Chapter 6 ~ Silence Earned

Lesson number one… stop crying, no one cares if you do, if I had never cried the moment I was born maybe I would have been dead; no such luck. Most children are born making noise and those who love them quell that noise; again no such luck.

The same rule applies throughout life, people cried before, animals, and the entire world was drowning in tears and no one cared; we were taught not to. Now those tears are above our heads, maybe there not even tears anymore but for awhile more there were still people crying out for help and we pretend not to hear them. If we do see, if we do hear, we’re not helping we just want them to shut up, more merciful to put them down in this world; more than likely we are helping ourselves.

The Abomination prepared me for times such as these before anyone dared have such nightmares; when I was a baby my parents would leave me in the dark and let me cry until I was too exhausted to cry anymore. The day of the outbreak was the first time I had cried, a gift from Christa but still I remembered that tears solved nothing, she wasn’t there and thankfully neither was The Abomination. How dare anyone expect me to care for the endless tears in this world; yes I could feel love, hate, and strangely enough happiness but not one drop for these people, the fires raged on.

I envy those people who decided they didn’t want to cry anymore, let the living cry or in my case not, the dead don’t cry, the Loveless, and neither do I. My tears would not be returning and soon there would be no tears at all, dead, infected, where is the love?

It wasn’t in my life and I heard plenty, there were the names of course, the destruction of everything I held dear, but what I remember most was the laughter. Sometimes I think I was deaf to the good things until I understood they weren’t there, if only my dog had made me deaf to The Abomination’s voice or a pretty girl’s laugh.

Why didn’t I feel human or act human; according to people I never was such a thing, to think there was a time I would have given anything to be just like them. Another reason I never learned to love “correctly” was the fact that everything I ever loved was stolen, destroyed, or worse… treated just like me. Then there was the laughter; once I wanted to be a comedian but I wasn’t even a clown, as far as people were concerned I was only a joke of this life.

They would lie and say they praised me but better those lies to the lies of God, tell him that Sunday and then go about your business the rest of the week until it’s time for more lies. I would listen to Braxton bark and while nearly everyone was annoyed his barks if only for a moment kept back their words, he was a blessing. Yet he could not protect me from the real monster… The Abomination and I would shut him out of my life only to be punished by Christa.

How is it, that even after all this time the hate can still be heard, in memories, in wishes, and in dreams; it seems impossible to silence such a thing. Happiness, truth, and yes even love seem the easiest things to shut off; if you want quiet, believe in such things.

A year and a half all I ever spoke was love and like my tears no one cared until it suddenly disappeared. How much time has been wasted on goodness and it seems we were always a button press away from silencing everything… wish granted.

My morals started out so pure, I was only a boy in love, I wanted a girl to be in love with me, and I wanted to sit by the lake with a pretty girl and read her some of my poetry that’s all. I talked about lies and so I believed them, I wanted to be like other guys and use my talent to have a girl and then toss her aside; honestly I thought better of girls back then. If this was a gift I wanted to make money; I thought better of people as well the fool I was, I thought the people wanted love, I thought the people wanted to be happy.

In an hour as the world went to Hell I destroyed all my work in some simple keystrokes; just like everyone else to destroy a heart is nothing. With button presses the world was made to burn, people, Loveless, and everything else was set to burn away and what did they accomplish. If you’re lucky the last thing you hear is someone pulling the trigger and sending you somewhere nice, such an act of love, to finally hear silence.

This is what most people want to hear now, peace, serenity, and silence; I can’t remember how many times I attempted to kill myself before the invasion only to get The Abomination’s voice out of my head. There are still those who want to live, those that cry out to be saved, there was a time when I thought I could save the world, maybe I could but my only answer now is… “NO”.

How often I heard that word, from myself and others; honestly this is the word that could have saved the world and because one girl would not speak it the word is here. That word has lost all power; it has meaning, reason, and a place but why bother speaking it anymore when it is no longer the correct answer?

The Loveless never scared me because I knew people, I knew the monsters formerly known as humanity and the words “no, stop, and don’t” never did anything to curb their appetites… before they started eating themselves. I heard that word daily from girls I liked, and from two girls I actually loved before Christa and they had not hesitated, I had different reactions but I understood the word. Then there was Christa herself and she said nothing… a world full of silence, imagine the two of us of one mind because that is what this world is becoming.

