The Quiet Shift of Bones

“You don’t notice when the cracks start. It’s only later, when everything creaks just a little wrong, that you realise the foundation’s already moved.”

My flat welcomed me with the indifferent silence of empty rooms, the air stale and undisturbed. The place didn't protest my return, nor embrace it—it simply was, inert and unfeeling. The small two-bedroom in South Hobart had never felt particularly homely—functional, yes; serviceable, certainly—but never warm. This morning, its emptiness seemed more pronounced than usual, echoing the hollowness in my chest. The space felt too still, like a paused breath. Like something waiting.

The door closed behind me with a soft click that seemed to reverberate through the space, announcing my presence to no one. I stood in the narrow hallway for a moment, keys still in hand, and took in the scene before me with the detached observation of a crime scene investigator cataloguing evidence.

Dust motes drifted in the grey morning light filtering through the blinds, their lazy movement the only sign of life in the still air. The place smelled of stale coffee, old newsprint, and that peculiar mustiness that accumulates in spaces that aren't aired out enough. Underneath it all was the faint ghost of the takeaway curry I'd had three—or was it four?—nights ago, the containers still sitting in the bin, waiting to be taken out.

This was my life, distilled to its essential components. Work, sleep, routine maintenance of existence. Nothing extra. Nothing warm. Nothing that suggested a full human life was being lived here.

The realisation settled over me like a weight. When had I become this? When had I stopped caring about comfort, about creating a space that felt like more than just a place to collapse between shifts? Had it been a gradual erosion, or had there been a specific moment when I'd given up on the idea that home should mean something?

Jargus broke the silence with a single, deep-chested woof from the bedroom—a sound less of alarm and more of habit. Moments later he appeared in the doorway, his large German Shepherd frame blocking the light from the hallway behind him. Ears forward, tail raised, hackles just beginning to lift.

His appearance was commanding even in this domestic setting. Jargus was a beautiful specimen of his breed—deep chest, strong shoulders, the classic black and tan colouring that photographers loved. His coat was thick and lustrous, the black saddle across his back rich and glossy, the tan markings on his legs and face vibrant. He carried himself with that particular dignity that German Shepherds possess, that sense of purpose and intelligence that makes them seem almost human in their awareness.

That alertness faded almost immediately when he recognised me. His stance softened. The tension ebbed from his shoulders.

The transformation was subtle but complete. The ears, which had been pricked forward in warning, relaxed slightly. The tail, raised in challenge, lowered to a more neutral position. The hackles smoothed back down, the fur settling into its normal pattern. His entire body language shifted from guard dog to companion, from defender to friend.

It was a reminder of what loyalty looked like. Unconditional recognition. The kind of bond that transcended circumstance and judgement. Jargus didn't care that I'd spent the night in my car watching a house. Didn't care that I'd assaulted my partner or jeopardised my career. He cared only that I was home, that I was his person, that the world had returned to its proper configuration.

He crossed the hardwood floor with deliberate, measured steps, claws clicking against the boards in a rhythm that somehow felt reassuring. I knelt instinctively, and he lowered his head to sniff my outstretched hand, nose twitching as if confirming I hadn't been replaced by someone wearing my skin.

"Sorry, mate," I murmured, reaching to ruffle the dense fur at his neck. My voice sounded flat, rasped by exhaustion. "Long night."

He held my gaze for a moment—those intelligent amber eyes narrowing as if in judgement. He had that uncanny way of seeing straight through me. No questions. No pity. Just assessment. And then, apparently satisfied, he let out a yawn of exaggerated boredom, jaws wide, tongue curling. With a dramatic sigh, he padded back to my bed, circled twice, and dropped onto the crumpled sheets, back turned but with one eye cracked open—still tracking me. Always watching.

I envied him. Envied his simplicity. His ability to live unburdened by whispered taunts or moral compromise. He didn't second-guess his instincts. He didn't question reality.

If Jargus heard a whisper, it was a whisper. If he sensed a presence, there was a presence. His senses were reliable, his instincts trustworthy. He could navigate the world with confidence because his internal instruments were calibrated correctly, reporting accurate data that could be acted upon without hesitation.

I'd lost that certainty. Or perhaps I'd never truly had it, had only believed I had it, and was now confronting the reality that my internal instruments had always been suspect, capable of generating false positives, of manufacturing threats from shadows and whispers from silence.

