THE OBLIVIONIST

Alex Kimmell

 

"Silence isn’t empty, it’s full of answers.”

- Unknown

 

 

Subject 003: Bethany Maines

Female

19 years old

Blonde Hair

Green Eyes

Approx. 120 lbs.

Hometown: Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

Brown University

Area of Study: Political Science

Sophomore

Currently no sexual partners. Previous relationship ended by male partner six months ago. No reasons for breakup provided during interview.

One living sibling. Three years older. Married. Currently pregnant.

Younger sibling deceased. Complications due to rejection of kidney transplant.

Parents still married.

Father 62 years old. High School English teacher. Healthy and fit for his age.

Mother 57 years old. Architect. High cholesterol problem. More than a social drinker. Thyroid removed due to history of cancer in the family.

 

08.09.16

10 MINUTES:

8:00PM - CLOSE DOORS

 

8:01PM - Bethany, “Wow. You weren’t kidding. It really is quiet in here.”

Fabric rustling and scratching.

“My ears are ringing. I don’t think I ever noticed that before. It’s actually uncomfortable.”

She is adjusting her position.

“Sorry. I know you told me not to move too much.”

 

8:03PM - “My head feels funny. Like something is pushing down on me. I’ve never been claustrophobic before, but this is creepy. It’s so dark, like I’m blindfolded over my ears and eyes at the same time. Even my voice is so darn loud. When I stop talking, there’s nothing there anymore.”

 

8:05PM - “I hear my heartbeat. I mean, I’ve heard it before, but this is like I can hear…all of it, the muscle squeezing and pushing all the blood and stuff. So freaky.”

 

8:07PM - “I think I can hear my fingers when they bend. Like the muscles and bones scraping together or whatever. You know how ropes crack when they stretch?”

8:09PM - There is loud pop. “That was my knuckle. I crack them sometimes when I get nervous. Holy gosh that was loud!”

 

8:10PM - OPEN DOORS

 

The quietest room in the world is at the Orenfield Laboratories in Minneapolis. The Anechoic Chamber is 99.99% sound absorbent. When it’s sealed shut, background noise inside the room is -9.4 dBA. The inside of the chamber is covered completely by 3.3-foot-thick fiberglass acoustic wedges. It has double walls of insulated steel surrounded by a foot of solid concrete. In less technical terms, it’s basically as quiet as outer space.

The initial intention for creating the room was for product testing. Artificial heart valves, cell phone displays and even car dashboard switches all make noise. If they are too loud, consumers complain. NASA put the room to a slightly different use with potential astronauts to see how long a person can stay inside before they start hallucinating.

Not being an employee of a large corporation or member of a federal organization myself, all of my requests to enter the room to use it for my experiments were quickly denied. Fortunately, there are places on the deep web where floor plans and designs for pretty much anything can be found.

My oldest friend Scott happened to work in construction and he owed me more than a few small favors. Let’s just say when we were kids he got sick and now his bones are full of my marrow cells. I didn’t mean to be selfish. How else could I get my own chamber made?

 

Subject 003: Bethany Maines

08.10.16

20 MINUTES:

8:00PM - DOORS CLOSED

 

8:01PM - Deep inhaled breath followed by a slow, shuddering exhale.

“I had a really bad dream last night. Allie was at the foot of my bed. She floated just above the covers. She didn’t say anything…or move either. I sat up and looked into her eyes. It… hurt. I mean, in my belly. She had this giant hole in her side. The same spot where they put in the kidney that didn’t take. I could see right through her, all the way to my dresser behind her. She grabbed my hand and tugged…she pulled me through the hole. Then I woke up. Of course, she wasn’t there anymore. I can still smell her perfume right now…in here.

 

8:05PM - Scraping sounds.

“I’m getting dizzier today than yesterday. Thanks for putting the chair in here for me. I think I’ll sit the rest of the time if that’s okay?”

 

8:09PM - “My whole arm tingles, the same one from my dream. How long do I have to be in here? I think I’m starting to freak out.”

 

8:10PM - Creaking and scratching again. Is she adjusting herself on the chair?

 

8:11PM - “You aren’t messing with me are you? You didn’t hire some lab assistant and like hide him in here to freak me out in the dark?”

