SOUNDS ABOVE

*This story contains physical and mental abuse.

Her father is dead.

Mira received a brief phone call about her father’s death. The only emotion she ever felt for him growing up was fear.

Mira thought that her fears were over and she would be free, but Mira didn’t feel free. Her father was cruel, controlling, and abusive. He always made her feel small and insignificant with just a look and made her heart race by saying her name.

As a little girl, she learned to recognize the sound of his angry footsteps before she learned basic math. His footsteps were heavy, slow, purposeful. She could tell what kind of mood he was in by the way his shoes struck the hardwood floor. When she heard him coming toward her bedroom, her entire body would stiffen while filled with anxiety and listened for his angry knocks on her door. All the while wondering what she had done to make him angry.

Sometimes the footsteps stopped outside her door, and nothing would happen. Those moments were almost worse as she would be more terrified not knowing the degree of his anger and what she had done to deserve his wrath.

As a teenager, she became skilled at making herself invisible. She learned the sounds of the floor leading to her bedroom, which floorboards creaked, which doors could be closed without the clicking of the doorknob, and how to cry without making a sound.

When he spoke, she would watch his hands, she watched his face, she watched his eyes. Every movement he made was a warning.

Even after she became an adult and moved away, the fear followed. A slammed door made her heart race, heavy footsteps in an apartment hallway made her freeze, a man’s raised voice would send her back twenty years in an instant. Whenever her father called, she became that frightened little girl again.

One morning, the telephone rang, she started to feel anxiety thinking it was her father, it wasn’t; her father was dead. She sat on her bed holding the phone long after the conversation had ended. She felt nothing, no sadness, no grief, no relief.

Mira did not want to attend the funeral, but she felt it was something she had to do. At the funeral, she stood several feet from his casket, not wanting to get too close while thinking of how horrible he was to her, how much she hated him, and all the things she wish she had the courage to say to him before he died.

People spoke kindly about him. They talked about his accomplishments, his sense of humor. The things she had never experienced with him.

Mira listened in silence; she wanted to scream as she was feeling the hate she had for her father. Instead, she stared at his hands folded peacefully across his chest she thought “those hands can’t hurt me anymore, he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead”.

After a couple of weeks, Mira returned to work. She decided to stay late as she was behind on her projects. The office was never this quiet. Mira sat at her desk alone in the office staring at the computer screen as the clock slowly moved toward seven. Everyone else had left the office hours earlier.

Outside, the parking lot was nearly empty. Inside, the long corridors were dark except for the fluorescent lights above her. The building seemed to breathe around her—pipes trickling, air vents humming.

Then she heard footsteps. Slow, heavy footsteps directly above her in the ceiling. Mira froze, she looked up at the ceiling, thump, another step, then another. She held her breath. “Hello?”, she asked. Silence, she waited, nothing.

Mira tried to convince herself it was the heating system, maybe a maintenance worker was somewhere upstairs. However, the floor above her had not been occupied for months. Thump again, she heard, her heart jumped. This time the footsteps moved across the ceiling from one side of the room to the other, then they stopped, they sounded angry. Mira pushed her chair back, she checked the hallway, empty. She searched the storage room, closet, bathrooms and conference rooms, nothing. When she returned to her desk, she heard a noise coming from inside the wall, a faint scratching, then three sharp knocks. Knock, knock, knock. Mira backed away. Who’s there?”, she asked. No answer, but the noise continued.

Suddenly, Mira remembered her father’s footsteps. The same heavy steps she had listened for as a child. The footsteps that meant she needed to be quiet, the footsteps that meant anger was coming, the footsteps she had heard throughout her childhood, through her teenage years and continuing into adulthood.

The noises came from everywhere. Footsteps in the ceiling, knocking behind the walls. A door creaking open down the hallway. Every sound made her more frightened. Soon, Mira couldn’t concentrate on anything else. She pulled bookshelves away from the walls, she ripped open closets, she smashed through drywall searching for whatever was making the noises. Nothing, only insulation, pipes, wires, dust and dark empty spaces. Still the sounds continued.

She heard footsteps running above her, she panicked. She grabbed a broom and attacked the ceiling panel after panel came crashing down. “Stop!”, she shouted, as her voice echoed through the empty building. Again, she shouted, “JUST STOP!”, as she tore apart the office. Walls were damaged, ceiling panels littered the floor. Closet doors hung broken from their hinges, but there was no one there.

There had never been anyone there. Eventually, Mira collapsed in the middle of the destroyed office, exhausted and trembling. Then she heard it again, a man’s footsteps, slow, heavy, coming down the hallway. Mira looked towards the doorway, and the footsteps stopped.

Her father had died only two weeks earlier and Mira had spent her entire life being afraid of him. She had believed that when he died, the fear and hate would disappear with him…they hadn’t.

The building had been empty, the walls had been empty, the ceiling had been empty, the footsteps had been inside her all this time. The sounds were memories she had been carrying all these years. Memories of a little girl listening for the next angry step, the next-door opening, the next knock against the wall, her mind has turned the silence around her into the one thing she has known best…fear.

Mira looked at the destruction surrounding her, for the first time, she understood. She hadn’t been searching for someone in the building, she had been searching for the little girl inside herself who was still hiding from her father, and she finally realized that he was gone. The footsteps had stopped, and now for the first time in her life, she was free from her father.

Mira took time alone thinking about the experience she had gone through. She remembered much of her childhood, her teenage years and her adulthood, memories she could never shake, memories that affected every aspect of her life including fearful of being in relationships and not being able to trust anyone. It was like she was living in the world all by herself.

She finally realized what she had to do to move on from those horrible memories and the hate she was feeling. About a week later, Mira visited her father’s grave. With all that she had been through her whole life, she knew it was up to her to let go of those feelings. 

Mira told him everything she always wanted to say to him but was too afraid. How he made her feel, the fear, the hurt, the sadness, and the loneliness. She told him everything she had been feeling for all those years.

Now it was time for her to move on. After being able to speak to him without fear, she felt a sense of relief. Mira was now able to face her fears and relinquished the hate she had for her father. She knew that was the only way to free herself of the demons that haunted her all her life.