Victims cry out no as they are being raped and eaten but will this stop it from happening, no, will the monsters ever be sated, no, will this just go away, no; you can give other answers but no has never lost its meaning. The word No is a reason, found in a world without reason and it will not be restored, I don’t think it was ever here in the first place, just like love. No has a place, in the blood bathed streets, sheets, and in the meat that still lives… and not, a mad world.

I still remember the final no I ever read and by the time I read it, that no was a year and a half too late, it was the no I wanted, the no I needed, but like everything else it was just too late. On the other end of that no was Christa’s smiling face but did she smile for long afterwards… I think you know the answer to that.

Smiling faces tell lies or they once did, back when anyone had a reason to smile; though when someone smiles now it’s not a good sign. Like tears, frowns, fresh bruises, and dead eyes tell nothing or maybe no one cares.

When The Abomination would smile I would usually be in pain and if I wasn’t in pain, he didn’t give a damn about me, either way it was always a bad time. Christa would smile, I know she was smiling the day the world ended, and a second later she was screaming and yet how I long to see her smile again. Somebody smiles now and it’s still a lie but haven’t lies kept people alive, helped people cope, and helped people survive?

There were a lot of frowns in the aftermath but no one cared to know why, given the fact that everyone had the same reason but there was no one left to pretend that everything was going to be okay. I learned a long time ago to hide my bruises and scars, maybe it was seeing my mother do the same, maybe I just knew they would invite more from The Abomination, today it’s the same for all victims, the naked torn to shreds not lucky enough to die. When I talk about dead eyes I mean the eyes of the actual dead walking and not, no one asks them anything as they put them down and as they steal whatever’s left.

I wish I could smile but that’s another thing I forgot how to do, that I couldn’t do if I tried but I will admit I feel better than I ever have when the world was “civilized”. Christa tried to smile but she already came off as one of those girls asking for help and in the new world there was only one way to ask for help if you were a pretty girl.

I don’t remember pretty girls’ talking much, being pretty was easy, singing, and dancing, not to doubt the plight of pretty girls but Christa had been so silent for so long. It took much more than that to survive, still there wasn’t much talking involved but they had to be heard… to block out all of the other horrors that the night holds.

When Christa was still at home she tried calling for help but millions already had the same idea and she couldn’t deny who she was, another thing we have in common now and so like me had I bothered asking, no help came for her… lucky for her. Her feminine wiles had no effect, not when you could look outside and see corpses for miles, the wagons collecting the living for slavery, and the dead, just in case. I wonder if her voice had once put a spell on others as it once had me but her voice was drowned out from all the curses from others.

Like the days of old there was first their manner of dress, already the mind whispered words into the night “anything, more, yes” such were the keys of survival. Next came the begging, the screaming, and hopefully another day of breathing, and may a girl be the stronger, though Christa had yet to indulge in such things. Most weren’t so fortunate; they became those horrors, bodies found stung up as they breathed their last, found by the Loveless, or kept to be used again and again and again.

No one bothered to listen to Christa anymore; there was nothing she could say to make it right, what was the voice of an angel worth, and to dance, that would come later. Cries of help unanswered and why should they be heard, as she now walked the path of the damned she knew she was guilty; she didn’t need to hear it from others.

I heard a million times a day that I was guilty and I had once been an innocent, so when it came to being guilty well… there was no one left to tell me as such. Yet like Christa I still knew what I was, the thing is we had not done this all by ourselves but this is always the way of people, find someone to blame, kill them, and repeat.

When everyone blames you the truth is you never lose your conscience just with so many other voices already screaming at you, it’s incredibly easy to ignore. When you see those who wish to convict you committing the exact same sins, you learn like them to feel nothing, as evil as I became it was like picking flowers, baking cookies, and breathing. So now I have this great sin upon my head and with the exception of my immediate family, most of my other judges were dead and blanketing the black sky.

Christa was looking for someone to share her guilt with and there was only one more person who knew exactly what she was going through but what could I say to help her? Everyone else wanted her ripped to pieces, to take all the pain that everyone had earned, and they always thought that if she did take this that everything would just go back to normal. Killing the innocent does nothing, killing the guilty just might but the truth was that in the end every single person was guilty; make this right and there would be no repeating.

I suppose I was lucky that I didn’t have wanted posters with my face on them, lucky that the Loveless weren’t calling my name, was it better to be hated or unknown… I was guilty. In this world all I still wanted to do was love and be loved but dear Christa if she could not be with me, she was alone, completely alone.