 

8:15PM - Definitely a creak from the chair this time. Her breathing is faster and shallow. She groans and smacks her lips. Air whooshes past the wall microphone.

 

8:16PM - “Are you sure there’s nobody else in here? I could swear I felt something brush over my fingers.”

 

8:18PM - “My head really hurts… like I’m being squeezed. Can the quiet do that? Sorry for such a dumb question.”

 

8:20PM - OPEN DOORS

 

My primary studies were in ethno-musicology at Brown University, though my deepest interests were in studying silence. Since academia never created an area of research devoted solely to the absence of sound, they had no name for what my pursuits would entail.

Brian Eno, John Cage, Steve Reich and the other 20th Century minimalist composers were the only ones who came closest. Even they were too noisy for me. If I could spend two hours in a soundproofed practice room, I’d never touch the piano. Eyes closed, head bowed focusing only on the spaces between my breaths. The most peaceful thing I could imagine.

I spent a lot of my time between libraries, the philosophy department and holding my breath at the bottom of the pool. My professors never hid their opinions from me. They all agreed I was crazy. That only served as an impetus to work harder.

I booked studio time on the film scoring stage. I borrowed the most sensitive microphones the university owned, placed baffles in every corner, blanketed every flat surface and waited until three in the morning when the only people in the building were the recording engineer Tom and me.

With noise canceling headphones on, I recorded two and a half hours of blissful, near perfect quiet. With the advent of digital recording I didn’t need to be concerned with the awful grinding machine noise of reel to reel machines. I kept recording the silence until Tom’s snoring burst the bubble.

I listened to that recording so much, I could sing along with the minuscule crackles and creaking coming from the building itself. I submitted the audio files as part of my thesis, “God in the Emptiness: The Holiness of Quietude.” Along with it, my writings on Buddhist meditation techniques, Catholic monks who take decades-long vows of silence, etc. After months of waiting, their evaluations finally arrived. While admittedly, they didn’t fully comprehend my chosen field or “obsession” as they called it, they did reluctantly grant me my Doctorate.

“Now what exactly are we calling this new area of study you’ve discovered?” My professors laughed. “Are you now a doctor of silence? I guess we should address you as Dr. Silencio. Maybe Dr. Quietus? Dr. Nothingness?”

Over the years since I discovered my love for silence, I gave a lot of thought to this issue. Hours spent scouring encyclopedias for terms referring to silence in multiple languages. I studied dictionaries, thesaurus and scoured the internet. One day I came across what I knew would be a name befitting my passion, a name describing my search of the almighty void.

Complete stillness doesn’t mean solely the absence of sound. We can be quiet inside and be surrounded by the noise of our surrounding universe. Absolute silence requires the elimination of any and all possible chance of resonance. To achieve this, one must enter a sublime state of utter emptiness where every opportunity for sound has been destroyed or removed. The infinite void lies in the extermination of all else.

I am seeking that oblivion. I am an Oblivionist.

 

Subject 003: Bethany Maines

08.12.16

30 MINUTES

Last night’s session canceled. Bethany refused to come back. She didn’t return my phone calls or text messages until this afternoon. She spoke to me of bad dreams and night terrors after the previous session. She claims to be plagued by the recurring appearance of her deceased sibling accompanied by side pain and a burning sensation in her hand. With much persuasion involving an offer of greater tuition assistance, Bethany relented and has now arrived for tonight’s experiment.

 

8:00PM - DOORS CLOSED

 

8:02PM – Her breathing is inconsistent with stuttering inhalations similar to a dog panting.

 

8:05PM - “I don’t like this room.”

Scratching and creaking from the chair. Her feet stumble heavy on the flooring. Wood creaks.

“Guess I shouldn’t stand up in here again. I’m spinning. Have I mentioned I hate this room?”

 

8:10PM - “Did you hear that?”

No signs of any alterations in the WAV file.

“There it is again. It’s a voice?”

There continue to be no anomalies in the WAV files.

 

8:12PM - Movement of air close to the microphone.

 

8:16PM - “I swear to grace there’s someone in here. I can smell her perfume.”

