The Weight of Silence

I am aware of the stillness, my own stillness. Of the far from natural calmness that has claimed me. The feeling is strange, in that there is none. There is no longer the need to blink, to breathe, to even lift a finger. The passage of time appears to stretch, but I'm not entirely sure whether it's the passing hours or the absence of movement that makes it feel so endless.

I cannot see. Nothing but the black - silent and still, as if the very air around me thickens into something far more oppressive than gravity. My body lies still, thought I'm not sure where I am exactly. I cannot feel the cold of the dirt nor the warmth of the sun. No sense of my position, am I prone or upright? Am I laying on a bed, a table or on the earth itself. The world of the living has slipped away, and I am alone in a place that doesn't exist.

But I'm still here aren't I? Here but at the same time, not. Existing in a liminal state between the living and the dead.

There are times where I try to focus the memory of what it felt like to be alive. But those are all but faded, like water slipping through my fingers. I can pick out faces - faint glimmers, the taste of saltwater on my lips, the buzz of a busy street corner - but they are clouded in fog, like watching someone else's live unfold through a dirty window.

My own thoughts are mere fragments now. Coming in bursts, rapid and sometimes slow, as if my mind is attempting to grasp at an idea it does not yet fully comprehend.

I hear something. Distant and echoing. Is it footsteps? Or could it be the wind. It's hard to tell, and I'm not sure the sound is real, or if my shattered mind is trying to make sense of the void that surrounds me. Time has no meaning nor purpose here.

I think of my body. Wondering what it looks like now. If it's begun to decay. I can't feel it - no itching or coldness, no stiffness. The sensation of being dead is more akin to floating in water than anything else, absence of all feeling but the heaviness of inertia.

I remember once, when I was alive, I had the fear of being buried before I was dead. Waking in a coffin, trapped beneath the earth. It was enough to send shivers down my spine. But now, as I linger in this strange, liminal space, that the true horror is not being buried. The horror is the quiet, the isolation. The ever expanding silence, painfully stretching in every direction, pressing in on me, and telling me I'm no longer part of the world that was once mine to live in.

Another sound. A thump. Louder this time, and closer. My body stirs - well, not in the way that it used to. More like a pull, my awareness shifting. The sound becomes clearer, I think I hear a voice, faint and muffled, as though as someone is speaking from far away.

"It's... time."

I don't know what it means. Are they speaking to me? Of me? Time for what, to leave? To go somewhere else? A part of me hopes wherever 'else' is, it won't be so quiet. Somewhere with noise. With people. But maybe that's just wishful thinking, or the mind of the living yearning for something it can no longer have.

I hear more sounds now - faint but unmistakable. The scrape of a chair leg on wood. Swishing of fabrics. More footsteps, closer this time, and the voices - clearer now, more distinct.

I can almost comprehend it.

"Is it... is it really over?"

"I don't know. He's... gone, right?"

"Not yet. They said... they said there's still a chance. But I don't know, I don't think there is."

There's a quiver in the voice that speaks those final words, I can almost feel the weight - an emotion? Sorrow? Fear? Regret? I want to grip it, understand it, but that also slips away like the other fragments of memory that fade before I can hold them. I wish to speak to them. To say that I'm alright. Not angry or afraid. But can't speak nor move. I'm a body in a place that's stopped, where nothing exists but the unbearable silence.

I think I remember the sound of my own voice. A voice that used to ring with laughter, whisper words of comfort, words of love. Am I missed? Was I loved?

Do they think of me at all.

There is another shift in the air - colder and sharper than the last, like the arrival of something pointed and inevitable. A door opens. The sound of people walking in, closer, voices are low and muted by the thickness of whatever separates us. I feel the vibration of footsteps through the floor, though I don't know how I feel them - whether it's simply my mind imagining it or I am in fact actually sensing it. How the living sense the world around them.

Another voice. I find it familiar.

"Are we ready?"

"Yes. It's done."

The words are hard to follow. Disconnected, fragmented like everything else here. I can't place the voices, cannot tie them to faces. I think I remember them. But it's more like an echo, a suggestion, opposed to the vivid clarity I once had.

Someone moves towards me. The floor creaks beneath the weight. There's a chill in the air, and I feel it, though I don't know how. A sharp contrast to the warmth that used to fill the room when life still clung to my skin. My body shifts, as though being moved - lifted, perhaps? Although I'm no longer sure of what is real. The world of sensation and awareness has become muddled, confusing. What is this touch? What is this shifting weight?

"Careful," one of the voices says. "He's still... fragile."

That word lingers in the air, heavy with something I can't define. Was it an insult? Sympathy? I think I used to be fragile, at least in certain ways. But that seems so far away now, far from the truth of who I am - or who I was.

I feel myself lifted higher, body swaying, but there's no pain - to that I am glad. Just a strange floating sensation. They are lifting me, and I am powerless to stop them. I don't want to. But the act is unfamiliar , and leads to further disorientation.

"Do you want to say something?" one voice asks.

It lingers in the air. Like they're waiting for me to respond, to speak. But how can I speak, when I'm no longer able to move? I cannot give what they desire, as I have nothing left to offer.

I wish I could tell them not to be sad, that there's no need to mourn. To assure them that I'm not gone, not really. But the words are caught in my throat and lost to the silence. So I remain silent. Just a body. A shell.

They move me, and I drift along with them, though I am uncertain whether they realise I am still here at all. Or if they care. Maybe it's not important. Perhaps it never was.

As I'm carried through the darkened space, I catch fleeting images - flickers of light, the hum of voices. For a moment, I think I see the sun, or what may have been the sun, shining through the cracks of a door. But it's brief, and it vanished as quickly as it appeared. I am then placed down again, and the weight of stillness returns. Alone again, but this time there is no fear. No sorrow. Just the unbroken silence.

Is this the end? I cannot tell, it may be another beginning. But somehow, I don't mind. Here, there is no more need for the world. Only the quiet.

And I am at peace.