I remember when everything fell. I remember when everything disappeared without a trace. I remember the beginning of the chilling silence and what came before it. The screams, the terrible, terrible cries of tortured souls, and yet- less terrifying than the silence, nothing is worse than the silence. I remember exactly what I was doing when it happened... it was so fast... everything was gone in an instant.
I haven't spoken since that day, I haven't heard a single voice since that day, I haven't heard anything since that day... not anything that isn't in my head. Nothing dares to break the silence, not falling leaves, not wandering, mutated birds, not the random, radioactive storms, the silence is not to be broken, not by me, not by anything.
I'm damned to perish immortally with everything else that already has left this planet, as far as I know... I'm the last, the very last. It's hard to remember life before the silence, what life was like with noise, without the screams of the damned in my head, but it's all in my head... nothing more.
After a while, you learn to tune it out, you learn to forget everything... just make it day-to-day until you die, that's the day I await, and yet the day that will never find me. I've been alive for 1,537 years... even though I'm human.
The current year is 3047.
The current day is Tuesday.
The current date is July, 13.
I long for death, just as I had the day I was born. June 14, 1510. My first proper thought was about death, the first time I tried to die I was 4, and the last time I tried to die was yesterday. I don't remember my first name, meaning the name I got the first time. I don't have a name anymore... there's no need for it. Although I think my favorite name was the 17th one, it was November 8, 1801, and I got a new identity... again. The name was Mercutio Beldam, Mercutio being after my favorite character from Romeo and Juliet, and Beldam after the name of an ancient witch. Sometimes I think of myself as Mercutio... that dumb little kid only a couple hundred years old.
I think my least favorite name was my 8th, it was August 17, 1638, I changed my unremarkable identity again, and my 8th name was Augustine Lenson. I don't know where my 8th name came from, but I didn't like it.
It's so cold... it's July and it's freezing... I remember the heat, I remember the warmth, but the chilling silence takes everything good away, it takes everything decent about your miserable life and it crumbles before your very eyes. I despise the silence. How desperately I wish to break it, but I'd be met with a fate worse than living another day... something even more torturous than my life has already been to me.
I remember right after the silence started, I had a friend I named Yorick, once again after Shakespeare, Yorick was a dog... a big one, I don't know the breed... he was a mutt. I held him to me because he was the only thing I held dear after the silence fell... but then one day, he broke the silence. Yorick broke a twig by mistake, then started howling in pain... but it was silent, yet I could see the despair and torture in his face. I reached out for him, but then he vanished, and now his desperate howls live in my head with the horrendous screams.
I haven't slept since May 28, 2002, I am so tired, but I can't sleep. I remember I never had regular dreams, they were always nightmares just like real life. I couldn't even find solace in sleep, at least, when I could still sleep. Sometimes I still try to, and I hope to whatever cruel god there is that I do fall asleep and never wake up.
Before the silence, everything was less piercing, everything was less intense than it is now. Nothing felt like life or death... and somehow, despite my presumed immortality and the longing for death, I feel the pressure of life or death situations... and I avoid the danger. I don't know why, I can't forge an explanation, but you'd think after being alive this long, survival instinct be damned, I'd be able to run towards death and embrace it instead of cowering like a puppy with my tail in between my legs. I hate survival instinct... damn you, neanderthals, that I evolved from, why must you have cowered in the face of death rather than embracing it.
Sometimes I think about breaking the silence... sometimes I wonder if it would kill me or just torture me more... sometimes I think it's worth it, but I'm still human, despite the fact I welcome the thought of death, I fear pain oddly enough. For all the times I've tried to end my life, you'd think I'd dislike pain a little less. Maybe I should break it, maybe the universe is finally giving me a way out and I'm not taking it... but knowing the cruel tricks fate likes to play, it's probably not, it will probably torture me more than being alone for eternity will.
I often reminisce about noise, despite how lovely the silence is. The silence is everything and nothing all at once, it's a piece of art beyond those I've seen produced, even as far back as Picasso... it's beautifully mortifying, yet mysterious. I think the only thing driving me not to break the horrendous silence is my curiosity about it, if I break it, it will no longer be silent, and nothing will be the same again. It would be the first time in 1,537 I change the world, and I think it would be for the worst.
On the other hand, maybe it would be nice to take something from it for once, instead of being degraded and beaten by it, maybe I should harm it instead of being under the looming threat of noise taking me to the brink of death but never quite to it. Like something you can touch, but not quite hold. Maybe I should break it-
*CRASH*
That came from behind me! But... there's nothing there- whispers. I want to investigate, but the sun is setting... maybe it'd be best to stay- *panting* Nope, I have to go investigate.
*Shuffling*
I don't see anything, and yet I can feel the silence whirring around me. It's angry, very angry. I almost pity it, but not quite, but I don't yet hear cries of the damned, or howls of pain surrounding me, feeding into an eventual silence, pleasing the existing silence, I hope it doesn't catch its culprit, I hope it suffers. The screams in my head are concerned, they stopped... they're hopeful too, they're hopeful that the silence will be angry to no avail, that it will be in pain, tortured beyond belief.
Ow-! Son of a bitch... it- it thinks it was me! The silence thinks it was- shit- shit! Why does it think it was me... oh well, maybe it's time for me to tempt fate.
"...kill me... I dare you..." My voice is raspy, I haven't spoken in such a long time... but now it feels like my body is on fire like I'm being torn apart limb by limb like I'm being shredded from the inside out, yet, I can't be bothered to scream.
Why?
I can't scream... why?
Why am still alive?
Why is life so cruel?
How long has it been?
It feels like seconds, yet I'm watching seasons pass in front of me. How is this happening? It hurts so bad... what did I do to deserve this?
I didn't want any of this, I've never wanted to live... yet I've been the only person damned to live forever... I suppose this is the next chapter of my life, an eternal hell, different from the one I was already subjected to, one of a special design, to torture me to the brink of death, just to pull me right back and dangle the idea in my face again.
I'll never die...
I want to die...
But I can't die...
This is my life...
Constant misery, just as it always has been, and I suppose how it always will be.
