Cursed and Lonely: The Stop

Chapter 1: Time

He woke up with a beam of light on his face.

It was silent, too silent. A silence where you would be able to hear your own heartbeat, your own breathing and your own blood flow.

He expected to hear the birds chirping but they weren't. He expected to hear the clock ticking but it didn't. "The battery must have died over night." He reasoned.

He got up and looked around, still astonished that he heard nothing. Anxiety started to creep up on him. He didn't want this. He didn't want to be deaf. He still wanted to listen to songs and he still wanted to hear the voices of those he cared for. This went on for a little while until he calmed himself down. "it might not be permanent" he thought.

So he slowly got up, it was hard to move. He shook it off, he reasoned that after an anxiety attack he would have trouble with moving.

He went to his kitchen. The kitchen was small, there was not really anything special. He had just moved out of his parents' house and really didn't have the money for any special gear. The move had taken a long time, his dad didn't really care about his move, he never really had a good relationship with him either. So that was to be expected. His mom found that it was too early for him to leave the house but understood that her son wanted some space and responsibility. She offered him some of her kitchen tools but he didn't want to accept it. So now all he had was a simple coffee machine.

He tried to make some coffee but he couldn't get the machine working. He could really use a cup of coffee right now. He let out a deep sigh. It is just a bad dream he thought, there is no way and no reason that so many bad things can happen all at once.

So he walked around for a good thirty minutes but it could have been longer too. The more he walked around the more awake he became. It felt like he could move better with every minute that passed. He started to panic so he stopped walking. The fear of this not being a dream started to creep up on him. This was reality. Bad days like these do exist.

He didn't feel like doing anything today, he felt no motivation whatsoever. If it was really going to be a bad day he rather just spend his whole day doing nothing than to let the bad day have its way.

So he took a cold coffee out of the fridge. He noticed that the lights in the fridge didn't work. "so it was probably an electricity outage." He felt a little bit relieved. His coffee machine was probably not broken.

He tried to turn on the lights to make sure that it was an electricity outage. Like he expected they didn't turn on. He still couldn't hear anything though, he couldn't hear the light switch.

With sadness he took a sip from his coffee. To his surprise he could hear himself drinking. He could hear himself gulping down the cold coffee. He was confused, could he hear again? Why is the coffee cold? How was all of this even possible.

He flicked the light on and off again but couldn't hear anything, he drank some coffee again and could hear that. He couldn't stop thinking, his mind started getting some crazy ideas. Something was wrong, there was no way that he could hear himself drink but couldn't hear the light switch. He just couldn't figure it out.

The more time flew by the less he understood the situation. How was it possible that he couldn't hear anything from the outside but could only hear things from the inside of his body. There were too many different possibilities but none of them made sense.

While he was thinking he was brushing his mid long brown hair with his hand. He wanted to let his hair grow because he felt like it was a part of growing up and being free.

While he was still thinking his eyes scouted through the whole kitchen room. He was going over every object in the kitchen hoping that it might give him a hint of what was happening, there really wasn't a lot in the kitchen though.