The clothes peeled away with difficulty, cold and clammy against skin that had gone pale and puckered from the extended exposure. The jacket first, heavy with absorbed moisture, the lining cold against my hands. Then the shirt, which clung stubbornly to my torso, requiring effort to work it over my head. The fabric was damp not just from external condensation but from my own sweat, the sour smell of prolonged stress mixing with the cleaner scent of moisture and eucalyptus.

The bathroom mirror offered no comfort.

The man staring back at me looked far older than he had twenty-four hours ago. My skin was pallid, eyes sunken in bruised hollows. Bloodshot whites ringed irises dulled by sleep deprivation. My usually close-cropped hair stood in uneven tufts, the product of too many restless hands dragged through it in frustration.

A stranger. Or worse—someone I recognised far too well.

I stepped into the shower and let the hot water hit me like punishment. The pressure was just strong enough to feel cleansing, but not enough to peel away the fatigue rooted in my bones.

The steam rose in billows, condensing on every surface—the mirror, the window, the tiles, the ceiling. Within moments, the bathroom had transformed into a tropical microclimate, the air thick and wet, visibility reduced to a few feet. The moisture collected on my eyelashes, ran down my face indistinguishable from the shower water itself, filled my lungs with each breath.

I stood with my head bowed under the stream, letting the water hammer against the back of my neck and shoulders, targeting the knots of tension that had accumulated there during the night. The heat gradually penetrated, working its way into deeper tissue, encouraging tight muscles to release their grip. It was a slow process, incremental, requiring patience I barely possessed.

The rivulets of water ran down my body, tracing over scars old and new—none visible to others. None of these were war wounds in the traditional sense. No bullet holes, no dramatic near-death experiences. Just the small violences that accumulated over years of police work, the body gradually marked by the job, scarred and reshaped by exposure to danger and physical demands.

But the deeper scars—the ones that mattered—weren't visible at all. They were written in neural pathways and sleep patterns, in startle responses and moments of dissociation, in the way certain smells or sounds could trigger cascade memories of past traumas. Those scars couldn't be washed away, no matter how hot the water or how long I stood under it.

The white noise of the shower should have been soothing, a blank canvas for thought. Instead, it seemed to amplify the chaos in my mind, providing a constant backdrop against which my thoughts could spiral without interruption. There were no external distractions in here, no competing sensory inputs—just heat and sound and the ceaseless rhythm of water, creating a kind of sensory deprivation that paradoxically made internal noise louder.

I attempted to walk through the sequence of events with the methodical precision I'd bring to any case. Start at the beginning. Establish timeline. Identify key moments. Build the narrative from evidence.

We'd arrived at the house. Gladys had let us in. I'd moved down the hallway, ostensibly towards the bathroom but actually investigating. I'd found the bedroom, seen the garbage bags, heard—

That's where the narrative fractured. Where certainty gave way to doubt. Where objective observation collided with internal experience.

The memory of the whisper remained vivid, crystal clear, more real than many actual recorded conversations I could recall. The tone had been smug, confident, deliberate. The pronunciation had been clear—both words fully articulated, not slurred or mumbled. The volume had been quiet but distinct, easily separable from ambient noise. The spatial positioning had been specific—behind me and slightly to the left, at approximately head height.

Every detail remained sharp, available for inspection. That should have been reassuring—evidence that it had been real, that I'd truly heard what I thought I'd heard. But the very clarity of the memory was suspicious. Traumatic memories often became more vivid, more detailed, than ordinary ones. The brain highlighted them, marked them as significant, sometimes adding details that hadn't actually been present in the original experience.

Was I remembering reality, or remembering my memory of reality? The distinction might seem trivial, but it was everything. Each time I recalled the whisper, I was potentially rewriting it, subtly altering details, reinforcing my own interpretation rather than preserving the original experience.

Could I have imagined it?

The question itself was painful, cutting at the foundation of my identity. If I couldn't trust my own perceptions—if my senses could manufacture experiences with such fidelity that I couldn't distinguish them from reality—then what was I? A detective's entire value lay in observation, in the accurate recording and interpretation of sensory data. If that capacity was compromised, then I was worse than useless. I was dangerous, a liability, someone whose certainty could lead investigations astray and innocent people into harm.