8:18PM - “Yes. I hear you.”

No WAV file anomalies detected.

 

8:20PM – "Allie, it’s me Beth. I’m really here. Where are you? It’s too dark in here…no…take my hand… right in front of me…please.”

No WAV file anomalies detected.

 

8:25PM - “Allie?”

Wind blows past the microphone.

“Allie? Come back. I’m right here!”

 

8:27PM - Bethany screams making monitors distort. WAV file peaks above software redline.

 

8:28PM - DOORS OPEN

Thirty-minute experiment requirement not met. I will review audio files again for possible variations. Bethany is sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall farthest from the doors. Hands wrapped around her torso, eyes bloodshot, dried and crusted white lines drip down from the corners of her mouth. She rocks mumbling unintelligibly. I lean in closely and cannot make out what she is repeating. Listening back to the WAV files, I manipulate the audio signal using compressor and EQ plugins until her words become clear, “I’m here Allie.”

 

I sat in the cafe across the street from the Brown Bookstore watching underclassmen and coeds bask in the summer sun. Short sleeved shirts, flip flops and mini-skirts were the uniforms of the day. Many of course were emblazoned with the Brown University logo, crest of arms or cartoon bear mascots. Having observed my reflection in the window earlier that morning, I realized how long I’d kept myself away from other people. This led me to perform the long distant rituals of shower, shave and the adornment of clean clothes. Otherwise my attempts to recruit assistance in my experiments would have proved even less fruitful than they turned out.

The majority of male students I approached scowled at me with scorn and disgust. Eventually two agreed to fill out the forms I was handing out. One took his time and thoughtfully signed his name “Jack Meoff.” The other used language not fit to use in this documentation.

I ordered another coffee and decided to reassess my method before approaching any female students. It occurred to me that without explaining why I asked strangers to spend a week alone in a dark, soundproof room with me, it might not come across as innocently as I intended.

The first woman listened to my new, improved and less sinister sounding proposal with a friendly grin and nodding head. Politely, she declined. She had to go to New York for a family gathering that would last the month. The next two sorority sisters were busy with freshman rush and their new pledges. I pressed on until sundown and the crowd thinned before returning home to reconsider my options.

Money, there was my answer. If I offered a stipend provided by the university, it would add credibility and an extra layer of perceived security. I made some flyers for social media and printed some with my email address to post on message boards and telephone poles all over campus. The following morning my inbox showed four viable candidates. I admit I felt a little guilty lying about where the stipend money came from. Since admitting my deceit would most definitely have disastrous effects on the future of my study, I pushed that aside.

I responded to the candidates and waited.

Gordon Bonnet, a sophomore studying Applied Mathematics contacted me on BrownsList.edu. He seemed very eager to know more about the project. I agreed to meet with him though he mentioned the biggest reason he wanted to participate involved discovering what geometry we used in the construction of the Anechoic Chamber.

On his first visit to the room, he spent the entire interview running his fingers along the edges of the acoustics. His demeanor changed making me more than a little uncomfortable. He seemed… aroused by the construction of the space. He asked for permission to bring his laser measurement tools and if it was okay if he could be naked during his time alone in the room. I asked him to leave and summarily blocked him on all of my social media accounts.

Twenty minutes later my email alert went off. A sixth year Senior Visual Arts student named Kevin Jones responded. He drew political cartoons for the school newspaper. His scholarship had run out and he needed a way to make tuition payments. We conducted the first ten-minute experiment uneventfully. We made it thirteen minutes into the twenty-minute experiment when he started singing “I am Iron Man!” at the top of his lungs.

I opened the door to remind him I was studying silence and he demanded more money. He said if I didn’t pay him triple the amount I stated in the flyer, he would spread word around the university that I came in the room and had “dirty, nasty, kinky sex” with him. Already disgraced and removed from my position at Brown, I disregarded his threats, kicked him out and blocked him as well.

Bethany Maines contacted me the next morning by telephone. I called her back and discussed the basics of my study. After her classes ended for the day, she came by to visit the room and continue our interview. We scheduled the first ten-minute experiment for the next evening.

