Tick, tick, tick. Or maybe it’s a click. I don’t know what it is, I must have gone through every drawer in my kitchen to find its source. It’s Sunday-don’t worry about it Jason, I tell myself. I’m right, everything’s fine: I’m off work, the kids are at church with their mom, I should just keep making breakfast. 

I give the eggs a dozen more circular swirls with my whisk. I walk over across the kitchen to find the milk, then I hear it again. It’s so faint, yet in my silent house- so loud. The fridge! That has to be the cause of the noise, why else would I only be able to hear it now. I open the fridge and stick my head in, left ear first. I feel a cold cloud of air slowly encumber my neck, my hairs stand up and I can see my breath. I strain to hear but the sound ceases to be. Thinking it could be the culprit, I take out the ice tray and set it back in, perhaps it wasn’t in all the way the first time. I step back and as I’m about to close the door, tick. I look around as if the source could be immediately identified. At Least now I know it's more of a ticking sound. It’s just a ticking sound, why am I so worried? Despite it being a rhetorical question to myself, I answered, it could be a bomb. A bomb? I shake my head in disappointment in myself, I think Jason Jr. is rubbing off on me. I go over to the eggs, then I hear it again, although this time I ignore it. A fly rests on the edge of the bowl with my now room-temperature egg yolk. I swat the fly away and begin to wipe off where it was. I pour the eggs onto a pan from the cabinets and bring the pan to the stove. Tick, tick… tick, tick. I sigh as my hands blindly fumble to turn the stove on.

I go on making breakfast but I’m hearing the ticking still, only this time it’s in my head, taunting me. Or maybe it was always in my head. I blink hard to get that thought out of my head. After a few minutes of trying to convince me that it’s probably something like a grasshopper that got in the house, I look down to see nothing but raw yolk. I duck my head to the level of the counter under and see no flame heating the underside of the pan. I must have been so distracted I must have turned on another burner. I flip the 3 shut-off switches on the other burners. I don’t want to die because I’m distracted by a tick. Well, the bomb’s going to blow you up anyway. “IT’S NOT A BOMB!” I yell. Good thing I’m home alone. But then again I shouldn’t be yelling to my own thoughts especially if I’m alone.

I accept the fact that the sound is getting to me and abandon my eggs. I figure I need to carefully try to find out what part of the kitchen it’s in. I slowly creep to the side opposite of the stove, going across my marble countertop in the middle. I hear it, very faintly and not as rapidly as previously. The problem with it is it’s such a quiet sound I can’t find where it’s coming from, could be below me in the cabinets, could be to the left behind the coffee maker, even be from above. Above. Having an epiphany, I realize that directly above the kitchen is Junior’s room. A toy! That makes the most sense. I hurry to the stairs and as I speed up them I hear the ticking louder than ever, still quiet as a coin dropping but at least it’s loud enough to find the source. I pace across the hall to his room and a troubling thought comes to mind: If it is a bomb in Junior’s room, you HAVE to find it. I reach his door and swing it open expecting to see a big bundle of dynamite with a timer on it in the middle of the floor. But as the door swings open to give me a full view of the room, the ticking stops. I scan the room and see nothing that even would make a sound on its own. You should have known your son only plays with Legos, my mind says both making me feel both guilty and stupid. 

I guess if I can’t find where it is I could at least try to think about what it is, I cross the room to sit on the bed but I’m stopped by the sound, not as loud this time but also not extremely quiet. It’s taunting me, every time I’m near it the sound ceases to exist, then reappears from somewhere else. I’m gonna blow up, bomb or no bomb. It’s agonizing! 

I start tapping my left foot in frustration. As if on cue, I hear ticks. I stop, realizing the ticks are in sync with my foot. I start tapping it again, tick tick. I stop, silence. Start taping my right foot, nothing. Left foot, tick tick… tick. And with the last tick, I understood. I brought my left leg up and rested my ankle across my right knee, twisting my foot to face me. 

There, lying in the middle of the bottom of my slipper, was a small grey button, probably previously attached to someone’s shirt. A small gray button. All of this, the stress, the frantic searching, thinking it was a freaking bomb! All of it was because of a button stuck on a slipper! My face felt hot, the blood and adrenaline pumping through my veins now add to my frustration, my shame for myself. How did I not realize the sound went along with the steps, baffles me. I started breathing heavy, working up the frustration again. 

I decided to have a smoke, to calm my nerves. My hands reached into my silky smooth pajama pockets to pull out the package of cigarettes, pulling one out and slipping it between my lips. As I reach into my pocket the realization that I’m about to smoke in my 8 years old’s room. I sigh as I do yet another thing dimwitted. Before I relocate I decide to put a stop to the most mischievous button I’ve ever encountered. My fingers reach for the button, then I slide my nail under it to lodge it off. It comes off reluctantly, as it must have been covered in something sticky, explaining why it stuck to the flat surface of the bottom of my slipper. I stand up and start making my way back to the kitchen. My appetite has vanished, what a waste of eggs, all because you stupidly thought a button was a bomb. I reach the kitchen and throw the button into the trash, I hear a faint tick as it bounces against the metal container of the trash can. I plop myself on the countertop and begin to light the cigarette I’ve anxiously been waiting for.

I feel the smoke filling my lungs upon my first deep inhale. I blow the smoke back out, but instead of taking my next breath in through my cigarette-holding mouth, I breathe the clean air through my nose. It smells of tobacco, and, well something else, something sour. Great, another unknown source your senses are picking up. Before I go down that rabbit hole again, I chalk it off as being the uncooked eggs being left out for too long. But it’s not spoiled eggs. I look over to the idle egg pan, they seem normal. My mind strains, as it seemed so long ago, back to the memory of me cooking those eggs. I hadn’t actually cooked them because I turned the wrong burner. It’s gas. Not an alarming amount of course, as I turned off the 3 shut-off switches just to be safe. I had only had them on for about a minute before I realized I didn’t turn the right burner on yet the gas was quite potent. Well, you did turn on the right burner you just forgot to light the gas. As to why that memory only popped up now, I wouldn’t know as my brain started going in a frenzy connecting things. You did turn the gas on the right one, you only hit the shut-off switches on the other 3. 

Then, the last realization rolled its way into my head, the cigarette. Time freezes. As my eyes turn towards my left hand, with the lit cigarette loosely held between my trembling fingers, I hear yet another noise. I knew where it came from this time. I also knew it would be the last noise I’ve ever heard.