Flash Fiction Anthology

Silence

It had been days since she had spoken to me last, pushing me to act unkindly in my turn only get a reaction, any reaction from her.

But she didn't seem to mind my leaving for work before she woke up, never being home on time for dinner, sleeping on the sofa, and never attempting to talk to her either. Honestly, I had already forgotten what this was all about this time.

This wasn't the first time we argued, but the silent treatment I normally received never lasted this long or filled my mind with questions and doubts like it was doing now. Something... was different this time. We needed to talk.

Letting my eyes wander to my colleagues as I took my gloves off, I realised how we hardly ever spoke, our work influencing our dynamics and relationships. Spending endless hours on newly discovered archeogical sites, almost afraid to breathe and thus destroy something before we could catalogue and study it, we did our job in careful silence, the monotony of the movements our fingers performed, taking our minds from the places where we were, allowing us to glimpse the times long passed we were reconstructing.

However, since the day we started working in this place almost a week ago, happy that for once the new site didn't remove us for weeks or months from our families, none of them looked happy, and the few sentences we normally exchanged dwindled to confused smiles and unsure nods. Right now, the atmosphere was suffocating, I needed to get out.

I smiled at all four of them in turn, miming a quick goodbye with a wave of my hand as I exited the tiny temple dedicated to a deity we still had to unveil, climbed, almost glided up a ladder as I rushed through a near perfect darkness to the vaults of the biggest gothic church of the town.

My mind strolled to the moment when we first entered the temple found by the church's night guard, who almost fell into it through the collapsed floor of the vault. I remembered the feeling that always accompanied these moments-- entering places that had been shut and lost for thousands of years, breathing in the alien, primaeval air emanating from its walls. Those places smelled of magic, of spells, and maybe curses cast by the ancients who had built them, who gave the their souls...

I took a deep breath of a more familiar air as I entered the church, abandoned at this hour, only the scent and whisper of burning candles hinting at a recent human presence, it was so silent, eerily silent, the vastness of the building swallowing the sound of my footsteps.

I walked through the open door into the darkness reigning outside; the night had already descended upon the world, another day was gone, never to come back. Reluctantly, I directed my steps towards home, the flat only a few blocks away, almost hoping to find her asleep... I had meant to talk to her tonight, but suddenly I wasn't in the right mood... I'd sleep on the sofa again, and then we could talk tomorrow. It would be Sunday, neither of us would have to go to work, and we would have the whole day to speak...

I entered the flat silently, heading for the sitting room, feeling too tired to think about food. A sigh escaped me when I found her sleeping on my sofa with the television still on.

Had she been waiting for me?

No, one quick look towards the kitchen confirmed that the table was set for one person, a half-eaten meal abandoned to keep company to an almost empty bottle of wine.

Had she been drinking? Did this silly fight trouble her much more than I had thought? We needed to talk about it right now.

I sat next to her on the sofa, my weight leaving no imprint on the cushion... The realisation made me pause in the act of reaching for the remote control she was still holding in her hand. Noticing my curious weightlessness was followed by perceiving the way my presence affected her-- she shivered and pulled her legs to her chest as if she was suddenly cold, muttering my name as I touched her, my hand... passing through hers as if she was made of mist... Or I...

Suddenly, I recalled how my colleagues and I had not spoken to each other for days, the way I moved through darkness with ease, my steps not making any sound in the church, the way I... seeped through the front door of the flat when I could not find my keys...

'The funeral of the four archaeologists dead in the collapse of the ancient pagan temple recently discovered under the Church of The Holy Virgin was held today. The site, as well as the vaults of the church, remain closed to visitors...' The serious male voice reaching from the television scattered my thoughts... I wasn't true, it couldn't be...

A silent, surprised gasp left my lips as I finally understood and accepted the truth. Her eyes fluttered open at hearing the sound, and she stared at me as if she was seeing me for the first time in weeks while a beam of bright light appeared above us.

"I love you," I whispered, watching her nod vigorously, her words reaching me even as the buzzing, moving light took me away from her, making me lose my human form and become a part of its holy brilliance, "I love you too."

***

ravenwood666may I solemnly swear that I don't have a least favourite book, thus no quote...
But hopefully, I got the 'unreliable narrator' right, at least 😄