There was a noise.
A small noise.
He listened, unconcerned.
When the others had been here they
had made noises all the time. There was rarely a moments peace.
Sometimes in the dead of night when they were asleep he would awake to the
tiniest squeak or rattle and be afraid.
If they were all asleep, he had reasoned, there should have been
silence, but there was a noise, a barely audible noise! What could it have
been?
Now he just accepted it.
Now he spent all day alone, hearing just the sounds of his own
existence.
He had become used to the creaks and cracks of the building, the
wheezes and gurgles of his body. It was just the way it was.
Nothing can
move without creating vibrations, vibrations which travel through objects until
they meet the air. The air moves in sympathy. This is sound.
If there is no sound it means that nothing is moving,
if
nothing is moving then all life has ceased.
Silence is unnatural.
The noise stopped.
His ears strained for the next one, the next sign that he was
alive. The background hiss made him feel as if he were inside a velvet-lined
coffin, buried six feet deep.
It wouldnt be long now.
Will there really be silence there or does the movement of the
earth shake the eardrums of the dead?
A door creaked and then banged shut.
What relief!
Whether it was the wind, or a cat, or an assassin with a knife
clamped between his shining teeth, he didnt know.
He didnt care.
He was still alive, and he wasnt entirely alone.
Not entirely.