click.

The door closed itself behind me, motivated by the electromagnetic lock, outside the tinted one-way mirror windows, the rain was motivated by gravity, and inside; I was not motivated at all.

"Memories consume, like opening the wound. I'm picking me apart again.."

I took off my headphones and listened to the white noise of the downpour which drowned out the white noise of human activity outside. Which often drowned out the activity within myself.

Silence.

It is the loudest sound.

If you lock yourself in the bomb-shelter store-room in any HDB apartment with the lights off, you will hear it. It is the original sound, an unrelenting, high-pitched scream, which was here long before the beating of the heart-the only other sound you will hear in that room apart from the repeated chorus of your own breathing- in my case, our breathing.

I set my i-pod to repeat.

"You all assume I'm safe here in my room, unless I try to.."

Draw a self-portrait. I failed the first few times.

"Observation, observation, observation. Draw what you see, not what is in your head"

But since I never knew who I was, I could never really see myself.

The easel was already set up. I cleared the dust off the mirror and looked in.

"Cause inside I realise that I'm the one..."

I started on the outline of the face.

"Confused?"

"Go away."

"I don't know how I got this way, I know it's not alright.."

So I erase the outline and try to draw what I see.

"You can't see yourself can you?"

"Shut up, I told you to g-"

"You have never been able to. Not since the night when you put the batteries back into the television remote that was thrown across the room as your virgin ears first heard shouting -the shouting of your parents. Not since your father disappeared and appeared again so suddenly that you thought him a stranger. Not since you first fell in 'love', and your best friend had sex with your girlfriend. Not since your father broke the silence in the car by saing he regretted having children. Not since the silence inside you became you. Not since you started isolating yourself to listen and look at life. Not since you realised through that, that life and time are meaningless- endless generations over and over, living and dying, living and dying, searching for bigger, better, faster, stronger. Through what? Capitalism? Socialism? Democracy? Theology? Pragmatism? Art? What has changed? Not since the start of the cycle has any living man been able to see himself. Not since then has the silence subsided."

"I try to catch my breath again.."

"I'm sick of this. I'm sick of you being sick of them. I'm sick of you being sick of me. I'm sick of you being sick of fitting in to what everyone else accepts to be "life". I'm sick of it, that when you look here you can't see us."

"I had no options left again.."

Silence.

"Look into our eyes."

I try to ignore him. I put in the lips, then the ears, then the nose, and then..


I do.

"I'm breaking the habit, I'm breaking the habit, I'm breaking the-"

Mirror.

Deep red smears across the implosion of pieces of us, as deep red smears across the lacerated flesh that stretches thinly across the knuckles of the fist, as deep red globules about to stain the self-portrait are altogether suspended in the air for a brief moment, and true silence -the abscence of that primordial scream is heard for the first time.

He draws back his bleeding hand quickly in one movement, and as he does, distorts my lips, and smears them in deep red.

He stares a while, marvelling at the prodigy of pain, then glances over from the self-injury to his self-portrait, and doesn't recognise himself.

"I'm sick of you."

He opens the door, and the white noise of the people outside mixed with the white noise of the rain, mixed with the white noise of the scream of Chester Bennington mixed with the white noise of crashes, high-hat, bass, and snare drums floods in.

What has changed? The silence inside me has become me, and as I breathe the rainy-tainted air through my perfectly drawn nose, as I look through the one-way mirror windows through my own perfectly drawn one-way mirror eyes, I listen with my perfectly drawn ears -Silence.

click.


(742 words)

OKAY, so I've passed the first draft to my "editor" and looked at the suggestions and made some changes. This is pretty much the final piece.

Labels: Short Story Competition Entry Draft 1.5