Deafening silence

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DEAFENING SILENCE

The alarm in the poorly lit room had been blaring on for over 15 minutes now. It was coming from a phone on the bedside table which was charging at the same time.  Demola is lying face up on his bed staring blankly at the ceiling, completely unaffected by the alarm’s cry. He slowly drags himself out of bed and heads for the bathroom still ignoring the phone. This morning, like every other, is routine. Shave, brush, bath then suit up. Well almost routine. Before the crisis he hardly ever suited up, never needed to. He was a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy, one of the perks of being a radio presenter. Until someone could prove beyond reasonable doubt that a poor choice of tie, or shoes that don’t match could affect your delivery on the mike, otherwise no one gave a hoot. Demola had once had to give the 6 o’clock news in his jammies when he was asked to sit in for a fellow colleague on short notice. The good old days. This was all in the past now. He hadn’t left the house since the crisis. The long awaited letter had arrived yesterday evening, finally. He would have gotten this reply to his application way back if not for the crisis. All they would have had to do was make a phone call inviting him for a formal interview. Hell, he never would have needed to apply in the first place because he’d still have his old job back. Mary had pressed his suit for him and hung it in front of the dresser. He’d had this suit for years but it looked like he just got it recently. He hadn’t worn it in a while, three years to be exact. Mary had insisted he wear it to an office party back then down at the radio house. “If you don’t wear the suit, I won’t be tagging along...” She’d threatened. More of the good times, times when he and his wife still went out together, as a couple. They had slowly drifted apart since then and he had attended all subsequent functions alone. Plus side – he didn’t need to suit up. Until now. He threw the suit on, grabbed the tie and his shoes and left the room, still ignoring the alarm which was probably on its hundredth snooze. The quiet he felt as he walked along the lobby towards the living room still astounded him. His apartment was usually the noisiest in the whole building. Well his and the widow with four kids that lived two floors below. It had been five months since the crisis and he still couldn’t get used to the change. No loud rap music coming from his overzealous teenage son’s room. No consistently loud and unbelievably long phone gossip talk from his just recently turned sixteen year old daughter. She had to have a special network package, he could bet on it. No screams from his wife shouting at the kids to hurry up so that they could all leave for school. No noise at all. Everybody just moved about seemingly quiet. The TV is on when he gets to the living room. It’s the 7 am news. The main headline is still the crisis, unsurprisingly.  THE CRISIS is what the papers had termed the situation since it reared its ugly head five months ago. An airborne virus had spread all over West Africa. The virus wasn’t fatal, well at least not physically being that it had singlehandedly murdered the economic and social sector and left the affected nations for dead. The virus attacks the auditory nerves and completely hinders any sense of hearing. For these developing countries where malaria is still an on-going plague, the AOS virus [auditory obstruction syndrome] was a big blow to an already dwindling economy. Help had been solicited from advanced nations who are working around the clock to combat the problem. The only relief so far had been when the virus was declared non-fatal. All progress reports made headlines. Demola read on as the news slowly scrolled up the screen. It was like reading straight from the teleprompter. The newscasters had suffered the same fate as he had. Even the hot, skimpy skirt-wearing weather girl was no more. He wondered if they all got the same quit notice letter that he did.  “No need to be here when no one can hear...” his boss had jokingly scribbled at the end of the letter terminating his working contract. Funny bastard. Demola no longer cared about the details. He didn’t care how they were planning to do it or about the tests they were running or how many lab rats had died in the process. All he wanted to know was that they had found a cure. Nothing that came up on the screen suggested that so he turned the TV off. He forces his feet into his shoes and gets up. He notices that the house is empty as he heads towards the kitchen. He wondered when exactly they had all left for school. His food is in its usual spot; on the counter covered with a foil. There is a folded paper beside it, a note from Mary. He opens it. ‘GOOD LUCK WITH THE INTERVIEW’. How encouraging. Just what he needed. A hand written, non-heartfelt one liner from his wife. He rumpled the paper and made a shot across the kitchen for the bin. She shouldn’t have bothered. Save the ink and paper for more useful short messages. ‘I WANT A DIVORCE’ would be more in the likes of it. He peels off the foil on the plate; Beans and fish. Another thing he needed; a crappy breakfast. Just in case the note wasn’t dry enough. Sighing, he puts the foil back, grabs his coat and heads for out.