Listen To The Silence by Sheryl

Chapter 15

Can't you see I'm weary?
Maybe this news can wait...

Everything's gray. First thought on a shadowed morning. The sun is up but everything's gray, the light cold and dusky. When did they put out the sun?
Images swirl in his mind, the sun, black and cold, icicles hanging in gigantic splendor from it's bottom rim, laughing children sliding, spinning down the cones, falling shrieking into space.
"Someone should bring them in..."
Red rimmed eyes stare at the dead gray sun, blinking gritty tears of unknown origin.
The sun's face is gone, someone's cut it off, leaving empty nose hole and gaping eye sockets. What did the sun's face look like? And why is it blowing on him, dead breath frigid, breaking a sweat of ice crystals on his
bare skin.
"I'm freezing to death, they'll find me in the spring, I thought it was summer now..."
His breath catches in his throat as the racking cough grips him again, ropy threads suddenly in his throat, sticky, choking, vague instinct turning him over before he drowns.
"Sick, I'm sick... is that why I'm cold?"
The coughing, harsh and painful, breaks a little of the spell of delirium, and the color comes back into the world, the heat of the sun suddenly honest, the pain in his eyes a brutal reminder that his blackened icicle dripping visage is only an illusion.
"Sunburned my eyes? I have to keep going..."

He picks himself up, faintly nauseated at the soft, giving feel to his feet, feeling like they're simply going to disintegrate.
"I'm rotting away, there's nothing left of me now..."
Rotting or not, he turns northeast, plastic water bottle dropping now from nerveless fingers. There's nothing left, his reserves are gone, only some mindless gut wish to die with people near him keeps him going. No animal need to die in privacy, the fear that nobody will ever find him is overpowering.

In his head the sicksweet images of darkened suns and dying children take over, the smell of exhaust filling his nose, backseat on a Sunday morning, plastic, fumes and cigarette smoke, nausea licking his throat.
Childish voice, tripping from his past.
"Daddy I'm getting sick."
"We're almost there."
"No, I am..."
"Not in the car."
Not in the car, not in the car... the instruction, the warning, echoing round and round and he swallows, unaware that he's not in the car, that womiting now would make no difference, there's nothing left to mess up.
Carsickness and Sunday, the images play behind his eyes, mixed indelibly with childhood.
Comic strips lifted with silly putty, "Look daddy, I got the whole thing", the crunchy plastic snap of the putty bitten between front teeth.
"Get that out of your mouth, boy..."
Talcum powder and wet rubber, grandmas closet as she hangs up her rain hat.
"Here Jesse, I have buttons..."
Buttons, running through his fingers, dove and turtle shaped, round and square, brass, glass and plastic, strung onto a double string, spinning and buzzing.
"Look what grandma gave me!"
"Isn't that wonderful!" and pennies, tumbling bright against chocolate colored carpets.
"Only the wheaties Jesse, only the wheaties", picking wheat backed pennies from the enormous treasure trove, pirates cap perched on his head.
"Help me make a treasure map!"
"Not now, go play", presenting the wheat pennies to his grandmother, talcum scented hug, sweet taste of one of her pink mints melting on his tongue.

In the real world, feet that are little more than wounds tread over broken glass and shredded wood, fragments embedded in tissue too numb to feel, blood running in little streaming puddles, red footsteps in his wake.
His mind, sunken into some final realm of memory, holds him hostage, unseen beacon guiding his steps as the smells of yesterday wash over him.
"Don't just eat the fat off it Jesse, eat the meat too."
"George keep him out of the butter, I swear that boy's going to weigh six hundred pounds."
"Not an ounce of fat on him Ethel, let him be."

Let him be, let him be, but who is? Is anyone? He doesn't know, childhood's Sunday fading into remuneration of philosophy, junior high English class.
"I think, therefor I am... are you?"
"I am..."
"Am what?"
"I AM!!"
"Very good, does anyone else understand?"
"Do you understand me?!"
He jumps, startled. Anger, where was that, who was that?
"Did I do something wrong?"

He sees reality again, sun, trees, tar, nobody there, who had shouted?
"Do you understand me?!"
"Do I understand what?! I don't understand anything!"
He stumbles, amazed as pain lances into his foot, eyes downcast onto a gout of crimson.
"My God that's so bright! I'm so bright!"
"Stupidest thing on two legs, no son of mine..."
"I'm not your son!"

He stops, gasping, pain in his foot forgotten as the pain in his soul fills him, floods him, throwing him back into the well of memory one last time, taking him to a morning of soft silvery light, snowfall shadows on his wall, breaking his face into a grin.
"Daddy it's snowing!"
Barefoot run into sadness, snow joy erased in the sight of his mother's tears, shining badge in front of him, the man with the gun.
"Why is he dead, did you kill him?"
"No, Jesse, no..."

Surrounded by a silent white killer, soft falling snow, snow that had waited for him to come home, to build snowmen and snow forts, to go out on the sled, new at Christmas, snow turned killer, driving the car off the road, into the trees, the smell of cigars and Brut replaced by the smell of expensive liquor, feel of soft flannel replaced with cold silk.
"Jesse I don't understand why you aren't thankful! Look at everything he's given us! He can't replace your father, bless his soul, but he's taking care of you!"
"He's not taking care of me!"

Alone. Alone and alone and alone, friends gone, books gone, sinking down, down into the deeps of despair again and again.
"Why don't you love me anymore?!"
"What's your name son?"
Final memories, shaking horror even now on the edge of death.
"Jesse Doran..."
Fear, they'd make him go back, as soon as they found out he was a runaway, they'd send him back and he'd have to face HIM.
"I'll kill him before I'll let him touch me again."
"Nothing on him, Burke, he's clean."
Swooning, killing loneliness, this torrent of mental debris, forcing reckoning.

They'd never reported him missing, never reported him a runaway.
"Why don't you love me anymore?"
Whispered words, falling dead onto bloody feet.
"Very good, does anyone else understand?"
"I understand"
"Don't ever do that again! Do you understand me?!"
Eyes fly open, that shout is right in his ear.
"Do what?! What did I do?!"
"NEVER AGAIN!"
Something swings, hard, against his knee, and he feels himself falling, consciousness leaping away from him, blackness chasing memories.

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