 

Subject 003: Bethany Maines

08.13.16

60 MINUTES

Bethany refused to return. After what turned into a heated argument, she ended our phone call and didn’t answer my subsequent attempts to reach her. Using the address she used on her initial application, I went to her apartment. Ringing the doorbell and knocking proved useless. Using a loose brick I picked up from the walkway, I snapped the screen from her rear window and climbed inside. Bethany sat on the edge of her bed. The flashing street light heartbeat pulsed through the same window I used to crawl inside. Damp hair pressed flat against the skin of her neck and shoulders, a soggy towel lay crumpled on the floor near her feet. Naked except for the old bandage wrapped around her right hand. It gave off the heavy, sour smell of rancid meat left too long in the sun. Fighting against the gag reflex, I pointed my flashlight into her eyes with no response. After failing to pull a pair of sweatpants up and over her wet legs, I took a thin, yellow sun dress from the closet, slipped it over her head and managed to wrestle her arms through the sleeves. Making sure she was fully dressed would arouse less suspicion from anyone still on the streets at this hour. Draping her arm across my shoulder, I half-dragged her to my car and secured her seat belt. We didn’t encounter anyone on our walk from the street to my building. I closed the doors behind us and took her into the chamber. For the purposes of my experiment, I removed the chair earlier in the day. With Bethany in her particular state, it seemed more reasonable to allow her to lie down rather than place her in a seated position that might require the use of restraints.

12:00AM - DOOR CLOSED

I left Bethany on the floor curled in a fetal position. Her eyes remained open, pupils remained unresponsive. The microphone received only small variations in the air which I attributed to her breathing.

 

12:03AM - Small level anomalies noticeable in the WAV file. Inaudible, but the pattern is equivalent to climbing volume throughout the chamber.

 

12:05AM - “Oh no, not again.”

I hear Bethany shifting position. She sounds confused. Her voice is unsettled with early signs of the rising pitch consistent with fear.

“Why did you put me back in here? I don’t want to do this anymore you son of a…bitter pill!”

There is a dull thudding accompanied by Bethany grunting and the smack of flesh against a hard surface. Her shouting distorts the speakers. The WAV file peaks over the red line.

 

12:09AM - “I didn’t sign up to be made a prisoner in here. You have to let me out!”

The blows continue. If she keeps this up much longer, she might damage the baffling edges. In order to preserve the purity of the experiment I must resist entering the room or attempting any outside communication.

 

12:11AM - Bethany continues shouting and is circling around the edges of the chamber

“She’s coming back. She told me she would. She’ll make me feel it. She’ll bring it with her. I know she will. She’ll make me reach through the hole again. I don’t want to feel that. I don’t want to. Don’t want to. Don’t want to. Don’t want. Don’t want. Don’twantdon’twantdon’twantdon’twantdon’twantdon’t…

 

12:12AM - There are underlying patterns growing throughout the WAV images. I’ll review these later with more precise outboard gear allowing finer EQ and mastering technology to see if there is indeed anything audible.

 

12:18AM - “I knew you’d come.”

Bethany’s voice is a soft breath with gentle consonants.

“No. I’m not afraid. I thought I would be.”

She pauses between statements. I am only able to hear half of her conversation. When I listen back, I’ll use proper headphones to search for whom or what she is speaking to in the room.

“I didn’t. You did. The bandage keeps medicine on my hand. I’m sorry. There wasn’t anything we could do. We tried everything the doctors said. Please don’t say that. I don’t want to know that. I can’t live with that.”

 

12:21AM - Whimpers and sobbing. The fence rattles under her feet followed by panicked breathing.

“Ahh!”

She grunts.

“It burns. Take it out. Please. Let me go.”

There is a struggle. Bethany screams again. Accompanying hers is a darker monotonous tone. It’s similar to being, but isn’t quite, feminine. There are hints of an indefinable animal sound. It begins simultaneous to Bethany, increasing in volume and pitch until it nearly overtakes her before both voices stop.

 

12:30AM - I smell the foul meat again. A thin haze is sinking from the high ceilings in my control room. An ashy residue coats the mixing console and computer keyboard. Bethany continues breathing steadily inside the chamber.

