Under the fluorescent lights of St. Jude’s basement, nervous people sat in a circle of mismatched folding chairs.

“My name is Gary,” the man in the Hawaiian shirt whispered. “And it’s been three months since I’ve been near a body of water larger than a toilet.”

“Hi, Gary,” the group droned.

Gary shuddered. “I still hear it. That relentless cello music. I took my kids to a museum last week, saw a full-size replica of a prehistoric Megalodon shark, and I hid in the bathroom for two hours. I just … I can’t live like this, guys.”

“Trauma is a tide, Gary,” sighed Brenda, the group leader. Brenda was a retired school teacher who now wore a garlic garland like a fashionable pashmina.

“At least your trauma stays in the ocean. I can’t go to a wine tasting without checking the host’s incisors, or wondering why he doesn’t have a reflection in the Pinot Noir.”

A woman named Abigail adjusted her neck brace.

“You think a pale guy in a cape is bad? Try having a date turn into a literal beast halfway through the appetizers. I thought the ‘excessive body hair’ on his date app posting was just a hipster thing. Then he ate the waiter’s leg.”

“At least a werewolf has the decency to stay on the outside of your body,” muttered Sanjay, an “Alien” survivor. “Try having a workspace where ‘chest-bursting’ isn’t just a metaphor for a bad performance review. I don’t even eat pasta anymore. One look at a fusilli and I start reaching for a flame-thrower.”

“Can we please talk about the dust?” interrupted Susan, a high-end realtor. “I had a showing in a renovated tomb — very chic, original limestone — and this guy in toilet paper rolls starts chasing me. He moved at approximately 1 km/h, but he was persistent. I tried to file a restraining order, but the police said they couldn’t serve papers to a guy who’s been legally dead since the Bronze Age.”

Suddenly, the heavy basement door swung open, but oddly there was no sound. A woman sidled in, wearing enough noise-cancelling technology to ground a Boeing 747.

She didn’t speak. She didn’t even breathe loudly. She held up a hand-painted sign that read: “IF YOU MAKE A SOUND, WE ALL DIE. P.S. DOES ANYONE HAVE EXTRA SAND?”

“Oh, great,” Sanjay whispered. “A Quiet Place survivor. They’re the worst.”

The woman slowly lowered herself into a chair as if the plastic might scream. She pulled a tablet from her bag and typed at lightning speed, the text-to-speech voice set to a barely-audible whisper.

“My name is Renata,” the tablet hissed. “Do you know what it’s like to live in a world where a bag of SunChips is a death sentence?”

“We get it, Renata,” Susan sighed. “Noise is scary. But at least your monsters have ears. My mummy hasn’t had an eardrum since the New Kingdom, and he still found my beach house.”

Renata’s tablet chirped back: “Your mummy moves at the speed of a tectonic plate. My monsters have hearing aids tuned by NASA and the temperament of a caffeinated hornet. I watched a guy get taken out because his knees cracked when he stood up.”

The room went silent, until Kevin shifted his chair. The metal leg gave a sharp, piercing screech against the linoleum.

Renata was airborne in a second, pinning Kevin to the floor with a throw pillow while frantically looking at the ceiling for armoured aliens.

“Meeting adjourned!” Brenda yelled, dodging a flying foam cup. “Same time next month! And for the love of God, someone muffle those chair legs!”

© Peterborough Examiner