I wasn’t really alone anymore, at least not in my thoughts, deeds, or in what I had been or what I was now because everyone was coming to understand the truth in the darkness and in the silence, what had once been my wilderness. Christa was now alone and when there is silence it can be paradise but the mind can just as easily be turned into a Hell and when Hell surrounds you…

Was I the only one that admired beautiful things; children died for diamonds, men looked at beautiful girls, people relished fire and destruction, and yet I was nothing more than an animal. I can’t say I didn’t dream of such things in the dark night, yet priests raped children, women were sold as slaves, and people woke up dead and yet these horrors walked the streets while I was blamed for simply saying it out loud. They didn’t treat me as a person and I was not one of the Loveless but they all were, in the knowledge of what was happening I was not alone.

When she was able to sleep, there was such a peace over fair Christa; nightmares were for the living, if you could not close your eyes for a few minutes this mad world would overtake you. Then there were the nights in the blackness; no screaming, no crying, maybe even a soft place to lay her head and a war would be raging inside her. What of the not so good nights when she was forced to hide, to hear, and to watch what happened to others and yet she did nothing?

There were times I had been so alone but was I really; I was like so many others just trapped in my own Hell that people made out to be paradise. Christa was only left with the echoes of a life gone by and the screaming of the next would be victim.

The echoes seemed so distant at times, how long ago had her real life been, what about anyone else's when the echoes began to grow silent. Other times the echoes were so much louder, they grew closer, and they wouldn’t be echoes but actual screams; the question was would those be her screams, Christa’s past was catching up with her.

There were days when I didn’t strive to forget, whole days where I would forget that she had existed, that anyone had really existed as if I had been alone all along. Christa though had once had a life where anger, screaming and oblivion had not been the order of the day... echoes of good things. Now there was only her pain, my pain, and the world’s pain but it was so far away now, she was running away as we all tried to do.

Sometimes it just wouldn’t be in her mind, those ear-piercing, bone-shattering, and blood-curdling screams but at her bedroom door, as she ran from the hordes, and while she hid in the blackness. “Not me, it won’t be me” Christa would whisper as she covered her ears but continued to watch the horrors unfold in front of her very eyes. Her past sins had brought these things to pass but would this, no this could not be her future; at least there was a time when it shouldn’t have been.

With silent tears coursing down her face she would be forced to take shelter in these valleys of the dead, as the last echoes of her name trailed off and all that was left was the storm. The storm would do nothing to block out the real noise but there were those precious moments of thunderous silence.

While the rain would fall it wouldn’t be the water that bothered her; she and the sky could cry together and no one would notice; it was the other drops. Barely anything grew anymore because the water couldn’t make it to the ground; the earth was already drowning, so much flesh, and the endless fires that raged on.

Christa watched the blood drip and drop from almost every surface, from every wound, and from every orifice that the Loveless had ripped into. There was the smell of sex; the sticky white cum, a macabre cocktail with everything else oozing out of those who had been lost. Finally there was the black sludge from the Loveless whose bodies had gave out, some of the explosions had been so powerful that doors had blown off the hinges and holes had been blown in the walls.

A few small drops fell into Christa’s hand as she worked to barricade the entrance; she drank though unsure for she hadn’t seen the actual sky for days, the endless roar of the fires and the smoke had been so thick. There was the impact of those same waters against the dead, a mockery of the flesh against flesh smacking when the Loveless had been here. How she yearned to be clean but as she went to lift her shirt she could hear the whistles, the catcalls, and screams from those who were far less fortunate before the roar of thunder brought her back into herself.

Nearly finished she stooped there and allowed her canteen to be filled, trying desperately to see herself reflected in this clean water, though she couldn’t see much of anything in her tears. As the rain began to trickle to a stop she knew what was next, more silence, more Hell, what was left to do in the endless quiet?

In moments such as these Hell would quickly overwhelm me and having nothing good to remember I only tried desperately to remember me… as I said nothing good to remember. Christa had been good and that is what she tried to remember, if not good purpose, and if not purpose at the very least a dream.

After a tussle with The Abomination, I would first attempt to remember the conflict, no one would care either way but something in me said write it all down, because I had to remember, so I could say it happened though everyone else would deny it. I would speak it and I would write it down, normally I would be very mad at myself but rage is more useful than despair. Then I would remember what I was; fuck being The Abomination’s son, I was a writer, compared to The Abomination I was a saint, and I had a heart.

