“Walls Have Ears” • by Raluca Balasa ~ Stupefying Stories Magazine

Monday, April 21, 2025

“Walls Have Ears” • by Raluca Balasa

By ~brb April 21, 2025 No comments

[START]

This interview is being recorded, at half past noon on the eighth of June, 2025. We are in Interview Room C at the Windsor police station in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. No other officers or legal representatives are present. Can the interviewee state his name and date of birth?

Is interviewee even a word?

Please answer the question, Mr. Older.

[Laughs] Yes.

Yes?

The interviewee is capable of stating his name and date of birth.

Mr. Older, you understand that should this go to court, your evasion of the simplest questions will do nothing for your defence?

You’ve already said my name twice, so as far as I’m concerned, you’re the one evading. And isn’t it within my rights to remain silent?

Okay. If you don’t want to respond to a question, simply say “no comment” so we can move forward. Okay?

Sure.

Great. You were arrested on Centre Street at 20:30 for possession of weapons. Can you tell me what you were doing standing on top of the Bellevue House historic site with a crowbar and a stick of dynamite?

Absolutely. I was breaking in.

You do realize that the house is open for free tours year-round?

They’re renovating. The whole place is locked down.

Right. What were you going to do inside?

Just talk.

Talk? To whom?

The house.

No metaphors, please, Mr. Older.

Let me break it down for you. I have to be inside a building before it lets me see what happened there. Did you know that a lady died in the waiting room here twenty-three years ago? In this station. Check your ledgers. She had a stroke while her interviewer was in his office making tea. The building’s still very upset over it.

Do you consider yourself gifted?

I know my father’s griped to the entire department about my gifts. Might’ve been easier if you’d just sent him to interrogate me.

Family members aren’t permitted to conduct interviews, Mr. Older.

You’re hardly unbiased. Still kissing his ass these days? Working hard to be a sheriff like him, full to the chin with medals?

Are you angry with your father? Was this a cry for his attention after your mother left?

Ah, so you’ve read my file. But it doesn’t tell the whole story.

Please try to focus, Mr. Older. Why exactly were you at the Bellevue House?

PM John A. MacDonald lived there for a year. I wanted to learn his secrets.

Give me a… let me write that down. Okay. What did you want to learn about Sir John A. MacDonald that you couldn’t just ask the tour guides?

No one really knows what was wrong with his wife, why she was sick all the time. The damned tour guides wouldn’t know, but the house does. Maybe he was poisoning her.

You’re slandering a national hero. Do you have some vendetta against great people?

Now you’re the one being dramatic. I have nothing against John the person. It’s the idea of heroes. Of building someone up as a god to justify why we don’t ask them questions. It’s my mission to show people the truth.

Let me make sure I understand. You wanted the house to tell you Sir John A. MacDonald’s darkest secrets, so you could prove that he poisoned his wife?

That was just an example, officer. But everyone has secrets. Whatever his were, it’s my duty to expose them.

And then what?

Then we learn to stop taking others’ word as gospel, and to start thinking for ourselves.

You feel called to do this?

I wouldn’t have this gift otherwise. Remember Doug Ford? The whole drug scandal? Who do you think was the first to set the media off on that?

Are you saying you were that anonymous source?

Of course. I spoke to his old office.

Okay… [laughs] I’m sorry, give me a second. This is… It’s just that we’re not at risk of John A. MacDonald running for office anytime soon.

That doesn’t matter. Write this down. No leader should have such unquestioning love from his people, not even a dead one. It’s unhealthy—it’s like Stockholm syndrome.

Can you tell me why you hate authority figures?

[Laughs] I suppose it stems back to my family. You were right about one thing: I am angry with my father.

Have you ever seen a therapist, Mr. Older? Would you be open to the idea?

Oh, but you think he’s a hero, don’t you? Of course you do. I must be ungrateful. My father, always so busy cleaning up other people’s messes that he doesn’t even bother wiping his own ass.

[Coughs] Please, let’s keep this professional.

He sent me away when I first told him about my gift. Said I was arrogant, that I—I!—had a God complex. He was always blaming his flaws on others.

You felt abandoned? Was that it?

I was chased out. You see, my father finally convinced my mother to send me away to boarding school. He wouldn’t let me back into the house afterwards, said it was so I could make my own way in life. Really, he didn’t want me learning what he’d done inside the house while I was gone. He was afraid of me.

[…] Go on.

So if I could no longer talk to my childhood house after my mother ran away, I had to find a way of talking to his workplace. Of getting her justice.

[…]

Officer, these walls scream that Sheriff Older is guilty of domestic violence. His office told me exactly where my mother’s blood still is, on the underside of his desk where he didn’t think to clean up. Go check for yourself.

[…]

I’ve said everything I have to say. Thank you very much for your cooperation, officer. This interview is concluded at twelve forty-three, on the eighth of June, 2025.

[FIN]

Raluca Balasa holds an MFA in Creative Writing: Fiction from the University of Nevada, Reno. Currently, Raluca works as a writing and literature professor in the Toronto area. Her debut science fiction novel, Blood State, was released in 2020 from Renaissance Press.