End of the Night

TW: Mentions of abuse, violence, and suicide.

The old man laid flat on his back. Up and down, phlegm caught in his throat, his chest heaved, pushed breath through the tube of his c-pap machine. Outside, the darkest hour before dawn, still the grainy film of night's shadow hummed in the air, all gray. The thick drapes hung over the sole window, parted just barely. A weak ray of silver dripped out into the brown carpet;  Maybe the moon, more likely a street lamp or a neighbor up busy, far, far too early. It was not enough to break through the room’s darkness. When he lifted his lids he saw the fuzzy static of aftersleep and not much else. Up and down, heaved his chest, gunk covered lashes brushed each other, stalactites kissing their cave bottom counterparts. His heart pumped terribly slow, barely awake, alive. Barely. 

There was a knock at the door. Soft like. It did not want to be answered. 

“What is it?” Hacked the man, suddenly remembering he was indeed alive. He pulled the mask over his head and tossed it to the floor. “Who’s there?” The door wailed open. Gentle footfalls, hesitant and unusually light, carried a person shaped darkness from the hallway. It stopped just in front of the doorframe. The old man could not make out a face, just the vague shape of a girl, dense and dark against the pale gray lighting of the bedroom. 

“I heard screaming… so I came to check.” Her voice was hushed, like she wasn’t sure she wanted to be heard. It was not a whisper. 

“What screaming? I didn’t hear any screaming.” The old man peered at her over the lump of his own belly. She swayed with the curtains. Back and forth and back and- 

“Did you need something?”

“I need a glass of water. I’m parched.” 

“Alright.” 

“Wait. Come here.” 

She hadn’t turned to go. 

“Please, I’m very tired.”

“Come here. Now!” 

She slid across the room. He saw a glimpse of her nose as the pale light caught her. Just a nose. Did he know it? He had to. She stood at his bedside, arched over him like a reed left bent by a wind that was no longer blowing. 

“When I tell you to do something, you just do it. You hear me?”

“I was afraid. The screaming woke me up.”

“What are you talking about? What did I tell you about coming in here at night?” 

“Please, I’m sorry. I’ll get you some water now.” 

The old man snatched up her wrist, anticipating her movement toward the door. It was limp and cold inside his thick, sweating fingers. 

“What’s that noise?” He demanded. There were only the crickets, the mechanical hum of the c-pap, and the faint rasp of the old man’s lungs. 

“I don’t hear anything.” 

“It’s a scraping sound. And chewing. Those damn ants…” he craned his neck up to look at the ceiling. “HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO KILL YOU?” He shook her wrist as he yelled. She remained rigid in his grasp. Her face was inches from his, but he could not see it. Not well. The whites of her eyes shone a bit, but only enough for him to see she was there. The pale light could not reach her. 

“They keep coming back,” he spit. “Because you leave out the dishes for too long. You never close the door fast enough. NEVER! And now they’re eating my house! They keep me up at night with their chewing. All night!” 

“But how can you hear them? Your tinnitus-”

“What do you know about my ears, huh?” He threw her wrist from his hand. It swung at her hips and fell limp at her side. 

“Go get that water.” 

Her darkness receded back into the hallway. 

Someone is saying, “wake up!” But it’s not a person’s voice. It's like the voice that lives inside the mind, that reads and hums but has no sound. Someone is talking. Beneath my breath. It’s too quiet to understand. “Wake up!” It’s not a person’s voice. Voices. It’s too many soundless voices all at once. Too many to be heard. I feel fear first. How long has it been since I have had fear or blood? 

There is breathing down the hallway. 

Someone is saying, “wake up!” but it comes from so far away. The voices are filling my lungs. I can feel them crawling down my throat. I’m only imagining it, but someone else put that false feeling on my skin. It is a vision from another mind. “Wake up!” I am awake now, you see? I want to see my mother.

There is breathing down the hallway. Up away from this room. That is where my mother used to sleep. I know that it isn’t her. This breath is not her breath. The air is stale. It was never stale when she was here. My mother used to sleep down there at the end of the hallway and even on cold nights I was warm. She always kept me warm. Where have you gone? How long has it been? Even on cold nights when the chill found a way through the thick walls to nip at bare toes she gave her warmth to me. Mama, I'm awake now. I’m home again. Mama- 

Someone is screaming! Down the hallway - at the end of the hallway -  Someone is screaming - Pure agony ripped straight from the throat, sheer terror, unyielding pain so hellish, its tenor carries an anguish so rich, he who screams is torn flesh, burnt flesh. It echoes. And claws at my inner ears. I am awake now. This can’t be right. I know his voice, I know the man who screams, even through the strain of his shredded vocal chords I know him. Please, I don’t want to hear him anymore- 

Suddenly I am seven years old and sitting on my bedroom floor. I’m just sitting there because I don't know what to do with myself. I am seven years old again and I feel like I have never seen the sun. I have seen the sun, of course, it just feels like I haven't. It’s been one of those days. It’s just one of those days again and I don’t understand what I did wrong. I’m trying to figure it out, you know? I’m running different scenarios in my head and they all come out the same. What could I do differently that I haven’t already tried? How? How do I make this work? How can I keep him happy and gentle? How do I tell him how it hurts? How badly he hurts? I’m only seven and I’m not very good at thinking up solutions. Even in my own head I can’t make it work. 

I stop and think of death. Thoughts of death are softer than thoughts of you. 

