Act of Silence

Scene 3

He opened his eyes, and looked up. It wan't the normal sight that he had looked up at for the last seventeen years of his life. Normally he would go to that old abandoned park at lunch time, look up at the stars through the misty fog of light pollution and wish he was somewhere else. This time though, all he could see was ceiling. He wasn't really surprised. After all, he was inside. He wasn't in the park. He was at work. Doing the night-shift.

He slowly stood up, with a faint whooshing, tinkling sound of several thousand pieces of plastic glass falling off his chest. Where had that come from? It made the loudest sound he could hear. The glass and his heart were all he could hear in fact. There was nothing else.

He surveyed the scene around him.

He could see silence.

The floor shone and twinkled under the yellow strip lights, like a slightly tainted diamond. It was actually quite beautiful; he'd never seen it before, it normally being suffocated under the seething mass of angry, worried passengers, all wanting to leave as fast as possible. A few benches lay uprooted, looking like fallen soldiers, where the seething mass had swept along, fearing for its life as a collective swarm. A mop lay comically next to the bench, the soldier's fallen sword, it's owner long since departed for safer climes.

A telephone rang somewhere deep down in the building. It rang once, twice, three times. Then it stopped, quieted by the peace like a stern but kindly librarian. A blackbird sang its sweet flute-like song, far above the young man's head in the mass of metal struts and glass that was the ceiling.

He picked up the smashed remains of his computer off the desk, and, not wanting to break the enveloping silence, gently deposited on the floor. He climbed up, kneeled down, crossed his legs, and watched the scene with mild interest. Why it had happened, he didn't really care. After all, if something terrible was about to happen, surely it was too late to do anything about it now.

He suddenly noticed a pair of large brown eyes surveying him from behind one of the battered desks. They were bright, nervous, but not fearful.

She slowly rose from behind the desk and gave him a slightly apprehensive wave.

"Umm..."

"Uh..."

They fell silent. They looked around again. They came to a kind of understanding, as if they had known each other for many years. There wasn't anything to say.

They walked slowly across the deserted hall together, towards the warm darkness outside, the runway lights twinkling invitingly in the distance. The moon shone on the tarmac like a path of light over an ocean.

The young couple was gone, the hall settled down into silence once more.