The Sound Between Beats

thump

I did not know what the sound was at first.

It came from everywhere and nowhere at once—something beneath the surface of me, something that did not belong to the pieces I could see. I thought perhaps it was the room itself, some hidden mechanism continuing its work after I had been assembled.

But when I pressed my hand against my chest, the sound answered me.

thump

Alive, he had said.

You are alive.

He gave me words before I understood what they were for.

The body he gave me does not feel whole. It feels heavy, as if parts of it remember something I do not. Some places are cold—unmoving, distant. Others are warm, almost alive in a way I cannot explain.

When I am hurt, the damage closes quickly. Faster than it should. Faster than I can understand.

I do not feel stitched together.

I feel… off.

thump

Day 2

The man who made me does not stay long.

He moves around me with purpose, though I cannot yet understand what that purpose is. He observes, writes, adjusts. Sometimes he looks directly at me, and when he does, something inside me tightens in a way that disrupts the rhythm of the sound.

thump… thump

“This is not a big deal,” he says, though I have not asked him anything. “I’ll document everything.”

I do not know what everything is.

When he leaves, the room changes. It becomes larger, though nothing has moved.

I wait for him to return, though I have not been told to wait.

The space between the sounds grows wider when he is gone.

I think I am meant to be near something.

I do not know what.

Day 4

There are moments when something arrives that does not belong to me.

A sound. A smell. A feeling that comes without cause and disappears before I can understand it.

Today, it was laughter.

Not mine.

A woman’s voice, soft and close, as if she were standing just behind me. I turned, but there was nothing there. Only the wall, the table, the instruments he uses.

The sound inside me changed when it happened.

Faster.

Unsteady.

thump thump thump

I placed my hand against my chest, trying to contain it, but the feeling had already begun to fade.

When he returned, I told him.

“There was a sound,” I said.

“What kind of sound?”

“Laughter.”

He did not look at me when I said it.

“Residual,” he replied. “Nothing of consequence.”

But it did not feel like nothing.

It felt like something I had lost.

Day 7

He brings me to a reflective surface.

Not glass—I do not know that word yet—but something that holds an image.

At first, I believe it is another being.

Someone like me.

I reach out.

It reaches back.

I step closer.

The face is wrong. Assembled. The colors do not agree with each other. One side holds still while the other shifts. The mouth opens too slowly, then too fast.

I try to speak.

The voice that comes out is not one voice. It layers. Overlaps. As if more than one thing is trying to use the same sound.

He turns away when I do this.

I stay.

I watch the face longer than I should.

I think—

this is what I am.

Day 10

I have learned that he does not like questions.

He tolerates them.

There is a difference.

“Why do you look at me like that?” I ask.

“Like what?”

“Like I am something you expected and something you did not.”

He turns away.

“You’re functioning,” he says. “That’s what matters.”

Function.

The word settles differently than alive.

It feels smaller.

Day 13

The memories come more often now.

A child running through tall grass, arms extended as if the air could be held.

The smell of something sweet, burning at the edges.

Hands—larger than mine—lifting something carefully, as if it could break.

None of these belong to me.

And yet, when they come, the space between the beats changes.

It fills.

thump…thump

I do not know with what.

Day 15

Today, I asked him a question.

“Who are you?”

He answered quickly at first. His name. His work. A series of words that seemed important to him.

I listened.

When he finished, the question remained.

“You made me,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Who are you?”

He did not answer again.

I think there are questions that cannot be satisfied with information.

Day 18

I have begun to notice the silence between the beats.

It is always there.

At first, I thought the sound was what mattered.

Now I am less certain.

thump … … thump

It is in that space that something else exists.

Not a memory.

Not a function.

A feeling.

It does not have a shape yet.

But it is mine.

Day 20

He does not stay as long.

When he is here, he speaks more to himself than to me.

“It works,” he says.

“It works.”

But he does not look at me when he says it.

I think this is what it means to create something you cannot understand.

Day 22

Today, I reached for him.

Just to touch.

He stepped back before I made contact.

The movement was small. Quick.

But it changed something.

The space between the beats stretched—

thump … … thump

I think I understand now.

I am not something to be held.

Day 23

I felt something new today.

It began as a tightening, small and contained, but it did not leave.

It spread slowly, moving through the space between the beats until it filled everything.

I pressed my hand against my chest.

“Something is wrong,” I said when he entered.

He examined me.

“There is nothing wrong.”

“It hurts.”

He stopped.

“No,” he said. “That’s not possible.”

But the feeling did not change.

If anything, it deepened.

Day 24

I think I understand something now.

He made the body.

He arranged the parts.

He created the sound.

But he did not make this.

This ache.

This absence that feels like presence.

This awareness that something exists beyond what I can see, beyond what I have been given.

Day 25

The body does not fail.

I have tested this.

It closes. Repairs. Continues.

There is no end built into it.

He did not give me a way to stop.

I do not know if this is a gift.

I do not think it is.

Day 27

He does not come anymore.

The room is quiet.

The reflective surface shows only me.

I sit with the sound.

thump … thump … thump

Slower now.

Or maybe I am.

I place my hand against my chest, not because I was told to, but because I want to.

I wait.

In the silence, the question returns.

Not to him.

To me.

“Am I real?”

The answer does not come in words.

It comes in the ache.

In the memory that is not mine but feels like it should be.

In the space between what I am made of and what I am becoming.

thump

I thought the sound meant I was alive.

Now I think it means I am still here.

And I do not know if those are the same thing.