Static

I envy those with functioning internal monologues. Not that I don’t have one— I do, I just can’t hear it. These voices talk so loud that I can’t hear myself think. Ever since I can remember, there has always been a scattered barrage of words and static buzzing sounds clouding my mind. And you know the worst part? I can’t seem to figure out exactly why they’re there. I can’t think clearly enough to discern who it is that is speaking in my head.

My parents have taken me to doctors, and I could tell from the suspicious glint in their eyes that they don’t take me seriously. They don’t trust me enough to admit that it’s more than an “auditory problem.” That’s what they say, an auditory problem… I know they’re lying; they don’t really think that. I’ve seen them hunched in a circle, whispering to each other as I walk to the restroom after an appointment. They mutter about how I stare off into nothingness, how I seem to have my mind in a different world. They think I have some kind of mental disorder. I’m too immature in their eyes to be trusted with that information, I suppose.

Regardless of the reason, my most fatal flaw is that I can never manage to live in peace. That is all I want, a functioning internal monologue. I don’t want to hear the buzzing, and I don’t want to hear the whispers. I just want to be left in silence, deafening silence if need be. I would give everything to leave this curse behind.

— — —

I wandered into the classroom five minutes before the fourth period began. The room was a cold box, blank and boring. The few items distinguishing it from a storage unit were a few scattered tables and a desk for the teacher. The only somewhat positive addition was the carpet, a comforting amber brown, like the shade of the carpet in my bedroom. It was the shade of sticks on the cold ground of a dying forest. I stared at it as the professor, a thin woman wrapped in a black rain jacket, droned on with her lecture. I strained to understand what she was saying. Something about a folktale of some sort, with an old man, it sounded like, with some kind of ability. I couldn’t hear the details. I watched her slither around the room as she spewed words I just couldn’t seem to register. I could have sworn I was hearing what she said, I just had yet to process it. The other students seemed to do so easily, nodding away and scribbling in their notebooks. Still, when I tried too hard to focus on the sound, the words lost their significance. I felt myself chasing after them but the faster I ran, the further away they drifted. Like a dream that eludes you moments after you gain consciousness.

I grew continually more frustrated with myself the more I dwelled on this problem. I fixated on the carpet again; comforting, familiar, tangible. The teacher’s voice faded into static noise.

— — —

The gravel crunched under my weathered shoe as I stepped down from the car onto the driveway. I was finally home. I gazed toward the aging gray house before me, then to the leaf-covered yard in front of it. The crisp winter air clung to a large maple tree in the middle of the grass. I debated treading through the damp grass and touching the bark. Trees always feel more authentic than the warm plastic of my desk and the heat of the inside.

I hesitated, then ripped my eyes from the tree, restraining myself. Too much to do. I dragged my feet towards the front door. Twisting the doorknob, I entered the house and a flood of warmth hit my face, a sweaty, disgusting warmth. The professor’s voice from the lecture that day replayed over and over again as I made my way through the entryway and down the hall to my room. I locked the door behind me and set my bag on the soft, amber carpet. There I sat: criss crossed on the floor with my journal and pen in hand, prepared to sort my thoughts out. I felt guilty for putting time that could have been used for studying into something as small as writing. But for some strange, twisted reason, my mind wouldn’t set me free until I’d made an effort to clear it.

Minutes ticked away as I sat in silence. The dead humming of the fan filled my head as my pen laid lifeless beside me. I didn’t have the energy to write. Or rather, I didn’t know how. How do you write about static nothingness? Before I knew it, all my opportunities of productivity were used up in utter silence… buzzing, loud silence. A wave of shame washed over me. Maybe if you started with work you would have gotten something done. I wished more than anything in the world that I could concentrate for just fifteen minutes at a time. Please God, I pleaded, if you’re real, just fifteen minutes.

