talking to thin air
one day, my cousin called at my mum's house to speak to her. nobody was home, however, except me. i invited beth-for that is her name-to join me for a coffee and wait till my mother got home. having nothing better to do, beth agreed.

we sat in the kitchen for a while, talking quietly. we didn't need to raise our voices, there was no t.v or music on.

suddenly, we heard raised voices in the hallway. "that'll be them" said beth, meaning my parents. "i'm not sure," i replied, "sounds like two men to me."

i got up from my seat and opened the door to the hall.
there was nobody there.
no people, no men, not even somebody at the door.
but i could still hear their voices.
"who is it?" called beth. "nobody" i replied. "bollocks! i can hear them! who is it?" she asked again. "i think you'd better come out here, quick." i answered. muttering complaints, beth followed me out into the hallway.
"there's nobody here!" she said. i just nodded, utterly freaked out by this point. "where are the voices coming from?" she asked. "i don't know, you tell me!" i said. "maybe it's someone outside. come to the front door with me." she wasn't going to that door without me to hold her hand, so i went.
halfway down the hall, we seemed to walk into what i can only describe as a bubble of sound. we could hear two male voices very clearly, but we couldn't understand what they were saying. it wasn't a foreign language they were speaking, it was definitely english, but it was as if we weren't being allowed to understand them. we took another few steps and it was like we were standing directly between these two hidden talkers, the meat in a sandwich of gibberish.
this was too much for both of us, so we fled back to the kitchen, white as sheets.

before long, my parents came home. we told them what had happened, but they laughed and refused to believe that we weren't telling jokes. to this day i don't know where those voices came from. but i did look into the history of my parents' house. it was built on the site of an old public bath house, used mostly by men who were sick of tin baths in front of the fire. it may have been the voices of two of these men we heard, but i guess we'll just never know.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Sun 6 Jul 2008, 1:52, Reply)