The betrayal wasn't just professional. It was existential. I'd built my entire sense of self around the reliability of my instincts, the accuracy of my observations, the soundness of my judgement. Those weren't just job skills—they were core components of my identity. Karl Jenkins was a detective who saw what others missed, who trusted his gut, who followed hunches to successful conclusions.

If those instincts were faulty, if that gut was feeding me false information, if those hunches led nowhere—then who was Karl Jenkins? What remained when you stripped away the professional identity that had defined for over two decades of life?

And yet—how else could I explain it?

The evidence was clear, unambiguous, pointing to a conclusion I didn't want to accept. An empty room. No person. No hiding place. No means of escape. Sarah had been there within seconds of the whisper, and she'd seen nothing, heard nothing, found nothing.

The logical conclusion was obvious: the whisper hadn't occurred. Or rather, it had occurred only in my mind, a phantom sensation generated by exhausted neurons and heightened expectations, my brain filling in gaps with what it expected to hear rather than what was actually present.

But logic felt inadequate to the task. The experience had been so real, so immediate, so undeniably present. How could something so vivid, so detailed, so externally located, be entirely internal? How could my brain manufacture something with such fidelity?

If he'd been there… how had he vanished?

This was the question that should have occurred to me immediately in that room, the question that any rational detective would have asked before tearing through garbage bags. The laws of physics didn't allow for human teleportation. People couldn't phase through walls or turn invisible. If Luke had been in that room—if he'd whispered those words from a position just behind me—then he must have still been there when I turned around.

The only explanation that fit the physical evidence was that no one had been there. That the whisper had been auditory hallucination, my mind conjuring a voice from the background noise of the house, from the creak of settling timber or the whisper of wind through gaps in the window frame.

I shut off the water and stood motionless as the last of it drained away at my feet.

The sudden silence was shocking after the constant white noise of the shower. The water circled the drain with a liquid gurgle, disappearing into pipes that would carry it away to join Hobart's wastewater system, to be treated and released into the Derwent, eventually making its way to the ocean. A journey from sky to sea, with a brief detour through my shower to wash away... what? Nothing that mattered. Nothing that had substance.

The steam remained, thick and clinging, the bathroom still filled with white fog that obscured the mirror and softened all edges. Droplets of condensation ran down the tiles in irregular rivulets, following paths of least resistance, pooling at the base of the wall where tile met floor. The air was thick, soupy, making breathing feel like drinking.

I stood dripping, naked, cold already starting to reassert itself as the residual heat from the water began to dissipate. My skin was red from the hot water, sensitised, every nerve ending seemingly closer to the surface than normal. I could feel the air moving around me, could sense the gradual cooling, the transformation from steam-heat to ambient cold.

Still no closer.

Still no answers.

Only questions.

The questions multiplied like bacteria in a petri dish, each one spawning others, the uncertainty spreading and colonising every corner of my mind. What had I heard? Why had I reacted so violently? Was Luke involved or was I chasing phantoms? Had I destroyed my career for truth or for delusion? Could I trust my own mind? What happened next?

And the growing sense that something within me had shifted. Subtly. Irrevocably.

This was the most disturbing realisation of all. Something fundamental had changed in the last twenty-four hours. Some internal threshold had been crossed, some line transgressed. I'd put my hands on Sarah—had committed an act of violence against someone I cared about, someone who trusted me. That couldn't be undone or taken back. That stain was permanent.

But it wasn't just the action itself. It was what the action revealed about who I'd become. I'd always thought of myself as controlled, professional, someone who maintained boundaries even under pressure. The Karl Jenkins I'd believed myself to be wouldn't have lashed out, wouldn't have let obsession override judgement, wouldn't have prioritised vindication over the safety of his partner.

But that Karl Jenkins—if he'd ever truly existed—was gone now. In his place was this new version: impulsive, obsessive, capable of violence, uncertain of his own perceptions. I didn't know this man. Didn't trust him. And yet he was me, indisputably, unavoidably me.

The shift was subtle but absolute. Like a bone slightly out of alignment—not broken, not obviously damaged, but no longer quite right, causing pain with every movement, altering gait and posture in ways that would gradually create larger problems over time.