Adam had felt a numberof odd sensations throughout his life,
but never before had he mentioned them in conversation. Proper decorum would
have prohibited the allowance of such talk, and surely, these matters were
nothing but trifling annoyances. Occasionally, his ears would burn continuously
for seven minutes. He wouldn’t have called this a common phenomenon—not quite—but
it had repeated itself with enough regularity to warrant precise cataloguing. That
alone was particularly unsettling.
And then there was the silence. Or rather more appropriately…the
lack of silence. Never in his memory had Adam encountered true, uninterrupted
silence. The admittance of such a thing would have been awkward, thus greatly
inconveniencing whatever company he had burdened with this information. Adam
could never bear the thought of being such a bother.
Honestly, the utter lack of silence had evolved into a comfort
in Adam’s life. An auditory mist accompanied him throughout his days, and
although it rendered him unable to find solitude, he scarcely yearned for such
a stereotypical description of peace. Silence was foreign and empty—a nameless
void without warmth or comfort. His mist pulsated gently within his mind, and
as the years had progressed, he had come to relish and even depend upon its
continued presence.
Until it started counting.
It was a Tuesday morning…or was it a Thursday? Adam had
always found the labels of the days redundant and useless in the absence of
remarkable events. Unfortunately, this particular Tuesday or Thursday would
prove quite remarkable as it staunchly awoke Adam with the sound of counting.
Never before had the mist made such pointed contact with
Adam, and although the numbers of his own tongue remained absent from the mist,
he felt the countdown viscerally within him. Was it a warning? Was it a
reminder? As the hours dragged through that Tuesday or Thursday, the origin of
the counting remained a mystery, but the intensity grew as the mist began to
expand.
No longer was the swirling mist confined to Adam’s mind.
Gradually, the sensation slid down his neck and across his arms, and as it did,
the numbers were finally translated inside his now boiling brain.
Five.
Adam’s breathing became increasingly labored as invisible
tendrils gripped his chest.
Four.
Fearful whimpers leapt off of his tongue as the silky
streams laced around his throat.
Three.
Adam’s vision began to recede in unimaginable fashion. He
was being pulled back…back…back into the dark.
Two.
Every finger curled at the mercy of the mist as it encased
his bones and fell into his blood.
One.
Why had he been forsaken by the one comfort of his
existence? This was wrong. This was wrong!
Screams died before they began as his shell continued to crumble around him.
Zero.
Darkness. Adam had recessed so far within himself that all
sense of corporeal existence had faded into a distant memory. Instead, he
swirled in an unknown abyss, screaming into the blackness…terrified of the
silence that had finally fallen.
Ah, that’s right…it was a Wednesday.