I sat, motionless like a stone. I sat with the same fractured sentences flowing through my mind, the only interpretations of reality I’ve had that day. Old man… special old man…. focus… special ability. The lecture droned through my brain as the fan blades contorted in circles. Man… I heard myself think. I wish this ‘ability’ could make these voices stop… the humming of the fan slowed down, morphed into a repetitive ticking… tock…tick…tock—

I found myself at the kitchen table with textbooks scattered in front of me, unsure of how exactly I arrived there. The clock clicked quietly on the wall in front of me. A change of scenery will help, I thought. I tried to move my hand towards the closest book to study, just to the end of the table. But oddly, it couldn’t seem to move above the edge. Ability… you can't even move your own hand….. old man… failure…

I gazed out into the hallway just past the kitchen counter. It was empty and the doors were closed. My parents had gone to bed. The house hung in silence. The static in my head continued to buzz, meaningless words whispering away like the whistling of the wind.

I shifted my gaze to the window. A gentle night gazed back at me, dark blue with a twinkle of starlight. Rain drifted to the ground: cold, clear, real. I was suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to join it, to go outside, to feel the rain on my face and the cold wrapping around my body. I ached to feel something more than this warm, disgusting wooden table. I needed to set my mind on something more than the constant buzzing and replaying of a stupid history lecture. I found myself moving towards the coat hangers and grabbing my black sweatshirt. After knotting my shoes, I checked my parent's room one last time to make sure they were asleep. I don’t remember what I was thinking about when I opened the living room window and climbed out.

— — —

The air was frigid and the street was soaked with rain. Lamplights glistened on puddles scattered across the pavement as the darkened houses around me slept through the night. The moonlight caught the rain as it fell to the ground, and I began to walk.

I rounded the corners of the neighborhood and wandered in the middle of the street. With no cars plaguing the roads, everything was peaceful. I saw figures walking in front of me, people in the distance. Midnight could be a dangerous time, I knew, but no one paid me any attention. No one looked my way, and I began to relax. They wandered as if they had no intention other than to feel something different, just like me. They, too, were chasing something, or someone, they couldn’t quite put their finger on.

I made my way to the grove, a large forest in my town separating the neighborhood from the freeway. I could hear the cars speeding on the freeway in the distance far past the trees. I pass it every day on the way to school, and I’ve never seen anyone go in or out. The trees drew me in, I felt myself being pulled towards it. But as I neared the wooden gate to enter, a flickering orange light reflected off of the ground behind me. Turning around, I caught sight of a figure: a man was shuffling down the street about 10 feet back. He was old; he walked with a cane and was dressed in a black— or rather a dark gray— trench coat (it is difficult to tell at night). The jacket’s hood was laid behind his thin gray neck, and a black felt cap clung damply to his frail head. He was hunched over, with one wrinkled hand guiding the cane and the other clutching a large, smoldering cigar near his lips. The end of the cigar burned bright orange, casting shadows on his sunken face. If it weren’t for that cigar and the street light a few yards in front of him, he would be nothing but a shadow… a ghost. I slowed my walk and peered towards him; for a moment, it felt as if he was not real. He made not a sound as he moved slowly along the street, one shriveled foot after the other.

He passed me, and my breath hitched tightly in my throat. My eyes widened; the noise had stopped. The buzzing, the voices… everything faded from my mind like water down a shower drain. I felt a void form in my thoughts which had been filled with white noise for as long as I could manage to remember. The haze dissipated and left my mind clean. I could hear myself again, my real thoughts— not the professor’s. In fact, the words that repeated themselves countless times over the course of the past few hours disappeared. I couldn’t even recall them. I stared at the figure now some 20 feet in front of me. What an amazing old man this must be, I whispered through the cold, to be able to do something as incredible as this. This awe was as solidified in my mind as the ground under my feet. So real in fact, that I felt I could reach out my hand and touch the breathless words hanging in the air.

