Fermented Mare's Milk

Last Wednesday night, around 3:30 or so, I woke up and rolled over so that I was facing the bedroom door. I was on my way back to sleep when I realized I hadn't actually woken up because I was cold or because the bed is too short or because I was having a dream where the same horrible person keeps calling and calling me until I finally have to smash my cell phone to bits with a hammer (all of which have recently woken me from sleep) but because the world was vibrating and making an awful noise while it was at it. Awful like a subwoofer implanted in your molars, like someone feeding a mid-70s model Lincoln through a paper shredder. The more I woke up, the louder the noise became.

I woke up Erin after a little bit and told her, "The blender is stuck on puree but something's blocking the blades." She made a noise meant to mean What the hell are you talking about? "Do you hear that awful noise," I asked. "Oh," she said.

We laid there a bit not talking. Eventually Erin put her glasses on and went to the bedroom window, the one that overlooks the courtyard of our apartment complex. She thought maybe a car was out there making the noise. It would had to have been a monster truck with a jet engine, so not surprisingly, there was no car out there and Erin got back into bed.

I put my glasses on and got up. The computer was sitting on the dresser by the bedroom door so, thinking it could have maybe been running roughly and using the dresser as a sort of amplifier, I reached out and felt the drawers for vibrations. Nothing, which, of course, is a good thing, as they probably would have signaled the end of the laptop.

The noise was so loud and so bass-heavy that it was difficult to tell which direction it could have been coming from. The only corollary I have at my disposal is if you were to experience seeing Jucifer in a very small closet. Or there was a story on This American Life once (Episode 279, if you're looking) about a group of people who compete in car stereo contests, something called db drag racing, where they build car stereos so loud they can't actually be played while someone is sitting in the car. It was something like that. So we went blindly into the hallway in search of the source, like David Livingstone setting off to find the source of the Nile, only in pajamas and without such lofty goals.

Once into the hallway a few feet, it became clear that the noise was originating somewhere in the direction of the bathroom or kitchen. Moving in that direction it became even clearer that the noise was definitely coming from the bathroom. In the wall behind the washing machine, to be exact. We looked at each other and then both went to shut off the water for the wash. It was off. "Off is to the right, right?" I screamed. Erin ignored me and began turning the machine on and off again, thinking maybe it had somehow come to life and was eating a Jabberwocky. No dukes. Finally we noticed that the wall was actually vibrating. The pipes inside that bit of wall were not well and were letting us know as much through the only means they had available to them: retched, horrible noise.

We closed the bathroom door and the bedroom door, too, and climbed back into bed. The noise didn't stop for another hour and a half, during which I sat awake trying to keep my teeth from chattering while Erin slept soundly beside me.

The noises have come back a few times since. And some horrific banging noises as well from the same spot. The banging noises sound like someone's knocking on the door with a ball peen hammer. The first few times I actually got up to look.

There is no moral here, no punch-line. Anecdotes can fail in that way and still exist.