It Makes No Sense

I just want to break the world.

I want to see it snap in two. And again.

And again. And again, until there is nothing left.

Nothing but the dust, and sweat and tears and blood.

For all the times that you think that there is nothing in the world giving you even the slightest glimmer of joy, when you think that there's nothing left and no more hope.

For all those times. Know that there will be a time when you are right.

The universe is chaos, is creation and destruction is wonder and beauty and emptiness. It is the void and it is everything there ever was, and everything that will ever be. All of the possibilities, all of the pain and the happiness. All of it. All of the birth, and all of the death. Every single thing, living or dead and for everything that never was.

How dare the world keep turning, the sun still shine ? How can they possibly do so when he is no longer here ? How ? It isn't fare, it isn't right. It just makes no bloody sense.

I close my eyes. My brain tricking me again, providing me with memories of him holding me. Protecting me against the night. The feeling of his breath against my neck. The way his stubble scratches me. His big, powerful arms wrapped around me, holding me close. His warmth. His smell. That gentle touch as his fingers delicately trace circles and ellipses on my skin.

But it is just the universe being unkind. He isn't here, and now, never can be. I don't want to cry, but cannot help it. How I thought that I ran out of tears days ago, but every day I prove myself wrong. Maybe the emptiness in my heart is filled instead with tears. Endless fucking tears that will never bring him back, never bring him close to me.

Can you hear It ?

Why does the noise never ever stop ? Something about this place. There's always that piercing hum. That throbbing sound of modern existence. This is something different. I've not been able to sleep for days. It's like my own personal torture chamber.

I've heard of those devices that shops use to scare away teenagers. Emitting a sound that can only be heard by the ears of adolescents. I'm neither near a shop or being a teenager. It can't be that.

It never seems to vary, never pauses - not even for a moment. It's always there, as constant as a heartbeat but as disruptive as a badly tuned radio. I've searched all round the house and failed to find the source. I've turned off every single appliance I own, one by one. It didn't work. I just had more silence in which to hear the sound.

I've laid motionless in darkened rooms at night. All alone in my bed. Just me and the noise. But still the ever present sound is there. Imagine lying awake, night after night. Staring at the same ceiling. I've managed to read more books than ever because of all the time I've been awake when I'd rather have been sleeping. At some point fatigue overtakes me and exhausted I fall into a fitful but still exhausting sleep.

I even leant out the window, embracing the warm summer air, searching in vain for some faulty streetlight, running car or air conditioning fan, something, anything that was causing the disruption. I've never been able to find it.

When it first started, (not that I can remember when that was anymore) I asked my neighbours what they thought this invasive annoying sound was. The looks they gave me varied from 'what the hell are you talking about you crazy, crazy bitch' to 'don't talk to me, just don't talk to me !'. Friendly sorts. I was very upset by their reactions. All I can say is I understand why most people don't talk to their neighbours these days. Who would want to ? Now I can't recall how it felt before the noise. I begin to even doubt such a time existed.

I'm not sure how much longer I can maintain a normal existence. I'm barely functioning as it is. I can't find a source of the grating sound anymore than I can find a decent night's sleep. My mind is starting to play tricks on me. Teasing me with images of impossible things and with half formed memories of things I have or have not done. I find I can't absorb details at all well and find myself crying for entirely insignificant reasons. This noise is robbing me slowly of my faculties.

I simply do not know what to do anymore. All I want is silence and a decent nights sleep. Is it really too much to ask for ?

What if it is just inside my head ? What if there is nothing external causing it ? I've heard it now for so long. A strange madness that follows me like a shadow. Such an imprint it has made on my very being that I could no longer say I can remember what it sounds like not to hear it. Am I just recreating the sound in my head ? Am I stuck processing a sound over and over again that I heard, or maybe never ever heard at some point in the past ?

The only good thing is I've given up drinking coffee. There gets a point when no matter how much you drink, no matter how shaky you get with caffeine overdose, the coffee simply cannot be strong enough to combat the endless feeling of exhaustion.

I could swear I just saw a fox walk calmly across my bedroom floor. I'm at the point now where I'm no longer phased by the prospect that maybe one did.

I just want it to stop. Please. Please. Please, make it stop. I don't know how much longer I can go on like this. Please. Make it stop !!

The Cottage

At the end of the lane, there was a brook with a small footbridge over it. Barely a bridge which is really nothing more than just a couple of planks of wood covering the distance from one bank to the other, in a rather rickety, slap dash fashion. On from the 'bridge' a narrow, winding gravel path takes you further into the woods. At the end of the path is the cottage.

Entirely unremarkable in design, and seldom noticed by passers by. The mould stained walls and sagging roof show the lack of care and attention the cottage had received in anything like the recent past.

Curiously, despite being surrounded by nature, anyone that happened to walk down the lane, across the bridge and down the path would notice that none of the animals in the forest went anywhere near the cottage. Nothing so much as a bird sitting on the roof, and certainly no brave squirrel ever ventured into the open windows.

The casual, but rather lost observer may comment that the trees and bushes surrounding the cottage had grown to be as close as they dare, as if some invisible barrier prevented their further encroachment. Either something within the cottage shielded it from their advances, or the plants and animals did everything in their power to avoid it.

No one ever knew which, or at least if they did know they never made it back up the path, across the bridge and up the lane to warn anyone else.