“I am Christa” I admired her for this, I hated my name more than anyone’s; The Abomination had given me his name, I didn’t want him, his name, or even my own life but he was too much of a coward to do anything about it. “I am headed to him” finally, of course I was him, it seemed almost romantic in a way, how many boys found the girls of their dreams at the end of the world, if only for one night. “I am still alive” I never found much comfort in this thought I was more “why aren’t I dead” but with more than my share of battles with The Abomination when everything is gone this would have to do as the last thing, being alive.

As she continued to say such things the moments would past and she would at the very least be calm, maybe enough to even fall asleep. This would be enough for now, a roof, a moment, the peace and quiet, and a fire satisfied… though Hell wasn’t.

People were never satisfied then or now, there was always so much more even in a world that was filled with nothing. The Loveless were filled with everything and yet it was never enough for when is love ever enough; believe what you will love is a need but it wasn’t all of it.

In the world before all I wanted was one girl, while I watched others have so many and when my rage grew, my desire of power, and everything I wanted was lost, I found myself wanting I suppose to make up the difference. It was no different now really, people steal, violate, and corrupt and why; the plague took care of that while the meek by no means inherited the Earth they took what had been long denied and yet for some odd reason others had expected them to share. The wanted, the needed, and finally the useless, the nothingness, things like life and love… the look of two corpses of actual survivors locked in a sexual tryst.

The Loveless would fill their bodies with meat and yet it did nothing to sustain them, how many corpses could one single Loveless go through… some could no longer walk but such was their gluttony. Some would feel meat with themselves; they could never find enough victims and even when they lost all sexual function, skeletons would pound pelvises with those still alive. Somewhere their bodies’ chemicals, their biology, and their memories would say that this was love, love is life, yet they were so far from it.

Would Christa had been enough, I wanted her friendship, her love, but eventually I would have wanted more; I remember the dreams I would have about her but would she satisfy me. The want of satisfaction is not necessarily as bad as it seems… when there is no one left to deny it.

There were still those who cried, begged, who sighed, but when finally there were no more rules, people didn’t talk, they did. Call them villains but when the Cupid’s Crisis struck I saw a world where without limits true freedom was found, where freewill was finally reborn and these times were the birth pains.

To think there were still those who followed the rules after seeing people use those rules to exploit them but without those rules the world was finally back to zero. As I said the meek didn’t inherit the Earth but they began taking it a piece at a time, survivors, and Loveless alike. All my existence I had tried to be a good person and they had words for people like me, virgin, poor, and victim and now how dare you even talk to me, how dare you even think of me: I no longer feared anything.

It was almost like driving in the rain, everyone else slowed down but those of us who had been stopped all our lives finally knew it was time… no more no; the word was “Go.” It wasn’t that good people don’t organize; maybe it was the simple fact that those good people weren’t so good and now facing down the mobs that had nothing more to lose, we would no longer be ignored. Never satisfied but there were those moments that there were sighs of relief, of the ending of the endings we had been cursed to, and of actually having too much and knowing there was so much more.

For all the stomachs that rumbled, for all the screaming, for all the sighing either way it goes there was a great silence in some villains. As if you could have one without the other there were heroes or if anything just people that were better than most… depending upon how you see better.

He was one… well no but he had yet to partake, almost like Christa, head down, quiet, but there was a passion he could not yet define, not yet give voice to, though he talked to his new little Chihuahua about her, the dog’s tag read Braxton. What does it even take to be a hero, fighting for what’s right, living as if the world is as it should be, what about being the only voice of reason?

Well he was no hero because heroes have the tendency to die, many would be heroes were loud mouths in the beginning, and the only heroic thing anyone could do is stay alive. He was more though, someone who actually gave a damn, he wanted to save Christa, needed to save; it was as if he were being led to save her. No thank you, no accolades, and lucky for him no detractors, for once one of the quiet ones you had to watch though no one ever did.

There was no right anymore, I’m not sure there had ever been such a thing, it had to be because I knew wrong but more often that not who you were defined wrong and right. This was the first time he had ever lived in the world at all and to him the world had always been thus just it was quieter now… after the Loveless. Reason in an unreasonable world thus his silence or maybe just the lack of anyone left alive.

For now there was peace and serenity usually reserved for those in the grave but he wasn’t dead yet, again he was no hero only a man called to the task of finding Christa. Maybe then the world would be different, no more screaming, no more dying, that is if he meant to kill her, to silence her…

Copyright © 2011, Will A. Bradford Jr. All rights reserved.