What’s That Sound?

I awoke this morning with a familiar yet puzzling sound in my ear. It was cool outside so my wife Angela and I decided to leave the window open to get some fresh air as we slept. Lying there debating on whether I was going to get up and go to the bathroom or try to ignore my urges and go back to sleep, I began to focus on the strange sound outside our window. At first it sounded like wind, but there was a whistling sound like that of a freight train. The wind was blowing pretty hard earlier that day so my imagination got the best of me and I found myself thinking the worst. The swelling windy sound, the train whistle tone. Oh my GOD! What if it’s a tornado?! I went through the safety check in my head and had it all planned out. First I would wake Angela and get her into the hallway then I would throw the mattress in there as a buffer and get the dogs from outside. I thought I should check it out first. I eased out of bed and looked out the window but could see no rustling trees, no gusts of wind shaking the screen. It was just this steady swelling noise that sounded like an interstate full of 18 wheelers and a tornado siren faintly in the distance. I’ve heard the sound for years in fact but it’s never jumped out at me and made me wonder what was causing it. Was it some factory near by? Couldn’t be.. Was it traffic? No way! If so I needed to find out why so many people were driving around at 2:40 in the morning. I got dressed, told Angela I was going to find out what the sound was, grabbed my digital sound recorder and video camera and set out to find out what the buzz was. I followed the sound all the way to Highway 82 East where a few 18 wheelers passed along with a few other random vehicles carrying passengers to work or home from a bar. After a while I began to notice little sounds.. A man pressure washing a service station parking lot, a woman in scrubs being called out to the hospital, a small pack of multi-colored dogs roaming about following the leader, and of course, myself trying to find out what’s going on. I came to the conclusion that the sound was always there but it was never as loud as it’s been recently. Maybe it was, in fact, all the little things I noticed when I was out that sounded like such a big noise compared to the silence of the night. Or maybe I wasn’t even close. Maybe I’ll set out on a bicycle next time and conduct a more thorough investigation. As I returned home with one heck of a boring video under my arm I noticed the sound was even louder than before as if it were taunting me or beckoning me. Maybe I don’t want to know what it is maybe I do. Until I find out for sure I will just stick with my current theory: It’s a space ship hovering somewhere on the outskirts of town full of alien beings who are spying on a huge little city called Greenville.