The other side of Silence

The lecture hall was packed to the brim with students, and the number of people standing exceeded the number of people sitting, the lecturer’s tiny voice was not helping matters>

Jane from where she was sitting on the sixth row of chairs had a difficult time hearing the lecture. Some students have given up hope of taking notes and turned their exercise books into hand fans and some resorted to chatting on their phones.

Jane kept glancing to her watch every five minutes, the only reason why some students attended Prof. Emeka’s class was because he took his class attendance seriously.

She was patiently waiting for the lecture to finish so that she could go back to the hostel to pack her remaining belongings and move to her new apartment at Mbele’s street, she rented an apartment because the school’s hostel was nothing to write home about.

The bathrooms were always messy and the incidence of stealing have greatly increased over the past few months.

Her new residence was neat, secure and surprisingly cheaper than other houses in the school area.

Jane was broken from her reverie by the sound of scrapping feet and squeaking chairs, the lecture was over and students were already fleeing from the class as if it were on fire some who felt that the traffic to the door was too slow for them jumped out through the window much to the chagrin of Prof. Emeka who could not understand the impatience of the younger generation.

Jane made a direct beeline to the hostel to pack up her remaining belongings. There was nothing much to pack, she had transported most of her belongings to her new place the previous day, every other thing fitted into her red echolac travelling bag. She went to some of her friend’s rooms to Say her goodbyes.

She got to her new apartment by 4:53 pm. She busied herself with putting things in their correct order, an hour later she took her bath, ate, and dozed while watching a film on her laptop.

Jane was having a dream, in her dream she was in her uncle’s studio recording a song, after recording she was sitting listening to the playback, the music became louder and louder till it started hurting her ears all attempt to pull out her headphones proved abortive then suddenly the headphones turned to worms and started eating away at her eardrums.

She screamed and woke up, she sat up on her bed, and her laptop long dead was nestled at one corner of her bed inches away from crashing to the ground.

The music she was listening to in her dreaming was still playing out loud. It was coming from the back of the house, she checked the time, it was 11:34pm maybe someone in the neighbourhood was having a birthday party, which was not a surprise due to the number of students living in the area.

It was very obvious she would not be able to get any sleep if she remain in the room. She took her pillow and moved to her sitting room and closed the connecting door between the room and the sitting room. She laid on the couch, amidst the faint reverberation of the music she dozed off.

She woke up the next morning with a splitting headache, she was already late for her lectures, she hurriedly took her bath and dashed out, on getting to school she had a quick food at the school canteen, she was feeling a little queasy but her only solace was that today was Friday and lectures ended early.

After lectures she went to the market and picked up a few items, she stopped at the salon to braid her hair, she got home around 7:06 pm.

On entering her apartment, she was hearing the sound of music coming from behind the house. She went behind the house to find out the source of the noise, it was coming from the building on the street behind the house. She saw a lady packing her clothes from the line behind the house.

Good evening ma, please what is happening in that house, she asked. I see you just moved in newly, well they just opened a night club there and the owner is not sensible enough to make it sound proof. A lot of people have moved from this building because of the nuisance of that night club and if nothing is done about it, I will move away from this house when my rent expires next month. Jane suddenly realized why the building was not highly populated and why the rent was cheap.