of slipping into sleep or rising from a dream, it whispered:

What am I listening to?

There was never an answer. Not one that made sense, anyway.

No one else seemed to hear it. At least, no one admitted it. Or maybe they were so absorbed in their own struggles, their own inner tremors, that they couldn’t hear the one thing that lingered like a constant. The world around him was fluid, relentless, always on the move, like it was heading somewhere he couldn’t follow. Thomas never felt like he was moving. It was as if the world moved him.

For years, he had tried to ignore it, tried to push the questions away. He had tried asking, once or twice. He had wanted to ask more—something more than the question that hung, always unanswered. But every time, the words slipped away. The questions crumbled before they reached his lips, dissolving into shapes that didn’t quite fit the space they were meant to occupy.

And when he did manage to force the words out, they didn’t sound like his own. They were fractured echoes, voices borrowed from places just beyond reach. They weren’t his to ask, and so they crumbled back into the void before anyone could respond.

The others didn’t notice. Not really. They responded—nodded, smiled, spoke back in patterns he hadn’t chosen but somehow knew by heart. They filled the silence with responses that didn’t feel right. Their voices were hollow, their eyes too vacant, as if they were speaking through the motions rather than living them.

Sometimes, their faces didn’t make sense. He would look at them, and the lines of their features would blur and shift, as though they weren’t even anchored to their skulls. And when he blinked, their eyes would be gone, replaced by empty spaces where eyes should have been. Not empty—full, somehow, of something he couldn’t name. A silence that had never been broken.

No one noticed. No one ever noticed.

Then, one day, Thomas saw the man in the square.

He had seen him before, countless times. Always in the same spot, standing motionless in the middle of the square, an immovable figure amidst the bustling flow of bodies. He wore a worn, threadbare coat, the kind that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. It was the color of old dust, of things long forgotten.

People walked around him, their paths bending like water around a stone. No one gave him a second glance, no one even noticed the way the space around him seemed to curve, as if the world itself bent around the man’s stillness. But Thomas couldn’t look away. The man never moved—not even a fraction—and yet, there was something about him that made everything else feel distorted, blurred, like the world itself was unstable, shifting under the weight of his presence.

At times, Thomas would stand there, just watching him. The clock on the church tower would chime, and yet time felt warped. There were moments when he blinked, and the square would be empty—no people, no movement, just the quiet hum of the city. But the man was always there, standing in exactly the same place, his coat unruffled, as though untouched by the passage of time.

The man’s face was blank. Unremarkable, and yet it felt deliberate, as though it had been crafted for the sole purpose of being forgotten. His features were faint, receding, like a face that had been erased by time. But his eyes—those eyes were different.

Whenever Thomas tried to look into them, he felt the hum surge within him, pressing against his skull until his vision swam, like trying to focus on a word that was constantly changing its meaning. Every time he tried, the connection between them seemed to disintegrate, as if he were looking into a void.

It was maddening.

One afternoon, as Thomas stood frozen, watching the man in the square, a thought slithered into his mind:

Maybe he’s waiting for something too.

The thought felt wrong, alien, as though it wasn’t his own. But in that moment, as his gaze lingered, Thomas swore he saw the faintest movement. The man’s lips barely twitched—not in speech, but in something like a smile. It wasn’t a smile of joy, or even of recognition. It was a smile made of absence. The lack of something.

And then, as quickly as it came, the moment was gone.

Thomas blinked, and the world around him seemed to shift.

He found himself in the waiting room before he even realized he had moved.

The room was familiar, but it felt off. There were no windows, no doors that he could remember entering through. The walls were smooth, sterile, and the air was heavy with an oppressive stillness that made his chest tighten. Across from him, a woman sat, her hands twitching in the lap of her loose, faded dress, her fingers moving like they were trying to hold onto something slipping through them.

Her eyes darted around the room but never met his. She never spoke. She never even looked in his direction for more than a split second. Thomas had seen her before, but that wasn’t quite right. No. She wasn’t here.

She had always been here.

She was a figure, caught somewhere between moments—out of time, out of place. She existed, but she didn’t. She was a faint ripple in a world that was too still, too tight.

The silence in the room pressed down, folding over them like a heavy blanket. It was the kind of silence that stretched on, like something that had always been and always would be. Thomas felt like he was suffocating under it. The woman’s movements were slow, too slow, like she wasn’t really there. She was a shadow, an afterthought, repeating something that had already happened—or perhaps something that was yet to come.

He could feel her waiting, as if they were both suspended, caught in the same timeless moment. He watched her for what felt like hours, but every second seemed to bleed into the next, like the room itself had no boundaries.

And then, the hum.

It was louder now, deeper, vibrating beneath his thoughts, curling through the walls and into his chest. The space around him felt like it was bending, warping, stretching out of shape. Each pulse of the hum made the room seem to breathe, shifting the corners of his vision, the air thickening.

Thomas reached for something solid, something real. But every time his fingers brushed against it, it slipped away. The walls of the room, the soft creak of the woman’s dress—everything was slipping, like sand through his fingers. Nothing was anchored. Everything was in flux.

The world was folding, breaking down, revealing layers beneath layers.

He felt it then—truly felt it.

He was already gone.

There was no before, no after.

There was only this. Only the hum. The endless, suffocating hum.

And it was never going to stop.

He had always been here, caught in this cycle. He wasn’t waiting for something. He was the thing that had always been waiting. And the woman, the man in the square—they were just ripples, fading in and out of focus.

Still, he wanted it to matter. He wanted to believe that there was something more.

But the hum pressed in, tighter now, a tide beneath the surface of everything, pulling him deeper.

He wasn’t an observer. He wasn’t even a part of the world. He was a response to it. A resonance. An afterthought.

The man in the square was still waiting. He had always been waiting.

And the hum hummed on.