Silence

Tom screamed at the top of his lungs again.

"Please shut the fuck up!" pounding on the wall incessantly as if trying to kill
it with his bare hand.

Of course the only response was more laughter and loud music.

Tom lived next door to some young college girls who seemed to have a party
every other night for their sorority, though Tom did not mind watching the
endless parade of young girls wander by his apartment. In their sleek new
cars that these days seemed to be custom made for those young soft looking
girls. The cars though not expensive had sensuous curves, almost as if they
were extensions of the softly curved bodies of the lithe females driving them.
They exited their cars, stretched like young felines. Yawning, with muscles
moving beneath their taut shirts and low cut jeans as they stretched out their
tanned arms.

Tom loved watching them. But that's where it ended. Tom did not particularly
like anyone. He did not like being bothered by anyone, or anything. He kept
the ringer off on his phone. He worked as a consultant programmer, taking
jobs through email, and then dropping the finished goods in whatever
Internet or VPN accessible site his employer would indicate to use. Tom
hated noise, avidly hated anything that others could intrude into his life with.

"Damn kids!" Tom briefly considered calling the police. He had several times
in the past but threw the idea out almost immediately. Calling the police
would involve speaking to some moron on the other end of the phone barely
qualified to speak much less answer emergency 911 calls. Plus as slow as the
police were it could be hours before they came, and the Sorority of Moo
Cows, or whatever the hell it was would be long gone out drinking away their
parents money and getting fondled by young men whose only thought was
getting laid.

A loud voice could be heard yelling over the din of voices and music.
Sounded like a guy.

"Thank God, someone is trying to shut them the hell up!" Tom said. 11:28
pm blinked at him in the darkness slowly, methodically, with the same beat
as of a heart. Blink. Blink. Blink.

The apartment next door quieted somewhat and Tom rummaged through his
medicine cabinet in search of his Diazepam. Good, lovely sleeping pills.
Drown out the world in a haze.

The party seemed to pick up again, music roaring as loudly as before. Tom
groans and wandered to his living room and laid down to watch TV. He cant
stand all the little shows, every damn body is trying to be funny, kill
someone, find someone who killed someone, or find some lame ass excuse


for quasi-mystic reasoning in their favorite TV shows. Tom categories a TV
show in one of 3 categories, Bad, Shit, and Smelly piles of rancid dead rats.
Flipping on Animal Planet he watched the animals. Those he understands,
they are quiet when they should be, they live in their space and most do not
invade each other's privacy except to mate. Which Tom thinks is a most
excellent idea.

A car peeled out into the street as Tom fell asleep watching a documentary
on monkeys drone on and on.

"What the hell! I just want some sleep!" Punching his pillow a few times to
soften it up, he lays his head back, and once more started to listen to the
mating habits of the west African butt monkey. The Valium kicked in and did
its job well.

Morning swiftly came, bright light stabbed Tom in the face as he rolled over
to avoid it. Groaning he pushed up off the couch. The TV roared with static
haze. He grunted and walked to the kitchen to pour some coffee and then log
on to the network to download his latest work.

Leaning back in his recliner chair, he logged in, or rather attempted to log
into the network. Nothing.

"Mother fucker!" He picks up his phone and dials the Internet service
provider. Most of the time when he calls the incompetent
asses he hears a message telling him he has a wait time. Finally he gets
through once without hearing that damn message.

A bright cheery voice informs him, to please wait and that his call will be
answered in the order it was received. Horrible, unimaginable elevator music
begins to play on the phone. It's like some sadistic masochist chooses these
songs to torture people who have to wait for their call to be answered, so
that by the time the call is answered the person is so weary from the horror
of hearing "I would do anything for love" played on a synthesized piano that
he cant remember why he was upset with the service, and just thanks every
higher being he can think of that he is no longer forced to hear that music
play. After several minutes the phone emits a quick busy signal pulsing over
and over.

Tom sighs, slams down the phone and turns on his radio to listen to the
news. He likes to listen to NPR rant their quasi-liberal news, then listen to
Rush rant his conservative views right afterward then laugh at the idiocy of
both sides trying to make sense and justify the actions of the herds of
politicians (from all sides) who would sell not only their souls, but their
children's for a vote.

Static blared over the station he normally listens to.

Tom stares off into the wall over his clock in his kitchen, which happily states
a time of 9:32 am.

"Time for the old lady to bring out her pissy little dog to crap in front of my
walkway again." Tom opens his window to look outside, waiting to ambush
his neighbor before her dog does his 'duty' again in front of his home.

The sky is perfectly clear, not a cloud darkens the sky, and the sun shines
brightly overhead. Not even a shadow mars the scenery from which he looks.
Not a soul is moving outside his apartment. The street, which runs across
from this window, is totally devoid of cars.

Tom blinks, puling his robe over his bony shoulders he walks out into the
sunlight. Silence covers him like a blanket. In the distance he can see clouds
of smoke rising from some unknown locale. He rushes inside and grabs the
keys to his car an old beat up machine that barely qualifies to have the name
of an automobile since it barely runs due to the infrequency of its use. It
would be better called a sometimesmobile. Starting it up in the quiet of the
morning it sounds like a freight train crashing into a building of bricks.

Starting around the corner of his street no cars were in sight, no radio
stations were picking up except one station that was playing some top 40
crap, with some idiot singing about how didn't mean to hurt his mother. Tom
decided that the silence was better than that.

