Scream

There are some events that make one ask oneself, "am I a man or a mouse? There are others that make you wonder whether your life is just one extended Monty Python skit. This was one of them.



I was playing anonymous, antisocial internet chess when I heard the first scream and jumped like I'd been cattle prodded. My first thought was that it was some kind of domestic incident occurring in the street outside our building. This was a regular occurrence when we used to live in Truro (the county town of Cornwall) where fairly frequently some angry and intoxicated altercation would cause us to peer from the window, and on one occasion call the police. But this scream had a different, agonized and urgent tone.

I went straight to the window, but nothing was moving in the street outside, and from here it seemed the noise was coming from inside the building. The screams came in two second bursts and had a regular pattern that slightly undermined their agonized pitch and volume, but it was still worrying enough that I briefly considered taking my kukri with me as I ventured into the hall way.

I left the flat and met some of my neighbors - two college girls who live in 2N and an artist who lives in 2S. They were in the process of calling the 911. It was clear that the noise (which continued along the same pattern) was coming from 1N on the ground floor. I hesitated, because I hate awkward situations, but then I thought about how it would look at the inquest and stomped down the stairs and knocked on the door.

A solidly built, toothless elderly lady opened the door at the second knock and looked askance at me. Behind her, at the other end of the room, was another lady (a little younger, similarly proportioned) sat at a large desk with a laptop open in front of her. "Is everything okay? Because it sounds like someone's being brutally murdered in there?" In reply a vague shrug/murmur of reassurance that all was well escaped the door opener; a two second burst of agonized screaming came from the otherwise unruffled desk sitter. Other than the intermittent screaming the woman with the laptop appeared to be in no immediate distress or danger, so I pulled a face and beat a hasty retreat trusting to the police to investigate further.

Later on the artist who lives downstairs knocked on the door and reported that after a significant delay (given that you can see the police station from our apartment building) a police office had arrived. When he commented on this slow response he received the reply "sorry, I just woke up".