Silence

The train station was silent. Years ago, it would have been impossible to find such emptiness even if you tried, but today there was nothing left. They had never known there to be anything, but others had explained to them it had once been so. The fluorescent moss creeping up the rusted track was the only gleam in the darkness, the only assurance that they were still there, that they hadn’t just imagined everything in the first place. They started to walk, balancing on top of the rails, arms pinwheeling to keep their small frame steady and upright, to keep them from plummeting into the abyss to either side whenever a silent gust of wind leaned against them, grappling to share the illumination. Grappling to share in the illusion.  

Their footsteps were silent, an unwillingness to do anything to disrupt the atmosphere around them even as it pressed down with every moment’s breath. The only thing that could assure them of having made any progress at all was the seemingly random pattern of illumination provided by the moss and the way they could feel the flaking rust of the tracks sticking to their old worn boots.

After a period of walking they glanced about them, seemingly searching for some marker in the darkness. They hummed a short affirmative, and the quiet sound almost accidentally pierced the darkness and seemed to echo so loudly that any beings left in the entire world would undoubtedly pick up on the disruption and come running. The darkness seemed to wind in on itself in an attempt to escape the disruption, curling up tighter around their frame. They froze, resisting the urge to rapidly turn about in search of anything that may have heard the noise. Instead they waited. Time seemed to speed up as it whipped by their face, changing everything that it passed.

The moment passed, and silence continued its reign. The darkness untangled itself from their figure, resuming its watch over the empty tracks and the assault on the glow of the moss.

They took one tentative step off the tracks, and then another, glancing about furtively, seeing nothing but the slight shadows cast by the glow behind. They started to walk away from the tracks, damp dust silently sticking to the bottoms of their boots. In time, even the shadows disappear as the light that cast them fades into memory. Many times the darkness led them to a wall or some other crumbled structure that obstructed their progress, but they merely adjusted the angle they were facing and continued on.

Meeting a surprisingly stable obstruction with their shins, they turned around. Then it blinded them. An arm whipped up to cover their eyes, an action long forgotten by anything but muscle memory. Minutes—or perhaps seconds or hours—later they lowered their arm slowly to face the disruption.

Perhaps the light had been triggered by some form of pressure plate, some hidden switch, or some movement or gesture that had been long lost by intention. As they moved their arms to shield their eyes from the sudden blinding light they simultaneously took a quick, quiet, step back into the shadows that surrounded the flood of light, the darkness clinging to them like a young child.

The slight buzzing that came with the sudden disturbance to the darkness seemed to shatter the silence, as though the suffocating veil that had been masking the world’s expression for so long had suddenly snapped under the pressure. They didn’t gasp but across the world, where even the air had learned to be so still that breath could barely be taken without it sounding as loud as a scream, people seemed to cover their ears at the sudden deafening volume.

They take another slow step away, the slight sound of the depression of the soggy grass beneath their feet sounding like a drum beat, tolling their doom, the darkness itself tensing around them. The shadows seemed to be reaching toward the light, as though reconciling with a long lost friend. They continued the odd back and forth, as the power shifted fluidly, calmly. They turned to look back at the pool of light, which was now growing.

They quickly turned around to face you, panic clear in their eyes. They nodded, and the light went out.