Chapter Nine

Emily pressed her hands to her ears and released a cry of frustration. The level of irritation produced by that sound seemed impossible to adequately express. Nails on a chalkboard didn't even come close.

She hated dog whistles. She hated them passionately, and she particularly hated that nobody else heard them but dogs. She didn't often feel out of place because of her hearing. Most of the time, it was an interesting and brag-worthy quality, something she could share on a first date or use as an icebreaker when she gave the occasional lecture.

Now, though, she was the only person walking around behaving oddly. The fact that it was night didn't make her feel any less watched. How many people were staring through their windows at her and wondering if they should call the police? Maybe someone had. And what would she tell them? Hey, can you hear that damned dog whistle? Tell that asshole to stop blowing it.

Well, if they couldn't hear the whistle, they'd hear the dogs. The dogs in the neighborhood barked loudly. Those she saw through gaps in their fences ran in circles or shook their heads, whining and howling with discomfort. She knew how they felt. Of course, that sympathy wasn't enough to make her ears hurt any less. In fact, the howling and barking on top of the fucking whistle was impossible to handle. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes.

She'd become adept at tuning out excess noise. It was an essential aspect of living with her accelerated hearing. Accelerated. That's what the pediatrician had called it. That was what her mother still called it. Someone with accelerated hearing had to filter noise because they heard it so clearly. Ordinarily, Emily could force noises to the background. She could ignore the phone conversation one room over so she could clearly hear the conversation in front of her.

But this was too much. She couldn't focus on anything but the noise. It reverberated in her ears, pounded in her head, rippled through her chest and drove her to a frenzy. Damn it, if she figured out who was blowing that whistle, she would stab them through the fucking neck!

"Hello."

She was so surprised that she could hear that word over the sound assaulting her skull that she didn't see the knife that came from her right side to stab her through the neck. If she'd been able to focus on anything but the whistle still echoing in her ears, she might have acknowledge the irony of her last thought.

But the only thing she was aware of was sound. Then nothing replaced it.