Tilting Towards the Quiet

"Some nights don’t end, they just put themselves to bed and wait for you to notice."

Another half-bottle down, the evening had unravelled into a slow descent of slurred commentary and half-laughed memories, a last-ditch effort to pretend we hadn’t just set fire to something that could unravel us both. The kind of laughter that bordered on hysteria, brittle at the edges. The chatter was aimless, looping back on itself like an old record left to spin—scratchy, repetitive, desperate in its intent to distract from the yawning void we’d opened.

I could barely recall what we were talking about—something involving the cats (or was it Mum’s ornamental birdbath?) and a childhood escapade that had ended with Dad launching into one of his infamous lectures. Something about consequences and community trust, all while holding a garden gnome like it was a courtroom exhibit. But it was all just noise now. White noise. Wine noise.

The wine, which had earlier felt like an enabler of truth—a velvet glove around sharp words—now settled into my limbs, thick and slow. Every blink dragged longer than the last, my lashes clinging to one another like damp laundry. The room, warm and dimly lit, pulsed around the edges, soft and spinning.

Gladys, ever the reluctant matron, snapped back into herself first. She always did. It was something I’d simultaneously envied and resented about her—this ability to drag herself out of chaos with a flick of will.

"You’re staying here tonight," she declared, arms folded like battlements, voice clipped and decisive.

There was no space for discussion, no room to object—and frankly, no ability.

Arguing felt as appealing as sprinting a marathon in stilettos.

I made a vague sound of assent—half sigh, half grunt—and braced myself against the couch’s armrest, which was far too pristine and slippery to offer any real help. My knees wobbled as I stood, giving way in that delayed, traitorous way that made you feel your age and then some. They buckled slightly, like party guests trying to ghost the exit but caught in the spotlight.

The room shifted. Not metaphorically. Not with poetic licence. It tilted. A nauseating slide to the left, as if the whole house had quietly decided to lean towards the abyss. A side table loomed in my periphery—mocking me, daring me to knock it flying. The lamp swayed gently. Or maybe it was me. Probably me.

I didn’t protest. Couldn’t. Not to Gladys. Not to the momentum of the night, carrying me forward, slow and unstoppable. Her offer—no, her command—was a soft mercy in a night that had offered precious few.

And I wasn’t about to throw it back in her face. Not when standing upright already felt like a rebellion against gravity itself.

Navigating the hallway felt like some grim, slapstick pilgrimage. A slow-motion odyssey through domestic terrain that had, somehow, turned against me. The corridor stretched ahead like an Escher sketch—illogical, repetitive, far longer than physics should allow. My feet shuffled over the carpet, one lagging behind the other like they’d forgotten they belonged to the same person. Each step required negotiation. Each doorframe, a bloody gauntlet.

I clipped my elbow on one, hard—sharp enough to elicit a muttered expletive that might’ve included an apology. To the wall. Or to gravity. Or to the absurdity of existing in a body at all.

The shadows pooled around me like judgement, elongated by the dim hallway light. I squinted towards the blurred rectangle that marked the spare room, trying to focus on it like it was a safe haven, a holy relic I just had to reach before my legs decided to mutiny altogether.

Through it all, I felt her behind me.

Gladys didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. Her silence wasn’t empty. A tether. A signal. Her presence hung just out of reach—quiet, steady, half-annoyed, half-watchful. Like she was daring me to fall over just so she could say I told you so, and then catch me anyway.

A quiet, begrudging protector.

She always had been.

Even when she resented it.

Especially then.

Crossing into the spare room, I barely registered the space around me. The familiar trappings—Gladys’s taste in vintage botanical prints, the neatly folded crocheted throw at the foot of the bed, even the faint scent of lavender air freshener she insisted on using—all dissolved into a grey, formless haze. They drifted at the far side of my attention like half-remembered dreams. Normally, I would’ve made some sardonic comment about the cushion overload or the aggressive number of throw rugs—what was it with her and textile-based nesting? But not tonight. Tonight, I couldn’t muster sarcasm, let alone curiosity.

Without a backward glance or a word of thanks, I closed the door with a quiet click, the sound soft yet final. A drawn curtain between me and the mess we’d made. Between me and the truth I wasn’t ready to fully face.

The bed greeted me with a forgiveness I didn’t deserve, its mattress sinking beneath my weight like an old friend with open arms. The kind who never asked questions, never held you accountable, just let you fall apart and stayed silent through it. I barely had time to shrug off the burden of the day—let alone the scratchy jumper I’d meant to remove hours ago. My limbs moved with the lazy resistance of someone walking through syrup. I made a half-hearted attempt to kick off my shoes, one flopping to the floor with a dull thud, the other stubbornly clinging until I gave up entirely. The jumper stayed. So did the shame.

The room dimmed, either because I closed my eyes or because sleep was pulling the light out of the room. My head throbbed, a dull, insistent drumbeat behind my temples—wine-induced, yes, but also from the effort of holding too much in. Too much wine. Too much memory. Too much everything.

As sleep crept closer, a soft tide dragging me from the shore of my own thoughts, I floated somewhere in that strange liminal space between consciousness and oblivion. That in-between place where reality softens and memory begins to lose its outline. Time slipped sideways, no longer linear but fluid, indifferent to clocks or consequence. My limbs felt leaden, as if the secrets had settled into them—secrets that now lived in scorched paper and silenced truths.

What we had done—what we had chosen not to do—loomed above me like a slow-moving storm. Not quite here, but never far. A brooding presence, a hush before thunder. The promise of consequences wrapped in silence. Our silence. A pact forged not in trust, but in fear.

But that was a problem for tomorrow. A cruel gift for the sober mind.

Tonight, it was just Gladys and me. Two sisters. Tethered by blood, and by the thing we’d just burned. A secret that whispered between the walls like wind through a crack. Not a curse, not quite a bond—something without a name.

Sleep claimed me before I could decide which.