I’m about three blocks away when
I realize I’m still wearing my bathrobe. Must look like The Dude. I just had to
get out of the house. I couldn’t face her. Even if she wasn’t disappointed in
me, the very fact of her human presence around me made me hate myself and my
failings.
I walk and walk. I walk in no
particular pattern, just following whatever crossing lights were white. Path of
least resistance, as usual.
Ugh. Why am I so not who I want
to be?
The bad thoughts were starting to
encroach again. I’ve been getting isolated and weird. Trying to meet people
halfway, people whom I knew liked me and wanted to engage with me. People I
love. I feel like I’m slowly warping into a person I don’t want to be. I feel
myself slipping further and further away from them, even as I sit and smile
mid-conversation. All I want is silence.
I’ve even stopped listening to
music, one of my biggest passions of my youth. I don’t care about new bands or
shows or anything. When I do feel the urge to listen to something, just to
break the monotony, it’s always barely audible.
It’s like I can’t stop listening
to the silence. It calls out to me. When I have to be subject to noise, I find
myself longing for deafness. I want to finally hear nothing. Maybe if I
didn’t hear how awful the sound of my voice is, I wouldn’t hate everything I
have to say.
I walk, scowling at every car
that passes for interrupting my peace. I try to step outside of myself,
remember that they have as much right to walk the Earth as I do. But it
immediately follows that none of us has any right. It makes it easier to hate
them again for the crime of life.
There is a high parking garage
gone dark. Only diffused moonlight filters through the cement structure. I duck
into it and follow the smooth concrete upwards. The noise from the outside is
turned down, having to traverse many angles to reach me. But it still seeks me.
I walk slowly, carefully, as quiet as I can manage. Every scratch of sand
beneath my shoes scrapes down my brain. When will this just end?
I make it to the top of the
parking garage and the wind mocks me with its hiss. I sit down near the center
of the parking level. There aren’t tears for this kind of desperation. I’m past
tears. Tears are for amateurs’ little jaunts into sadness and despair.
Tears are for the living.
I sit and I stare.
I walk to the ledge and stare
down. The city is quieter, but not quiet enough. As my foot shifts, a sharp
metal clinking forces into my head. A long, thin nail lies at my feet. Maybe
one last effort before I give in completely.
The second eardrum ruptures
easier than the first one.
It’s quiet. I look down at the
city and feel the wind brush me, neither one making a sound. I can almost enjoy
my other senses now that I have the silence. Now, I kind of do want to cry.
As I start walking down into the
parking garage, I notice the sound of my blood, round and organic. It was
almost enough, but the necessary functions of my body still intrude into my
head. The proverbial wind leaves my sails. I slow my pace to keep my heart rate
low.
“James?”
I turn in fear and fury to the
voice behind me. There is only darkness. I freeze.
I should not hear anything. And
my name is not James.
“James?”
It’s still behind me. Closer.
“James?”
I turn again, met only by
shadows. I can hear my blood rush. The shadows look finer, more defined in my
terror.
“James?”
I run.
I can hear what sounds like wet
meat slapping on the concrete and sound of bone crunching under heel.
“James?” The voice sounds afraid,
pleading.
I corkscrew down the halls of the
parking garage, hounded by the increasingly desperate cries.
I see the exit, a dark frame
around the street’s safety of light and society. I burst out of the exit.
I don’t hear the car coming.
