The Silent Sound

My Own Piece of Hell

Chapter Five

"How are you feeling today," Dr. Caulfield asks, as I sit down in front of her.

Abigail has not accompanied me once again. I think I've finally done what I was always afraid of-I've driven her away. My cruelty is beginning to take new forms and though my subconscious is watching my actions with horror, a fragment of me rejoices when others cry.

Why must I be the only one to suffer? Why must I bear the burden alone? Of course, she is hurting too. Her only son died and now her husband was being a callous monster, but the latter was too far gone in his own guilt to really focus on the consequences.

Now that didn't mean I didn't understand or acknowledge that my behavior was wrong. Of course it was wrong. I made my wife cry by cutting our dead son's birthday cake on our wedding anniversary for God sake. But was I really feeling guilty or was I feeling guilty because I felt no guilt?

"I am starting to confuse myself," I tell her and for the first time, in these two years and six months, I have spoken the truth.

I hope she didn't get me wrong; I wasn't warming up to her all of a sudden. No, my heart was engulfed in a thick layer of ice that was incapable of melting. Rather, I needed her for my plan. My foolish, dangerous, yet genius plan.

"Oh and how so," she asks, her pen writing down words in blue-inked script.

"I don't know how to explain it Doc," I say and yet again, it was the truth.

Am I finally beginning to open up? Are my wounds finally healing?

I place my hand on my heart. Nope. It was still bleeding profusely and there was still a gaping wound where my beating heart used to be.

My heart was missing, lying six feet under the ground.

"Can you try," Dr. Caulfield asks.

I have to laud her for her patience. In these two and a half years, I've told many lies, confused her beyond belief, and blatantly refused to help her solve my case. Nevertheless, she still gave me an optimistic smile every time I entered through the door and made sure to tell me that I had made progress at the end of the session. We both know she's always lying to me like I lie to her.

There is no progress because my conscious, my morals, were paralyzed in their position and I had yet to revive them. Now, I am only a body. A moving, lying, criminal-minded, body that had no other desire than to make others weep and cry.

If I lost my son, everyone needed to feel my pain. Why was the sun still rising when my own sun had long set and my life had been pushed into an eternity of darkness? The sky was still blue, resembling my son's cold body when I buried him with my own hands, and the grass was still green. The rain still fell like glass, each drop shattering on the ground and scattering in a million pieces, and the moon still glowed like a luminous mirror.

I hated it. I wanted the birds to die, I could no longer stand their chirping or their songs, the sky to turn black, the world to fall into disarray, and for everyone to feel my pain. No one deserved to be happy when I was here weeping.

How could the world still go on when my son had stopped breathing?

All of these thoughts would be sufficient enough to answer Dr. Caulfield's question but I choose not to use any of them. For if I did, then she'd see the vortex, which I call my heart, and she'd become yet another obstacle in my path.

"I don't know Doc. I just feel empty." That is also true. My body is empty, speaking in terms of a soul, and my heart is missing. But I'm not completely barren. I have the ravenous hunger for tears and pain in the pit of my stomach. I am beginning to think I had my own piece of hell in my body. For all I know now, I could very well be the devil.

I think I'd enjoy being Satan. Walking around, punishing the dead, making everyone bleed, scream, and writhe in pain until they were begging for a death that would never come. Yes, that would be fun.

"Perhaps, your son's death has something to do with your lack of emotions," she says, her face lit up in a million lights as if she had just discovered the cure for cancer.

She hadn't made a ground-breaking, earth-shattering, discovery. No, she simply stated the obvious. But I guess, to her it is new news. I had, after all, hidden my son's death from her for a good year and a half before my wife ruined my efforts.

Maybe I was punishing her too. Like Satan. The only problem is, she's not dead.

Not to worry, soon everyone will be dead-just like my son. For that is the price the world will pay for making me shed tears of blood, for forcing me to carry my son's corpse on my shoulder, and for manipulating me into burying him among horrific creatures that were waiting to feed on his skin.

Yes, the world would pay. Pay dearly with lives. After all, two negatives made a positive right?