Silence - A Short Story

Silence.

Dead silence. Back in the day—when people still said, “back in the day,”—you saw lots of movies and the like failing to acknowledge the silence; the silence is everything.

I say “dead” silence, not to tell you that it is as silent as death out here, though that is true, but because out here the silence will kill you. But the silence will also make you see. That’s when you discover how bright it is out here in the dark. Dark makes the light shine brighter. Here, I can watch Mother and Luna dance silently around each other, growing, shrinking, growing and shrinking. . .

Mother’s breath looks like glass in the glare of Sol’s merciless eye. That’s what I mean about the dark making the light that much brighter. Here, I can see a billion tiny eyes winking at me, woven into a midnight tapestry; they shine, tiny dots finishing the endless question marks of the universe, stretching out farther than vision. Metals have more gleam here, rocks have kingly sheen here, I am aware of how much I breathe here.

My doctors told me this job might be good for me. When you refuse to leave your house, I suppose the most extreme ERP possible would be to leave house and home and your whole world behind. Don’t think that makes it easier. It doesn’t. Because after the initial excitement (or unbridled terror), after your flying cage has stopped shaking and your teeth have followed suit, there’s a horrible moment when you feel everything in you and around you stops. You feel lost. You feel trapped, confined, and yet, adrift at sea. Your body is light, your head is lighter. Some of the passengers vomit all over themselves, maybe you do too. Floating sick…what an odd amorphous noun-verb-adjective-puddle-of-muck.

You dock, and you’re taken from one metal coffin and placed in another. The food is odd, the people bump and jostle, and soon, terrifying as it is, you start to crave that outer blackness, the abyss, cold, endless, but peaceful; nothing but your heart and lungs to keep you company. I come out here to write. After chasing my pen around the room longer than I’ve chased an idea, I finally catch it and hurry to climb into my metal pajamas. I’m going deep sea diving, but deep is every direction; I’m deep sea drifting.

Silence.

The silence won’t let you focus on itself long; it’s as elusive as the next string of words. Soon, you begin to be transfixed by the hiss-hiss of your own breath in your ears, and the eerie accompaniment of bloody bum-bumps in your eyes. I have chemical-fed, fire-breathing monsters lashed to my back, they propel me on my quest, but I cannot hear them. I can sometimes hear a hum as they vibrate my suit. But my heart and mind scream loud in comparison.

So, now I’m floating here, watching Mother half gone, and holding up the tools of my trade, trying to capture the hugest-hugeness that is all of this, all of everything. My portion, my bread-and-butter, my hammer and nail, are an electronic tablet and stylus to accompany. It’s funny, that having come so far and for so long, I’m still writing on a slate. The green-rectangle cursor winks at me while I glare back pondering. My weapon is poised, dialing down the noise, I touch down the pen-tip, like the kiss of an old friend, and then…

There’s movement to my left. I turn slowly, dreamily. A slug through liquid-less, airless death. Two have come to join me, garbed in tinfoil and out to see the wonder, that vast emptiness but exquisite beauty. They hover just outside our hostel, a ship in a sideways, up-down sea. Astronautical particles clutching hold tightly to their own mortality in a vacuum sealed climax to our Earthly comedy. This is our highpoint, when high becomes sideways, all ways. And now three human androids are suspended in the expanse.

I watch them, look on as they hover, looking all around at the wonders of the heavens. I am not even sure they see me here; unless they look at me, the silence strangles all notice. Their antiseptic suits make them white and silver plasticine twins. One of them extends his arm pointing up at the brilliant tapestry of lights, tracing shapes with a white-gloved finger. It is so surreal to watch the pair. Are they close friends? Lovers? Siblings? A soundless tapping from one to the other as another of the ancient wonders is outlined above them. There’s something about the silence here that makes you desperately wish you had a working ear. It will trick you, lie to you, let your imagination have sick, sick fun with you.

As I stood watching, I saw with horror a deadly pageant unlike any other, devoid of blood or curdling screaming, nightmarish in its lack of any signs normally calling for fear. One twin removed a light from his pocket, it came to a point, a knife in the darkness. In dead quiet the two grappled, brilliantly backlit by Luna’s curtain. Melodrama surfeit, lit by a full moon. I heard my heart take up the death-march drumbeat, watched as white bubble-man, turned on white bubble-man, slashing the tiny, fragile tube that kept the breath of life inside. I felt the horror of the drowning man; I tried not to imagine the candle of his life being sucked out of his white trashcan. The slayer used his victim’s corpse to kick away from the scene, and off he floated. I put a hand on the button wired at my throat, to call for help. But the silence had the last and bitterest note. Floating freely and fast away, the marshmallow wrapped man grabbed desperately at his neck and helm, kicked about awhile and then grew calm. He had crossed the threshold beyond night and day in a place where both came out to play.

Even out here I could not escape. I had not called for help, I had not run away, just sat there listening to the true sound of death, and watched it have its bloodless way.

My heart was loud and deafening. Starlight glowed in my tears. Yet all I could hear was the immensely weird. . .

Silence.