I am a simple man wrestling with the simple but obscured truths of the complex world, especially in the stillness of the night as I recline in my expansive bed, gazing at the ceiling. In these quiet hours, thoughts unbidden flood my mind, despite my reluctance.

The warmth of my bedroom, the softness of the sheets, all should have spelled comfort, but an intrusive sound shattered this tranquillity. A persistent, inexplicable noise lingered in my otherwise orderly and serene space: a scratching, ever-present and unsettling. Scratch, scratch. Still It must be my philosophical propensity, not — such an improbable idea—the strange noises that are causing my sleeplessness.

On most nights, I would ignore the noise and lose myself in lofty thoughts, but the peculiarity of this sound, now louder than ever, reminiscent of claws on stone, tugged at my attention. This scratching, starting as whispers at dawn, grew into a chorus by dusk, a daily symphony for over a year. Still, I was reluctant to shift my focus from the abstract to the tangible, fearing the real world’s blunt truths that could shatter my philosophical sanctuaries. Scratch. Still the noise grew louder and louder and more violent every day: scratch, scratch. Thus to avoid the risks I opted to ignore the noise night after night. No silence now, just: scratch, scratch.

A thought struck me like a divine intervention aiming at diverting my attention: in daylight, many things hide in plain sight – the stars, deceptive truths and great lies. Yet, all in all, nights are better for concealment and chaos is even better still. But the greatest concealment is found in the chaotic, dark corridors of the mind. As I entertained this thought, the scratching intensified, now sounding ominously close, pushing the thought to the abyss of the night. Scratch. Frustrated beyond my usual composure, I had to face a mundane reality: a sizable rat must be inhabiting my closet. In an uncharacteristic impulse, I decided to act immediately, resolving to instruct my housekeeper to eliminate this nuisance.

I was so tired, I only needed to close my eyes and drift away but dear good sleep was not to come. To blame were the thoughts swirling in my mind, not the sound of the rat—but some about the rat— they kept me up through the entirety of the night. Scratch, scratch, scratch.

Then the next morning when the sun rose, painfully bright for sleep-lacking eyes, the sound was gone as so was I. I went to work. I worked. I finished and came back. A monotonous routine unaltered by the night’s disturbances. 

Returning home, fatigued and disoriented, I was greeted by an unexpected sight: a well-dressed detective in my living room. “You see, detective,” I began, my voice a mix of exhaustion and disbelief, “so weary was I that I failed to notice the body, stepping unwittingly into a pool of blood.” Responding to his inquiry, I added, “Nothing seemed amiss, except the rat was gone, and tragically, so was my housekeeper’s heart.”

In a twist of fate, after this incident, never again had I had problems with falling asleep. But with the loss of the rat and the heart, my once boundless thoughts too dwindled, a silent casualty I was never to realise. A peculiar silence enveloped my world, an eerie calm replacing the philosophical storms, disease not cured but replaced by another one.