Gone With Love

The air felt thin that night.

That night, when he started the car engine and began to drive.

That night when the silence became violent. He found it hard to conceal his wracking fear of a soundless night. The fear that the silence will show the eyes that his pride was gone. Dead.

"Remember the words," the silence snarls, "Remember what you killed."

What did I kill?

He begins to pile up the miles behind him as silent hours pass. The headlights pointed north envy the ones driving south. Shall he crack the door? And fall out?

Then, he remembered what she gave him when he left.

She reached in the back and buckled up her heart.

For him, to drive away with.

In the sounds of the murderous silence, he began to understand--

Why God died.

•••

He held a torch.

It was dark, and the moon did not light the world that night. That night, loneliness seeped in through the cracked windows and the wind spoke threats. The man laid dormant as the dangerous number of pills he had swallowed hungrily took effect. The porch was lit, not by a light bulb, but by fire. The walls that surrounded him were quiet, and no words came from them that night. The silence was smothering, but he was not alone in it. The creature sat still on the front steps awaiting the time when his plan would be carried out. His torch flickered, but the flame produced no heat.

His mind screamed its thoughts. Dark and deafening, the words that usually were suppressed in his sober state were flying freely and at this point there was no stopping them. There was no sound to hide behind tonight. The thoughts searched diligently; finding gaping holes as it raked over the course of human existence, finding things that consisted of consistence. But, despite how hard the unstable mind raced, it ended up in a confused circle.

The man liked the night better when it had sound.

That night passed slowly, but the creature remained on his porch till the sun sent its first milky fingers of light across the sky, then he opened his great ragged wings and flew back to the dark place from whence he came. The drugged man remained also, but he could not fly away, for the sorrowful chains that bound him to his sheets were tight still. They would not loosen till late in the day, though even then he did not have the motivation to be free once the chains had fallen from him. Each day the sun sluggishly crossed over his house. The trees waited. The clouds anticipated the start of a new day when the man would put on his face and open the front door to light. The birds' songs beckoned the man's ears, but they faded away each night, failing to summon him.

Each night, the creature returned to the front of the house with his torch, and the dark took the man prisoner. Seldom would the man drag himself out of his bed, either to force more pills down his throat or to get a quick sip of water to prevent his tired body from shutting down completely.

These days, the night brought with it deafening silence.

But the world is not quite that cruel, is it? There is a hopeful undertone that is seen every once in awhile, right?

The thing that separated these long, tormented periods of time were the days when the man's pride returned home. She opened the door that had been closed since she left last time; four weeks before, and stepped into the dark house. She set her luggage down, and tiptoed up the staircase, knowing exactly where her man would be. Where he always is--imprisoned.