Then, I am ten  years old and sitting on the front doorstep. There is an ant in my cupped hands and I am trying not to frighten it. It’s  a carpenter ant. I know this because he’s always telling me he has killed them hundreds of times. He has the best exterminator. He has the best of everything. Always. He has the best insecticides money can buy. He destroyed their nests himself. The exterminator rid the house of them already. But the carpenter ants always come back. Some hungers are stronger than death. They’re eating his house. They’re eating his house. How many times does he have to kill them? He doesn’t know. This he admits he does not know. I hold one in my hands now; a little black bane. 

You and I are not at war. 

My god is a cruel god who scarcely lets me see the sun. Now I am the bigger thing. This is just the way it is, the way it’s happened. It’s nobody’s fault. I will not be a cruel big thing. I, too, am a fragile body in the palms of my god. Thick sweaty fingers obscure the sky. There is no way up or down or out unless he chooses to set me free. But my god is a cruel god. He would rather crush me than unfurl his fingers and let me drag myself away. I open my palms. My fingers touch the dirt. There is a moment between us, of complete stillness, complete uncertainty. Mercy would unnerve me too.  Go. I hope your mother is waiting for you. The ant drags itself away. I watch its black body shine under the sun. 

Then comes my twelfth year. With it comes clarity. I understand the truth. He will never open his hands. I understand. We can't both be here. Even in my head I can't make it work and I refuse to be crushed by him. I feel no anger, no hurt, no sadness, no fear. It just is. I know what I have to do. 

For the last time I am twelve years old, lying in bed, barely awake, barely alive. Barely. There’s a whole bottle in my stomach. I know this is the only way. It’s me or him. I never had the strength to kill a god. Night is falling on me. I let it. Soon I’m dreaming. I dream of my mother. I remember that I never said goodbye. I’m cold, getting colder. I don’t call for her. She should keep her warmth tonight. I’ll be waiting for you, Mama.

Night falls. 

Someone is saying, “Wake up!” It reaches me under his screaming. I know. I’m awake. I’m awake. Someone is saying, “It’s time.” I know. I am awake now. “It’s time to end this.” I know. I understand. My mother is long gone. She is the one waiting now. He is what remains. I am going to make the screaming stop. 

The girl returned in less than a minute. He could see the glass in her hand glinting in the moonlight. He shifted onto his side to demand his drink. 

“I’m thirsty!” The old man’s spittle flew everywhere. 

“Here.” 

She slid through the gray and emerged beside him. She tilted the glass to his lips. He drank, but even then he could not see her. Water dripped from his chapped lips into his beard, and fell onto his stained wife beater. Once satisfied, he shoved the glass away from his face. The girl stepped back to escape his reach. She pinned her back against the wall. Still, all he could make out of her still was her shape and the shining glass in her hand. 

“What the hell is that? What is that noise?” he muttered to himself. It was so loud now he could hardly stand it.

“The screaming.” 

“No! What the hell are you on about? The scraping!”

“I only hear screaming. Is that what you hear?” 

“Chewing! Scraping! I hear chewing and scraping!”

“Is it the ants? The ants you could never kill?”

“Don’t get disrespectful you-” 

“It is! Would you like to know why you can hear them?”

“Come here, you little brat.”

“The ants and termites and moths and their six thousand tiny legs no thicker than your beard hairs climb over your face while you sleep, pry open your lips, dip their antennae in your slobber. They are quietly counting how many mandibles and how many days it will take to finish you. They’re going home, scraping their hard bug bodies against the hardwood. They are telling the others the answers they found.”

The old man sat up in bed. He still could not see her face. Her dark form seemed to pulsate, grow bigger. And bigger. For the first time in a long while, he was fully awake. And terrified. 

“Who are you?” 

“It keeps you awake. How can you hear it? Through your terrible tinnitus, that awful ringing that kept human voices out? You can hear them. Why do you think that is? Is it your hate? Reaching out and pulling it past the ringing? No. Even your hate is not so strong. It's fear. Your doom builds an infantry. You can hear me now, all these years later. All you can hear is the ringing and the insects and me. We can always hear our ends nearing. Your ears are still good enough for that.”

The girl slid against the wall until her form was directly in front of the door. She paused, then strode into the middle of the bedroom to the patch of carpet where the light seeped in thickest. It fell on her face. Her features came to a glow. The old man rasped hard. 

“Daughter…” 

“I know what woke me now, father. I know what I heard.”

“You are not supposed to be here.” 

The crickets outside began to scream. The ceiling rattled. Sawdust fell from the new cracks into the sweaty bed sheets.

“Where’s my Mother? 

“This is not possible.” 

“I left her to be crushed by you. Alone…” 

“This is not real. This is a dream. This is-”

“How old am I?”

“Wha- What?”

“How old am I now? Fifteen? Twenty two? Forty? I have no way of knowing. How old am I?” She moved to the foot of the bed. 

“How long have you been here rotting?” 

He opened his mouth to answer and in fell a clump of sawdust. He hurled his head forward and spat out what he could. He felt something crawling down the back of his throat. 

“The ants and termites and moths know what you did to me. They saw it all. I have been asleep so long… but your screaming woke me. It’s getting loud again. It will be here soon.” 

The old man felt something crawling up his leg, and his shoulders, and his chest. He flailed his arms. He jerked and writhed in the sheets, but the ants were already all over. They were on the carpet, on the walls, the ceiling, the windows. Every surface shifted in the constant movement of a million tiny black bodies. A guttural scream tore from his throat as the old man felt an ant dig itself into his eyelid. Another wail ripped into the air as ants crawled under his fingernails. He thrashed helplessly, screaming and screaming. His daughter stood there watching. 

“There it is.”

Golden sunlight trickled in through the barley parted curtains. It broke through the grainy film of night’s shadow. 

I’m coming, Mama. The sun is rising - the end of the night. It is time for me to come home.