I recently moved into my first “grown-up” apartment—that is, not student housing or the basement suite of my parents’ house. I’d been looking for places for months by the time I viewed this one, and it was only 800$ monthly for a clean little one-bedroom apartment. If you know anything about the housing crisis on Vancouver Island, you’ll understand my scepticism. I asked the landlady why a place like this hadn’t been snatched up yet, and she gave me a flinty look.

“We’re very strict on quiet hours,” she told me, sliding the rental agreement across the table. “Absolute silence from ten at night to seven in the morning. This is a place where people can actually get a good night’s rest.”

I’m only 24, but this sounded great to me. I’m a notoriously light sleeper. Student housing had been a nightmare for me with all the loud music and pounding of headboards on the paper-thin walls. I eagerly signed the lease and wrote out a cheque for the first month’s rent.

I really liked the apartment. It’s only a twenty-minute bus ride to the museum where I work, and ten to Superstore. I wondered at first about the landlady’s assertion that the building would truly be silent at night, but I didn’t hear a sound during my first night.

I was served my first warning the next morning. It had been slid underneath my door, on a crisp white paper that stood out against the chequered linoleum.

REPETITIVE NOISE: Box Fan. This is your first warning. Quiet hours are 10PM-7AM.

I thought it was a joke at first, but it was signed by my landlady. I ran into one of my neighbours in the lobby on my way to work, and after introducing myself, I brought up the notice.

“It’s weird, right?” I asked her. “How would anyone even hear a fan running?”

She had laughed nervously, almost missing the mail slot with the envelope she was attempting to send. “Everyone gets at least one,” she said. “Just… don’t get any more. It’s quiet enough at night that you won’t need the fan.”

I meant to ask her what would happen if I got more, but I was running late. I forgot all about it until much later.

She was right, though, about the quiet. I begrudgingly shut off my fan at 9:45, and got into bed. It was silent—almost oppressively so. I never wore earplugs because the sheer lack of input frightened me, and the absolute soundlessness of the apartment had the same effect. The silence was like a physical thing, a thick blanket draped over me.

It unnerved me enough that I got up and flicked on my desk lamp. The click seemed like a gunshot—I flinched, and for a crazy second, wondered if my landlady was going to come pound on my door. I told myself I was only being neurotic, that I wasn’t used to sleeping in an apartment all alone.

But something about the stillness felt deeply wrong.

Eventually, as always happens when you move to a new place, I got used to it. The silence didn’t feel suffocating, but comforting. I woke up each morning feeling refreshed, wondering how I ever slept a wink before I lived here. I even stopped listening to music on the bus—it all just sounded like noise to me, grating on my ears. Although I used to hate earplugs, I took to wearing them pretty much constantly.

A couple of days ago, I got a stomach bug pretty badly. I spent the entirety of Wednesday night throwing up in my bathroom. I called in sick to work at around 6AM Thursday morning, and then slept nearly the entire day, waking up in the late afternoon. I felt weak and dehydrated, but my guts weren’t actively revolting. I trudged out of my room to get a ginger ale, and that’s when I noticed the imperious white paper on my floor.

PURPOSEFUL DISTURBANCE: Toilet Flushing, Phone Call. THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING.

Maybe it was just because I was sick, but my vision seemed to fuzz over for a moment.

“‘Toilet flushing?’” I asked aloud. Even my voice sounded funny—normally sounds would echo off the mostly bare walls, but it sounded muffled. Anger quickly took over my disbelief, and before I knew it, I was on the phone with my landlady.

“The warning is clear,” she said curtly. “The phone call alone should have been enough.”

“This is insane,” I said, my hands trembling from nausea and rage. “I’ll admit the phone call, but I was sick as a dog all night—”

The line went dead.

I had to sit down and take a long drink from my ginger ale to keep myself from charging down to her suite. After I calmed my nerves, I made a call to a friend of mine who is a clerk at the city courthouse, who affirmed exactly what I thought:

“No,” Louisa said with a chuckle. “She can’t evict you for running a fan or flushing the toilet. Even if she tried, there’s no way this would hold up in court.”

Vindicated, I called in again to work to let them know I’d be out Friday too, and went to bed early.

This time, though, the heaviness I’d felt during my first night in this apartment returned.

Rationally, I knew there would be no repercussions for turning on my lamp. But it was so quiet, so dark; even my nervous shifting under the covers seemed loud. Something deep in the primitive part of my mind was pumping me full of adrenaline.

Plunk.

I jolted upright, clapping my hands over my ears. The noise was apocalyptic. It didn’t stop, continuing to make a grating sound that lasted for several seconds.

Then it was silent again, and I realised what it was: a glass bottle falling and rolling. All I could hear was the blood roaring through my veins. The silence was pressing down on me, enough to nearly pop my eardrums.

The air around me seemed to flex, and there was a great rushing like a vacuum, only instead of oxygen getting sucked out, it was sound. The cartilage in my ears ached. My head felt like it was being crushed in a vice, and if I could have screamed, I would have.

And then just as suddenly as it happened, it was over.

It was still silent, but it didn’t feel like a physical force anymore. I could breathe again, and the agony had receded to a dull throb. I couldn’t hear a thing.

I didn’t dare turn the lamp on, and I didn’t move a muscle until 7AM.

It seemed as though I’d aged thirty years overnight. I forced myself to drink an entire glass of water, but even that made me nauseated. I needed a Gravol—I needed to go outside, to get out of this apartment. With the grace of a senior citizen with arthritis, I grabbed my purse and slid my bare feet into shoes.

The door across the hall from me was open.

Not just ajar, but wide open: I could see right into it. It was an exact duplicate of my own, right down to the stained faucets in the sink. From where I stood, I could see a white piece of paper attached to the fridge with magnets, but I couldn’t read it.

I don’t know what possessed me to investigate. It was like I was watching myself from outside my body as I stepped inside, wrinkling my nose at the smell of beer. There were several boxes of empty bottles stacked neatly in the corner.

The notice was nearly identical to the one I’d received yesterday—PURPOSEFUL DISTURBANCE: Door slamming. THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING. I thought it was strange, because I hadn’t heard any doors slamming.

And speaking of doors, his bedroom was open too, exposing a bare mattress. All the contents of his desk had been knocked aside, the garbage can had been tipped over, and his window was open. I slowly approached the windowsill and saw that there were fingernail gouges in the wood.

My foot nudged against something. I flinched back, and the object rolled away: a beer bottle. It made absolutely no noise, and I realised that since I’d entered the apartment, I had gone deaf.

I ran for it. I sprinted as fast as my jelly legs would take me down the stairs, through the lobby, and into the street. I didn’t stop until my lungs felt like they were on fire. I lost one of my shoes, and I’m typing this outside of a Starbucks, where they refused to let me in because of this.

I’ve been wandering for hours now. I need to go home, but I’m terrified of what might happen to me during quiet hours. What if I sneeze in my sleep? Twitch and smack the back of my hand against the wall?

For that matter, I won’t even be able to tell if I make any noise—I haven’t been able to hear a thing all day.