The footfalls echoed in the empty subway station. Step step step....pause. Silence. Blessed, blessed sweet silence.
She had yearned for it for so long. She was sick to death of all the noise, all the sounds, all the smells, all the vibes, all the sights. She hated it when people bumped against her, or touched her or even just passed too close to her.
This place, this abandoned, empty subway station would now be her own little piece of Heaven. Noone would find her there, and noone would bother her. No one and no thing.
She stood perfectly still for hours. It was in the dead of night, so there was no sound to be heard, other than that of her own breathing. Slow and regular as clockwork. This didn't please her at all. Even here, in the loving embrace of darkness and loneliness, silence was flawed.
A few weeks went by, and she stayed put in her lightless lair. The healing calm she had expected to find, wasn't happening. To her distress, she found that her uneasiness was increasing even more down here, than up there. It was the sound of breathing. The whole damn place was filling up and becoming choked with the sound of her breath. Trying to cover her ears only made it worse.
Breathing sounds so much louder when heard from the inside.
There was nothing she could do to escape either. The dreamlands were too dangerous to haunt; most probably it would mean certain death to go there. Limbo was not an option. There was total absence of all sensory input there, but that only made the noise from the soul so much louder.
After another week, she found it increasingly hard to breathe. The inescapable, ubiquituous sound of her breathing was getting on her nerves. How could this be? Why was she denied the quiet she so craved?
inhale exhale inhale exhale inhale exhale inhale exhale please make it stop inhale exhale inhale exhale
So cramped in there. Difficult to move. The noise of breath was now so thick she could feel it against her skin, pressing at her from all sides. She started touching the walls to try distract herself from the the breathing. She ran her hands over tiles and creases and mortar and wood. Couldn't stop. As another sound started to do battle with breath, tears came to her.
This wasn't a piece of Heaven. This was a piece of something else entirely.
And she could not flee. There was nowhere left for her to go. Heaven was denied her, and Hell would devour her. Earth was all she had, and it would not be quiet! She kept running her hands and fingers over the walls, and then the floor.
inhale exhale inhale exhale rub stroke inhale feel finger exhale rustle rub stroke stroke stroke stroke inhale rub rub rubstrokerub exhale
When the flames burned in her eyes, she didn't flinch. The weight of the sounds of her breath, and the stumps of her fingers upon the walls and floors, had all but immobilized her.
When the figure in the flames embraced her in a passonate kiss that burned her tongue to ashes, she didn't whimper. It wasn't as if she needed the tongue, when silence was her only want.
When the figure flared up and chased the darkness from the empty station, she didn't close her eyes.
When she saw the mad prophecies written in coal and blood all over the walls and floors, she screamed.
When she screamed, Fire joined her.