Noise

The noise. The noise was too much. He was going to go insane—he couldn’t hear his own thoughts anymore, did he even HAVE any thoughts, or was every tiny whisper just a spider, or a bird flying by?

I bless you with the ability to understand. To know what the creatures around you say.

A blessing, yeah, right. A curse. A horrific, insanity-inducing curse that made him able to hear every animal around him, let him know what they were saying. And most of it was just noise. That bird was wondering if her eggs would hatch, that spider was worried his web was not strong enough, that rabbit was thinking about how delicious the clover she was eating was. None of it MATTERED, why did they all feel the need to TALK ABOUT IT instead of just thinking it in their tiny brains?!

“SHUT UP!” he screamed, not knowing or caring to whom he was talking.

The forest fell silent for just a moment, as all of the creatures understood. Then the muttering started up again.

“Surely he wasn’t talking to me.”

“What a strange creature.”

“Shut up! So rude!”

“It’s not even that loud, it’s just some birds chirping—birds, this might be a dangerous neighborhood to be in, I ought to move.”

He collapsed to the ground, pressing his hands to his ears, trying in vain to block out the voices that crowded against his ears. There were so many creatures, and all of them had their own thoughts and lives, and it was too much!

“Such a strange creature. It’s almost like he can understand us. Ha. As if. He wishes. Wonder what’s wrong with him? Is he defective?”

He reached out, and swiped through the spiderweb of the chattering creature.

“NO!” the spider screamed, “All of my hard work! All of that silk! You stupid, ham-fisted—”

He took off his boot and slammed it into the spider. “Shut up,” he growled, hitting it again, “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

The spider gasped in a horrible, heart-wrenching way.

“Wh-Why?” it whined, “What… did I…”

One chattering voice fell out of the cacophony. He stopped, horror sweeping over him. He’d murdered the spider. He’d killed someone, someone with a voice, someone who’d worried about birds eating him! What had he done?! He screamed, startling some of the birds away, their chattering voices getting too far to hear. He slammed his head against a tree, trying to beat the spider’s final moments out of his head.

“What has he done?! He killed Clarisse! And destroyed her web! How could he?! The arrogant, horrible—”

The chattering, which had died down during his scream, came back up in full force, another spider lamenting the loss of Clarisse. He got up and stumbled away, hands over his ears, but he couldn’t block out the voices, all of them talking all at once. How could he stop them, what could he do, there was only one way to shut them up. Only one way.

Xxx

You wander through the woods, which are strangely silent. No animals seem to be here—a shame. A fairy blessed you with the ability to speak to animals, and while it was frightening at first, you’ve learned how to block out some of the voices, and speak to only some. You can always get directions, or have a friend to talk to along the way in the animals. But here, here there were none. Not even a spider. You’ve never been somewhere so quiet. It’s haunting, and a little bit spooky, but also… peaceful. You can't remember the last time things were this quiet.

You wander further and find a bird, its neck twisted, lying on the ground. Oh, no. Poor thing. You had to come to terms with the deaths of animals a long time ago—it was part of the circle of life, things died so that other things could live. But what would twist the bird’s neck and then leave it? Why wouldn’t whatever it was eat it? And why were there no ants, or other bugs, here to eat it? It looked like it had been dead for a while, based on the general decomposition, but no woodland insect or vulture had broken down the body.

“What happened here?” you wonder aloud.

Something rustles in the trees, and you whirl around, looking for the source. “Hello?” you call cautiously.

“A voice,” someone croaks, “A single voice—it’s been so quiet. So quiet for so long.”

“Who’s there? What happened, here?”

Someone drops down from the trees, a wild man with a haunted look in his eyes. “A human,” he wonders aloud, “Do I hear your voice, or the Gift? Which is it, which is it?”

You reach out towards him. “The Gift? You can communicate with the creatures, too?”

“The Gift, the Gift, the Gift! The blessing, the curse, the gift of a thousand swords!”

You take a step back. “What happened here?”

“The Voices. The Voices happened, but now they’re all gone. All of them. Every single one.”

What did that mean? “What—what happened to all of the voices?” you ask, voice wavering. You’re not sure you like where this is going.

“Are you a Voice? Are you? Are you a Voice, or a human? Or maybe the fairy, here to see her handiwork?”

“I’m just a human. Not a fairy. Not a voice. A human. What. Happened. To. The Voices.”

“They’re gone,” he singsongs, “All gone.”

You lunge forward, shaking him by the shoulders. “What did you do?!” you demand, “What happened to all of the creatures?”

“I didn’t want to at first,” he whines, struggling weakly against you, “But it was the only way to get some quiet! The Voices had to stop!”

A sick, sick feeling arises in your stomach. “You killed them. All of them—every single creature, you killed all of them!”

Tears well up in his blank, wild eyes. “I just wanted to have some quiet,” he blubbers, “Some quiet, but now it’s too quiet, and I can’t get any of them here, they avoid the area, but if I go further, the noise is too much, and it’s too much and I’m not used to noise, and you’re NOISY!”

He leaps at you, wrapping his wiry hands around your neck. The bird, its neck twisted, flashes through your mind, and you kick out, your foot hitting his knee. He lets you go with a yelp. He’s clearly out of practice murdering, or else he never wrestled anything bigger than a coyote.

“Stop it!” you yell, scrambling on the ground for a weapon and picking up a thick stick, “You need to stop!”

“The Voices have to stop,” he whispers, “For my good—and yours. You’re like me. It would be cruel to let you go into the mad, mad world!”

He lunges towards you again, and you swing the stick into his head with a sickening crack. He drops back, but advances again, dazed. You swing again. You spot a dead rabbit, and you swing again, even though he hasn’t tried to advance again. The strength of millions of slaughtered animals flows through your veins, and you swing again and again and again, until he’s another slaughtered animal, lying in a puddle on the ground. The animals don’t come back. Of course, why should they? They don’t know that their foe is dead. You have killed the last living thing in the area.

The woods are completely silent.