I've always feared silence more than sound.
I ran across the path to the village, my legs still aching from kicking around stones with the boys that morning. Pebbles crunched beneath my feet as I tried to navigate in the darkness. Yet, I had an urge to stop. To open the scroll lying in my hands. Before I realised it, I had stopped beneath a corneferius tree, its bark braided with pale roots, like tendons. The scroll was cool and heavy in my hands, its surface smooth as polished stone. It drank up the night, swallowing shadows whole. Such an object… it shouldn't exist. I unfurled the scroll gently. It resisted me at first. Just for a moment. Like it knew I would try. Such an object should not be hurt. I shouldn't have unwrapped it; not here, not alone. But my hands moved nonetheless. As I looked, the black canvas lay cold and silent beneath my fingers; no words decorated its papyrus. My right eye twitched. NO. NO. How could this be…? When the man showed it, it was filled with words and symbols. Such beautiful symbols. I could still remember how they drew in my gaze, grasped it and refused to let go. The feeling… It was euphoric. But now, it was empty. He handed it to me under the bridge. His smile was too wide, like it had torn him open. "Take it," he said. "It already chose you."
In desperation, I turned the scroll, hoping that I had only been looking on the wrong side. This side felt… emptier. Not just blank, but hollow. Wait… How could it feel more blank? There's something off about this. I raised the scroll. Its edge brushed my lip, cold as riverstone. I squinted; there must be something, some line, some mark I'd overlooked. But there was only black, nothing else. Not colour. Not ink. Something deeper. Something waiting. The scroll was perfect. No dents, no chips. Just blackness. How could a colour be so beautiful? I couldn't tear my eyes away from it. How did people say they were happy when they hadn't seen black? Black, more than a void, a mercy. A silence that doesn't remember.
My mother…? She told me something. No, she sent me. Somewhere. But…I can't remember what. I tried to remember, but the black… it didn't let go. Why remember such things… when you have this black?The black that warms. The black that watches… and waits. It filled the hollows behind my eyes, etched into the back of my lids. I should look away. I knew that. But the black… it hummed, not just with silence, but with promise. Why would I want to see anything else?
THWACK
I flew back, vision torn away from the black scroll, my eyes out of focus. My spine struck the wood with a thud, breath fled like a coward.
I tasted ink. Thick, warm. Not blood.
"Give me the scroll. Give me… GIVE IT," the hand struck me across the face. I slammed into the dirt floor. "Not brown… only black," I murmured. My wish quickly came true as a blackness spread over me, covering everything. But this was a different black. It took me away. It took everything away. Nothing was left.
———————————————————————————————————————
Something dragged me up from the depths. Not a hand, but a scent. Roses? I opened my eyes. Then, colour. Waking me from the darkness that had previously consumed me. What had happened? I couldn't remember. Yet somehow, I felt as if a part of me was missing. Like something that was supposed to be there suddenly disappeared. As my mind started to process the colours and turn them into images, I saw a feminine face looming over me. Her pale face and her pursed lips looked down in an expression of something that could be mistaken for concern. Yet I knew. This woman was incapable of such feelings. She was my mother after all.
"What did you think you were doing?" The voice rumbled through me, making my head ache.
"You said you'd get the fruits and be back by 10. Not only did I have to go out and find you at midnight, but you didn't even get the fruits. Not a single one." Her expression changed from anger to one of disappointment. "I should've known better than to trust you with such a task."
A pale, tight-skinned monster appeared, replacing the figure of my mother, yet it disappeared before I could examine it more closely.
"And what was the black scroll you were holding? A strange man offered 10 gold coins for it, and we need all the coin we can get. Not that you're any better than your father. He ran. You just get caught." Her words were knives, but her tone was syrup.
"No…" was all I could say. "The black…"
"Shut up, boy, don't you dare speak a word. Especially after failing to steal the fruits from Ol' Jenkins' farm. That old bastard's got fruit rotting in piles, but touch one and he calls the sheriff. He'll be gone soon enough anyway. Then we'll be feasting like kings. That's how this world works; wait for someone to rot, then take what's left," my mother droned on. The words were too much for my weakened state to handle. The words swallowed me, each one sending me deeper into the darkness from which I had recently emerged. I fell deeper and deeper, until I fell into its pits once again.
———————————————————————————————————————
The next few days went by as normal. I played with my friends, went to school, threw sharp rocks at passing strangers and broke rules that seemed to make no sense at all. Yet, the feeling that something was missing didn't disappear. Rather, it grew. It grew and it grew, a hole forming in me. Yet that hole was black. Pure black. The black I so desired. It would be so easy to give in to the black…
NO! What am I thinking? I shook my head and continued the game of soccer, resuming my position as goalkeeper, just in time to save the ball.. My body still remembered what my mind had lost.
On Thursday, no one left their homes. The windows all showed the same flame. One, then two, then none.
———————————————————————————————————————
I walk through the village, weaving in between thatched and dilapidated houses on the far side of town. The abandoned side. The side that we've been told not to go to, ever since we were old enough to understand. The trodden path crunches beneath my feet as I look around in awe. Since that day… when the black was there; since the time when a part of my soul had disappeared, I found myself being drawn more and more to this place. Something about this place called me. It drew me in. Voices whispered inside my head, beckoning me forth. Some days the voices were loud and noisy, other times they were quiet. Yet always, they had said the same thing. Go west. And here I was, at the western side of the town.
As I walked through the broken wood of collapsed houses, the scent of torn families lingering in the air, my eyes spotted something… Something kind of black. "It didn't stand out. Not really. Just… black. Like everything else here. Yet it called to me. Whispered like it always had.
He should have walked away. He even tried. But his legs moved before he could stop them.
His fingers, traitors, brushed aside the mud. Cold met skin. His breath caught.
He looked at the scroll. He? No… that was me.
And as I took it, I felt… peace. Like returning to something I'd never truly left.
The silence… it was waiting for me.