The Silence After

Jackie hadn’t slept in three nights. Not really. She closed her eyes, but every time she did, she saw headlights tearing through the dark and heard the crunch of metal folding in on itself. She’d wake up gasping, fingernails clawing at her sheets like they could pull her out of it. The silence after was always worse, pressing down on her chest until it felt like she might suffocate. The clock by her bed ticked endlessly, its rhythm digging into her skull. She hated the sound but couldn’t bring herself to turn it off, as if silence itself might swallow her whole.

Her apartment smelled of stale coffee, sour milk, and the sweat she hadn’t washed away in days. Empty mugs sat scattered across the counter, rings of brown staining the surfaces like old wounds. Curtains stayed drawn, suffocating the rooms in a dull half-light that never seemed to change. Every lamp was on, humming faintly, but shadows still gathered in the corners, thick and patient. She told herself she was imagining it, but sometimes she swore she could hear his voice there. Whispering. Accusing. Just beyond the edge of sense, like a recording played backward.

She avoided the mirror, but sometimes her reflection caught her off guard - hollow eyes sunken in dark rings, hair clinging to damp temples, a stranger wearing her face. Her lips were cracked, her skin pale and mottled. And behind her, just for a second, she thought she saw him in the glass. Ben, blurred and broken, looking at her like he knew. She would spin, heart lurching, but the room was always empty, leaving her with the weight of her own ragged breathing.

The pieces of memory pressed at her edges, sharp enough to draw blood. A voice cut off mid-sentence. A flash of movement in the dark. Her own pulse thundering in her ears. The smell of wet asphalt. The slick feel of the steering wheel beneath her palm. It came in fragments, but each time they returned, they stayed longer. She could not banish them. Not anymore.

The noises started small. A tap in the pipes. The rattle of the window frame. The click of her own tongue against dry lips. But in the hollow hours of the night, they became something else. Louder. More deliberate. She swore she heard his footsteps pacing the hall, steady and patient, like he was waiting for her to open the door. The boards creaked under a weight that wasn’t there. She pressed her ear to the wall more than once, heart thudding, breath shallow. There was never anyone there. Yet she couldn’t shake the certainty that if she opened the door, he would be waiting.

Sometimes, she almost called out his name. Sometimes, the urge was so strong she had to bite down hard on her knuckles until she tasted blood. Her teeth left crescent moons on her skin. Her hands trembled when she pulled them away. But then she remembered. She always remembered.

The memories returned like shards of glass. A hand gripping too tight. Her voice splitting into a scream she could barely recognize as her own. The sudden shift of weight, the world tilting off balance. The slam of something heavy. Then silence, heavy and absolute, as if the air itself had caved in. She heard the echo of her own ragged breathing in the aftermath, the sound etched into her mind like a scar.

Jackie pressed her palms flat against the counter until her arms trembled. She tried to ground herself in the sting of muscle and bone, the sharpness of the edge biting into her skin. The cool laminate was slick with condensation from a forgotten glass, and it smeared against her skin as she gripped harder. But her mind slipped back anyway. Back to him. Back to the moment she had buried under walls that were cracking now, one by one.

The static in her head never stopped anymore. It buzzed behind every thought, drowning her in white noise until she could barely breathe. It filled her ears, like the roar of tires on an endless stretch of road. She told herself it was exhaustion, that the mind plays tricks when pushed too far. But deep down, she knew. The fragments weren’t tricks. They were memories fighting their way back.

She chewed her nails until they split, raw and red at the edges. Her stomach cramped, rejecting every half-hearted meal she forced into it. Her body was betraying her, wearing down as if it too knew the truth she refused to say aloud. She paced the narrow strip of hallway between the kitchen and the front door, over and over, footsteps wearing grooves into the cheap carpet. Sometimes she would stop and lean her forehead against the door, listening, waiting for something she didn’t want to arrive.

It started with headlights, blinding and sharp. Then the sound - rubber tearing against asphalt, his voice rising over hers, a word she couldn’t quite catch. She saw his profile lit by the dashboard glow, jaw clenched, eyes narrowed. She heard herself, too, louder than she remembered, words cutting like glass. The smell of his cologne mixed with rain-soaked fabric. The vibration of the car fighting against her heartbeat. And then her hand - shoving, desperate, reckless. The wheel jerking. The night splitting open.

The memory hit in full force, unbroken this time, a reel unspooling without mercy. Ben’s voice cracked as the tires screamed, and her own scream swallowed his. She remembered the sickening weightless moment as the world tilted, the sick twist in her stomach as gravity betrayed them both. Glass shattered. Metal twisted. The sound was everywhere, infinite, until it all collapsed into silence. A silence that had never left her.

Her knees buckled. She dropped to the kitchen floor, palms skidding on the tile. Her body shook violently, as though the crash had replayed inside her skin. The silence after roared back into her chest, heavier than it had ever been. The world hadn’t ended that night, but his had. And she had been the one to end it.

Her breath came in shallow gasps. The room tilted, colors swimming. Her nails scraped the tile until they splintered, leaving streaks that burned into the white floor. Sweat slid down her spine, cold and sharp. She pressed her forehead to the ground, the chill of the tile biting against her skin, but nothing grounded her. There was no escape anymore. The memories had returned whole, and with them, the weight of everything she had done.

The shadows pressed close. The whisper of his voice threaded through the static, steady and certain now, no longer fragmented. She didn’t need to hear the words to know what he was saying. She had always known.

Her voice cracked in the emptiness, no louder than a whisper, but enough to splinter the silence that had smothered her for weeks.

“This is all my fault.”