Turn 9 of 13

Ask Rae to keep your key so you can't go back alone

Rae's hand is already in her dressing gown pocket, the key folded into her fingers. You ask her to keep it. Not hold it for now, not look after it — keep it, so the door stays closed to you, so you can't go back at the hour your hand already knows how to find.

"You're serious," she says, and it isn't a question.

"I stood there and my wrist wouldn't turn. You turned it and it was fine. That means it's me, Rae. Something in me is — I don't know. Listening to something I can't hear anymore. And if I go back in there at the usual hour I'll put the headphones on and I'll go down and I won't remember what I did."

Your voice holds. Every word lands where you put it. That shouldn't feel remarkable but it does — like speaking without a current pulling at the sentence, like walking on ground that doesn't tilt. You hadn't realised how tilted everything had been until now, how every sentence you spoke for weeks came out at a slight angle to what you meant. Rae watches you say all of this and her jaw is tight.

"Okay," she says. "I've got your key. That's a start." She pulls her hand out of the pocket and shows you the key, then puts it back.

"Now sit down. I'm making tea and you're going to tell me everything from the beginning, and I mean everything — when you signed up, what the transcripts say, what the recordings actually do to you. All of it."

She's already moving toward the kitchen. You sink onto the sofa. The television is still scrolling captions with the sound off, and you don't watch them. For the first time in weeks you don't want to watch something move left to right. Your phone sits in your back pocket with the forum notification and the second email and the paused waveform of Module Four, and you leave it there. Rae runs the tap. The kettle clicks on. The flat smells like her laundry detergent and the dregs of this morning's tea, and you are here, in a room that hasn't been arranged for you, and your words are coming out straight, and you don't know how long that will last but you know it won't survive the headphones.

"Start from the beginning," Rae calls from the kitchen. "Why did you even sign up for this?"