Excerpt: Strings in the Shadows

Usually, the static in his head is pretty constant – like the radio receiver in his head is stuck on one frequency, and interference comes and goes. Occasionally one radio station or another will infringe on the edge of it, enough for him to occasionally make out words and lyrics, and sometimes it's truck radios or similar, but either way, there's always a constant unchanging hiss in the background.

Today, though, it's all over the place, like the tuning knob in his head has come unstuck, and is swinging wildly back and forth across the whole band. It's a mess of squeaks and squeals, and occasionally there are crystal-clear bursts of talk radio or popular songs, and then it's back to static, then more pops and squeaks, and it just doesn't sit still.

It's way harder to ignore than usual; there's no constant background drone to this, it's constantly demanding attention, constantly pushing itself to the front of his mind. And it's horrible.

He groans, a low, pained noise, and pulls himself out of his chair once more. He stumbles through to the kitchen – actually stumbles, this time, a shoulder bouncing off the door frame as a particularly loud burst of some song throws him off balance. *…Baby, can you dig your man…*

He's almost blind with the pain and noise when he reaches the kitchen. He rummages wildly in one of his drawers, narrowly avoiding skewering his socked foot with a knife he knocks out of the drawer as he rummages. He ignores it, barely even registers that he just about impaled himself, nearly pinned himself to the floor. He keeps rummaging. Then he finds what he's looking for; he triumphantly holds up a roll of tin foil. (Part of his mind realises how ludicrous this all is, but pain is not something that can be denied, and he's in survival mode right now.)

He throws his bike helmet off; it lands on the floor by the knife. He doesn't even stop to think or plan or consider – he takes the roll of foil and just starts wrapping it around and around his head.