…tap…

Carol paused mid step in her kitchen and listened. She’d been about to get a drink when she’d heard it. Or at least, she thought she’d heard something. As she strained her ears, trying to stand as still and quietly as possible, she found herself hoping to be both right and wrong when it came to whether or not she’d heard it. At last she gave up listening and she poured herself the drink she’d come to get.

“Carol, it’s your turn!” Natsumi called from the living room.

“Coming,” Carol replied and she put her glass in the sink.

Back in the living room, Carol rejoined Natsumi and their two new roommates, Rin and Terra. Carol and Natsumi had been roommates for over a year now but Rin and Terra had only moved in a couple weeks ago. Terra had insisted at once that they get to know one another better by playing board games together as often as possible. That, in Carol’s estimation, was the only reason they had been sitting around the Monopoly board for the last several hours. It wasn’t how she would have normally spent her weekend, but she had no homework, it was her day off, and Terra had seemed so eager to play a game.

Carol picked up the dice, one in each hand, and rolled them, one each, into matching padded boxes. The boxes were shallow and looked purpose made for dice rolling.

…tap…tap tap…tap…

She froze yet again. Had that just been the dice? It hadn’t sounded right.

“You okay?” Natsumi asked quietly while Rin and Terra gave her curious looks.

Rin and Terra didn’t know it but the reason they were rolling their dice into a padded box was specifically because Carol didn’t like things that could make sounds like, well, like that. Natsumi had found out about Carol’s aversion to certain sounds after bringing home a clicky pen several months ago.

“You rolled an eight,” Rin prompted when Carol continued to stare at the dice. Rin began to move Carol’s piece, the dog, around the board. “You owe me twelve dollars.”

Carol fumbled with the paper money and finally counted out the bills.

Play resumed and Carol’s thoughts drifted away from the game once more. Really, she had a lot to be thankful for. Some people heard voices, others heard music. She heard tapping. The few people who knew about it usually said the same thing whenever the subject came up: “At least it’s only tapping”. Carol usually left it at that, but she knew they never really got it, but how could she explain that tapping could be so…so menacing. So threatening. As though it was the tapping of some predator stalking her.

TAP TAP TAP

Carol jumped in her seat as the tapping came on so suddenly and so loud.

“Please don’t roll them that way!” Natsumi said at once and took the dice from Terra who had been shaking them together, cupped in both hands.

“What’s the matter?” Terra demanded, her patience wearing thin as she was clearly feeling that the enjoyment of the game was being severely diminished by the imposed dice rolling rule. “I’m just rolling dice!”

Terra cast the dice onto the board in protest.

Tap Tap Tap the dice sounded as they rolled.

Carol managed to keep calm but she itched to snatch up the dice in order to silence them.

“Maybe we could just play something different?” Carol suggested in a rush. “I just…don’t think Monopoly is the right game for today.”

Terra studied her for a moment. It was clear that she really wanted to play Monopoly but all three of the others seemed to be agreement that a different game might be better.

“Fine,” Terra conceded, though not bitterly. “We could try Liars Dice.”

“No,” Carol said so quickly that even Natsumi jumped. “Sorry, I just had a bad experience with that one.”

“Oookaay ,” Terra said uncertainly. “I also have Tenzi, Farkle, and Yahtzee.”

“Aren’t those all dice games?” Natsumi asked.

“Yeah,” Terra said, “I love dice games.”

“Do you have anything that doesn’t require dice?” Carol asked.

Terra gave her a quizzical look.

“Why?” she asked. “Do you have something against dice?”

Natsumi shot her a nervous glance out of the corner of her eye while Carol hesitated as she wondered how best to answer. She didn’t like admitting to people that she sometimes heard things that weren’t there. There was a certain stigma about people who heard such things that she generally tried to avoid. Unfortunately, when she would just say that she didn’t like clicking or tapping sounds, most people discounted it and didn’t treat her requests with any weight.

In the end, she settled on, “I just really don’t like the sound of dice.”

As expected, Rin looked unimpressed. Terra, however, began to smile broadly, almost as if he were about to laugh.

“It’s not funny,” Carol said at once, ready to go on the defensive.

“No, I’m sorry,” Terra said, still smiling and now shaking her head. “It’s not you, its my mom.”

Terra got up and began digging through her box of games that she had set down beside the table before they had started playing Monopoly.

“Growing up,” Terra said while she rummaged, “I was always playing with dice, to the point where it was driving my mom nuts, so she bought me these.” Terra held up a clear plastic case the size of a small book. Inside was a set of dice. “They’re still the only ones I’m allowed to use when I’m at home.”

“What’s so special about them?” Natsumi asked, and Terra handed her the case. She opened it up and pulled one of the dice from the case. “Oh!” She said with surprise and handed it over to Carol.

Carol took it and rolled it around in her hand. It wasn’t as heavy as a regular dice, and neither was it as hard. It had a certain amount of give to it.

“What’s this made of?” she asked.

“It’s foam,” Terra said simply, taking back the case from Natsumi and dumping the remaining dice out onto the table. Carol braced herself but they fell and bounced with dull tones.

“So,” Terra began hopefully, “are these ones okay?”

Carol could have laughed. The only foam dice she’d ever seen were either the kind people hang from their rear view mirror in their cars, or else they were the kind for small children and in both cases, they were over sized and ill suited for board games. These dice, on the other hand, were the same size as regular dice.

“I think they will,” Carol said in awe as she rolled the die on the table, its pleasant subtle thump thump thump sounding as it rolled along.

“Excellent!” Terra cheered, “So what would you like to play?”

For the first time that Carol could remember, she played games involving dice and enjoyed every minute of it. In fact, she hardly heard any tapping the rest of that day.