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5 days ago
therealdocturner
Silence Is Violence
The alley is dark.
I see my breath in the frigid air.
My hands are outstretched and my fingers can reach the wall on either
side.
It’s narrow.
The walls are wet and slicked with some kind of slime. Children are
screaming somewhere in the dark. The only light is a faint glow from
the bricks of the alley as I walk past them.
The screams are behind me and they’re getting closer. Footsteps. Like
a thousand people running behind me, getting closer and closer.
My chest hurt̸ and I fałł over.
The alley is go̕ne.
Everything is light now. Too bright to see anything. I hear people
yelling. I smell soap.
I fall back into the darkness of the alley. I run and I can feel my heart
trying to beat its way out of my chest.
The screaming children behind me say my name. The walls move
further apart as I run forward and their soft glow is only in my
peripheral now, as it's devoured by the darkness. It’s getting colder. I
run into the dark̵.
God, help me.
There are lights in front of me.
I move forward.
I recognize the main street of the town where I grew up. Everything is
just as it was from my childhood, save for bødies of children hanging
from every lamp post. They’ve been gutted.
Their insides pile up underneath the swaying corpses. Roman
Numerals are carved into their foreheads.
My chest exploded in paın.
My hometown is go̶ne.
Light and pain are all that remain. Frantic voices. My chest is on fire.
My shirt is open.
I fall back onto Blackstone Avenue. The buildings are on fire. Children
with accusatory eyes surround me on the street.
They’re pointing, at me.
The Roman numerals are raised and bleeding. Ligature marks are on
every neck, and all of them begin to walk toward me. Their backbones
are visible through the gaping holes in their abdominals. My chest is in
agøny.
Just before they grab me, I’m back in that blinding light. Convulsıons
and I feel my own spit running down my neck.
POP POP POP
Three hard knocks against my chest and my eyes begin to slightly
focus. I’m in a hospıtals room. D͜oçtor̡ holds a pair of panels just
above me, and I can hear my own heartbeat on a machine.
Two days later.
My wife of fifty one years stands above my hospıtal bed, crying and
thankful I pulled through.
She stays until I make her go home.
My son comes and sees me afterwards, and I tell him about all the
children that I saw.
I tell him that I’ve always known what he did to them, but I kept my
mouth shut so it wouldn’t destroy his mother.
I tell him I can’t do it anymore. I rısk condemnation with my silence.
He’s got to turn himself in.
He tells me he loves me, as he pushes a pi]low over my fac͘e.