A large truck sat at an intersection near a popular Italian restaurant. Tom
waits a moment wondering if perhaps someone is in the truck, then gets out
of his car and walks to the truck. No one is in there. Looking down the road
he sees several other cars, trucks, minivans, SUVs, all sitting in the middle of
the road as if they were all just left by their owners while they decided to
step out of them and rush into the surrounding buildings as he approached.

He could hear his every movement. His footsteps echoed around him like he
was walking in a tomb. Skyscrapers loomed above him in the distance. The
gravel crunched loudly on the road, wind pushed through the buildings and
he could hear birds flapping their wings in flight.

Tom looked around, took in a deep breath of chill November air and sighed
happily and gorged himself on as much Italian food that he found lying
around the restaurant that seemed to be waiting there for people to eat.

He left the city after waking up morning after morning seeing the buildings
empty and staring across the spaces as if speaking in whispers to each other.

He had spent his last night in the city in the largest hotel downtown where he
woke after he had heard his ex-wife calling his name softly. He never
dreamed anymore and wondered if dreaming was a by-product of other
people's minds and thoughts interfering with his own. If he did dream still he
never remembered it. That made it all the worse. He knew he heard his
name whispered by Margaret, softly calling him. A cold chill penetrated him
as he stumbled awake. Falling out of his bed, and crawling to the stand
where the flashlight was he grabbed for it and quickly turned it on.

Everywhere he looked figures dressed in white robes moved about walking
through objects, they seemed to be moving as if they were on another plane,
some figures walked beside him while others stand still, yet those that stood
still moved on as if they were not really standing on the ground beside him
yet were somehow fixed in another dimension where space moved on and
the earth stood still.

Tom screamed.

The electricity had stopped working several weeks before that.

Grabbing the stray cat he had found Tom ran down the dark stairs with his
flashlight and exited the hotel. Jumping into his car he left the city. Buildings
had moved or so the thought, he did not clearly remember all the areas of
the large city but some things seemed to be in odd places.

He drove to an old cathedral and stood inside shuddering as rain poured
outside. Walking in with his cat he sat down in a pew and fell asleep. Upon
waking the sun shone in with bright intensity as always, no clouds from the
night before but you could see splotches of wet ground outside if you looked
hard enough. It always rained at night, with little or no thunder and never
lightning, while the day was always bright and cheery. Never hot, and never
cold.

The light shone in through the stained glass windows in pristine colors,
lighting the air with a soft rain of rainbow colored dust. Tom had never been
a religious man, but at this moment he felt closer to God than at any time
before in his life. Walking toward the altar, he knelt before it and asked God
to forgive him his sins, he didn't know if this was what or how he should do
it. It felt right and that was all that mattered. He looked across the church
and looked at the Stations of the Cross upon the walls. After a while he stood
looked for his cat and left the church. Leaving the doors open, in case
another lost soul might need to find a place solace.


***********
Six months later


Tom crawled along the edge of an old highway. He had not eaten for two days.
The cornfields growing along the edge of the road swayed in the sky. His old
clothes had long been discarded, he wore khaki camouflage clothing, which
he wore not because he thought it let him actually hide from the animals he
hunted for food, but because he was a hunter and he thought that was what
hunters should wear. Gone were the days that Tom was gangly and skinny.
Though not fat by any means his body was a mountain of muscle and bulk,
tanned from the constant outdoors activities he took up. He rode a fourwheeler
around during the day, and taught himself to fish, and hunt quite
proficiently. From a local library in a small town he had stopped in he picked
up some books he had went over before trekking off with his ex on some
vacation long ago on outdoors living and read them avidly this time instead of with annoyance .

He hunted deer that seemed to be everywhere now that there were no hunters to keep down their populations. Standing up to a crouch he took aim at a deer that was grazing on the vegetation. He fires, misses, cusses, the deer runs off through
the fields of corn, Tom cusses a bit more. He could hear the wind howl in the distance, a soft whirling noise that came and went constantly.

Tom rode in on his four-wheeler towards the hills that lay against the skyline
past the cornfields where there was a stream that he could fish in.

Pulling out his fly rod he wondered why he had never fished before the Event
that had taken everyone. It seemed he had missed out on so much that was
offered by the world. He loved the clean air, the quiet of the forests, the
rolling hills. Most nights he would put up a tent and sleep inside listening to
the rain patter around while reading books he had read in his youth over and
over. Strangely he could not find any that he had not read before in any
place he looked. He didn't mind too much, he had read many books in his
lifetime they were like old friends that he could come home to.

Casting the rod down stream, he barely noticed a mother grizzly coming out
of the woods on the other side of the stream. Dropping his rod he backed up
and began to move toward his four-wheeler where his rifle was stored.
Backing up slowly towards it, not moving fast, but keeping a steady pace as
he had heard he should do from a friend he tripped over something. He
heard a plaintive whining noise and saw that he had fell back over a small
bear cub that had came up to his four wheeler to investigate the sweets he
had left hanging in his bag. Suddenly he heard movement. A large growling
noise, he felt himself picked up and thrown violently. A large paw held him
down. Pain suddenly blossomed across his back, and then there was nothing.

***************

A blare of white noise sounds of in a dark room and a vision of black and
white dots blurs across the walls as a television set turns on “… Tom Phelps
the last victim of the tragic murders that rocked the north side of the city
earlier this year died after complications from surgery and a lengthy coma.
Police have charged the man responsible with another count of 2nd degree
murder from the slayings. The young man shot and killed his estranged
girlfriend and her roommate. A shot meant for one of her friends while they
attempted to restrain him went through the wall between the apartments.
The resulting shot injured Tom who was sleeping in his living room next door
at the time of the crime.