The man continued staggering through the neighborhood towards the grove, and I trailed after him in an awestruck attempt to prolong my clarity. I could hear birds in the shadows of the trees. I could hear the rustling of the leaves and the distant murmuring of crickets. I was overwhelmed by the sounds and the feeling of the dirt beneath my feet, by the sensation of living in a world that is more than a constant stormcloud of fog and confusion. A world you can touch and feel and hear and doesn’t vanish like a cloudy dream.

The man led me through the large grove on the edge of the neighborhood and I dragged my hand across the tree trunks as I followed. Why would someone want to sand one of these down and make it into a table? A warm, disgusting table, with wax smeared over the wood. These skyscrapers are much more beautiful, much more authentic. They stand tall and quiet, unlike the world around them. What a simple life.

The old man moved swiftly through the trees, almost hovering above the ground. I picked up my pace in order to keep up with him. Sticks and grass crunched under my feet and I yelled “Wait for me! Don’t leave me here!” He was the only thing that made the noise go away. He was like an angel, saving me from myself… Yes… that’s right, he was the answer to my prayer. We all need someone to save us from ourselves. To be able to trust wholly and blindly. The person that changes your life the most. This man is that person… yes… the more I said this the more true it became. And I hadn’t even the foggiest clue of what his name was. What was his name?

“Wait! Please wait!” I desperately shouted as his speed began to increase again, but he didn’t seem to hear me. Was I just background noise to him? A broken record? Does he even notice me stumbling over roots and stones after him as if my life depended on it? The sky was still dark, the stars filtering dim light through the trees above. It was amazing just how effortlessly he was moving through the grove. This was curious to me, along with the fact that his feet made no sound crunching against the forest floor. For how is that… possible… oh, but I caught myself and laughed as I ran; this was stupid to dwell on. All stupid. He was an angel, of course he didn’t make a sound. Of course… I didn’t have time to entertain my mind with such simple things when I could now think of concepts far more important…

The lecture. I finally understood everything, I knew I did. It was about paganism. Tribes that hated each other. Wars, blood, darkness, death; all of it remedied by some supernatural spirit. They said he could tear apart the sea and destroy nations with his bare hands, that is how the legend went. Full of fear, the two tribes hunted this man together. They never found him after he had vanished, but they supposedly found clarity and friendship along the way. What a good man he seems. He almost reminds me of this man I’m chasi—

I couldn’t finish my thought. The world came crashing down as my foot caught hold of an unearthed tree root. The ground was hard and freezing; my hands began to pool with blood from catching my fall. But when I lifted my head, I saw the man moving still further away. My heart dropped. I shoved them once more against the cold brown soil and pushed myself up, barely waiting to find my balance before chasing after him. He was just a light… yes, a light, ahead of me, blinking in the distance, calling me to chase after it. To chase after my sanity, my peace of mind. I sprinted painfully, my legs burning like embers as the trees flew past me in an array of dark shades and colors. I needed to catch up. I screamed out into the forest; I couldn’t let him leave me. I couldn’t let this opportunity slip through my fingers like the countless words and thoughts that have before. I would not allow myself to be lost anymore. I would not allow myself to go back. I saw nothing but what was ahead of me, nothing but the light at the end of the tunnel. Because for once in my agonizing life, I could think clearly, and I was determined to keep it that way. The smoldering orange flicker of the man’s cigar lit my way like a torch in a cavern. I didn’t even notice when my feet began running on solid ground.

I didn’t notice that the trees had disappeared from my sides. And strangely, I didn’t realize that the tiny light of the man’s cigar had multiplied into two, and together started rushing towards me.

But I heard the sound very clearly. It was sharp and acute and undebatable: A horn blaring into my ears like thunder reverberating off of the clouds. I couldn’t tell if it was raining or not.. and it must have been, because I hit the stiff, rocky pavement of the freeway so hard that it felt like I had been crushed by a tsunami.

I saw the old man in the distance as my sight began to fade. He drifted away, and yet I heard no voices. I finally heard nothing.