A Cacophony of White Noise

Short Story Day 14 of 365

Alexis needed noise to think.

No TV, no music, no radio, nothing to entertain or distract. She wanted noise that wasn’t understood or foot-tappable.

She started the dryer, threw a load of clothes in the washer, started the dishwasher, and began cooking her TV dinner in the microwave.

Unfortunately, those would be temporary noise creators, especially the microwave. When the five long beeps concluded the microwave’s cooking cycle, it would break her concentration again.

Then she would have to eat the food, fold the clothes from the dryer, and then transfer the other clothes from the washer.

Concentration break.

What would she have then?

She’d have a dishwasher in the background and the hum of a dryer with a piece of metal zipper or button on one of the clothes items banging every second or third rotation in the dryer.

But would she be able to concentrate?

Hardly.

How about silence?

She tried it a few years ago, but that was when she was still an undergrad. Learning didn’t come easy for Alexis so she needed all her synapses firing every day of her college career just to pass.

But silence?

“It’s worth a shot,” she said.