Alternate Realities

Loudest Silence

Heavy is the head that wears the crown...

Blocks of blood-filled rocks carved by clank after clank of iron on stone. A monument replacing old, tired symbols of strength with a weary chair of suspicion. Blocks of silence so loud that no whisper could echo through the hallow crown.

Fingertips inclined to tap and dance in impatient boredom are stilled on the edges of the shadowed arms. Unnecessary movement, long moments of contemplation, even the flippant arguments so easily entrapping to youthful statesmen cannot be tolerated under the heavy strain of silent stone. The safety is overpowering. The exhaustion is, at first, every bit an injury as any found in the long hard days of a trench. But weariness and sameness overtake unease and hastens his new found freedom into the depths of unseen illness. Dreams slither into nightmares. Nightmares spook eyes into sleepless turmoil. Days are spent sitting in the sucking void where his thoughts remain entangled with questions.

What is his? What was hers? Who is loyal? Who is scheming? What was real? What was placed?

Questions he's convinced his departed accomplice spliced along fractures. Quandaries that can enslave him to the silence for minutes and then blending hour after hour towards the dawn. On the horizon all enemies rise, but none engross him like the gaping spaces once filled by other voices.

Pop a comment, and I'll be smiling for days.