Drip, drop, drip, drop.

A sound of rain ricochets throughout my heart, chilling me to the bone. Madison Paige pries open a window with her little lady fingers and slips inside. After seconds of noseying around the place, she ventures upstairs.

Drip, drop, drip, drop

Creak.

Madison's footsteps let out a cry below, just as the home owner returns. He opens his front door, hears the little feet above and grabs a weapon. He smiles in anticipation, laughing under his breath. Above his head, Madison is panicking and looking for somewhere to hide. But there is nowhere to hide, there is no escape.

It's seven o'clock and I'm playing 'The Taxidermist' DLC for Heavy Rain.

We shift forwards now.

Drip, drop, drip, drop.

It's always a sound that goes through me, tears out my soul and ignites the fires of emotion. Here I am, little Nathan Hardisty, playing a game about objectivism and Ayn Rand inspired philosophies. My core values of the world and society are been challenged as I walk through a dead man's dream.

A different sound echoes through me, chirping in its own delight. I hear those same echoes over and over, the same words. The same footsteps, the flashbacks.

Would you kindly?

Drip, drop, drip, drop.

I'm Batman.

The stench of the sewer is hidden behind the pixels, but I can feel the nasal pain of little Bats. I can hear what he can, I can see what he can but I can't smell. But I can feel smell, I can feel that echo. The liquid garbage and sewer waste dripping and dropping.

Croc lurks below, stirring like Bruce from Jaws. He's waiting, waiting for me to make the wrong move. I peer cautiously at the ultrasound detector on my HUD.

Creak... creak

I hear waves, patterns, little whispers of the stalker below. He wants my bones.

Creak... CREAK!

Bat-bones?

CREAK... CREAK!

A step too far?

CREAK! CREAK! CREAK!

He emerges from the depths, covered in liquids. He peers right down at me and we give way to the chase. All the while, that liquid pouring down from his scales. Dropping on to the floorboards below...

Drip, drop, drip, drop.

I'm thirteen years old, I'm crying my eyes out. It's not in front of screen, or a book. My great grandfather died, that fateful November evening. He had been ill for weeks, deteriorating until I could not bare to see him.

For a brief second, I'm taken back. Taken back to my pixelated joys, to all my near-death experiences trapped within a screen. For one brief second, the rain speaks to me. We intertwine, liquids and liquids, my tears and rain.

Then silence.

I'm reminded, everytime I encounter water or liquids or the sound of dripping in a videogame, of that same moment. That brief little interlude between life and death, before everything came crashing down on my head. My great-grandfather lived a long, fruitful life but it tore everyone apart to see him edge closer and closer over that precipice.

This isn't much about videogames, this is more of a "What sound triggers what in your brainbox."

You might think it's painful and it is. It's painful to watch someone you love go that far and then fall over. It's painful to watch as your whole family tearfully comes to terms with it. More than likely, many of you have experienced the same.

But it doesn't hurt.

That dripping sound reminds me of a time before, a time well before my head was full of naked girls and Batman. I was six or seven years old and every so often at the weekends we would go up to a little river-abbey thing that I only know as 'Bolton Abbey' (the picture above). It would be a hot day and everybody would be out but it would be silent. My great-grandfather would be holding my great-grandma's hand in a cherished celebration of their fruitful love. They'd be smiling, and he'd think he'd look so cool in sunglasses. He was, in all fairness, the coolest great-grandfather you could ever hope to meet.

There was silence, you couldn't here a thing. Not an ounce of aural annoyance or obstacle anywhere to be seen. The birds, animals and farm-dwellers were all miles away.

It was still, still life.

Save one sound.

Drip, drop, drip, drop.

The sound of life.