 

12:35AM - She whimpers. She is mumbling the same pattern repeated in our previous experiment. I push the master fader up. I think she’s apologizing this time.

 

12:40AM - Scraping sound again. It’s moving away from the microphone. Is she backing off from something? Her breath is really fast, a nervous panting, moaning. Wet slapping sounds against the baffling come from the opposite side of the chamber. These blows have purpose…intention.

12:46AM – It’s difficult staying objective while listening to her pleading.

“Let me out of here! If she comes back, she won’t leave without me. You can’t let her take me. Please. I didn’t do anything wrong. Oh my grace, I didn’t do anything wrong.”

 

12:48AM - I stand by the door outside of the control room. Her whispers follow me. My hand hovers above the lock holding the ring of keys. I know which one fits, there’s a worn down spot from my thumb on the fob. I have to wait at least until the one-hour point. Each of her shuddered breaths wrestles my heart. It’s got to be worth something. Too soon, and it’s all for nothing. Nothing…ironic that nothing’s what this is all for.

 

12:59AM - I hold the key against its hole, the brass end only a hair width away from entry. I wait. I wait.

 

1:23AM - She stopped crying fifteen minutes ago. Her breath has all the qualities of an echo. One breath in is two. The second breath nearly imperceptible from the first. She exhales beside herself. But it isn’t herself she’s breathing along with. Is it? Someone…something else is in the room…breathing with her.

 

1:43AM - There are two people (?) breathing in the chamber. It took ten minutes for the breaths to split apart and become definably individual breaths with spaces I could see between them on the screen. Over the next ten minutes the second breath grew louder until it equaled that of Bethany’s. The two have yet to speak. I did hear fabric rustle, skin scratching and Bethany hissed in pain once.

 

2:01AM - I can definitively see the moment when the two distinct breaths split apart on the waveform. Bethany is in the middle of a conversation with what seems to be a female sounding voice. Bethany continually speaks to it as “Allie.” Re-reading Bethany’s application email, Allie is her deceased younger sister. I am only able to discern words from Bethany’s side of the conversation at this point. “Allie’s” responding half of the conversation is garbled and concealed by a thick layer of static distortion that my EQ controls can’t clear out at this point. I will try again during post.

 

2:07AM - The voices fell quiet momentarily. Thirty seconds later Bethany shouted and started crying. Her words were unintelligible between the sobs. I know I should open the doors. No one ever lasted this long in the Orfield Labs’ chamber.

Am I listening to her hallucinations? Her dead sister can’t really be in there, can she? I’m afraid if I open the door, I might find out. I don’t think I want to find out. I could leave her in there until sunrise. It’s not that much longer. Then…then it will be light outside. It’ll be safer in the light. More people around. Tom gets in around 7:30. He’ll be here to help with the engineering and the outboard equipment.

 

I used to sit in my parents' walk-in closet with two blankets draped over me. Sport coats and pants brushed across my neck, pressing close to the back as I could get. I wasn’t hiding. My parents weren’t beating me and I didn’t have any brothers or sisters threatening to give me wedgies. Finding the quiet, that was my hobby.

When I turned ten, dad told me to choose an instrument. Music ran in the family. That and he knew the correlation between the musical and mathematical sides of the brain and how it would help my grades. Sitting on the floor in front of my mom’s feet one Sunday night to watch PBS broadcast the Los Angeles Philharmonic performing Benedetto Marcello’s Oboe Concerto in C minor, I picked the oboe. In the age of hair bands and arena rock, it wasn’t an obvious direction, and certainly not an easy one to help make friends with either.

Sean Holt, my teacher, lived two towns away where he worked on his Master’s Degree in music at whatever college he went to. I never cared to ask. I only knew he played saxophone and sang with cover bands in addition to teaching kids like me so he didn’t have to get a real day job. We talked about girls as much as we did building my embouchure for the double reed.

“Get the reeds nice and moist,” he said in our first lesson. “Pretend they’re your girlfriends long, hard, sexy nipples. Lick them. Rub your lips up and down over them.” I remember my cheeks burning and the stirrings of blood flooding away from my head into my crotch.

Sean looked at me with a wicked grin. Shifting in my seat to hide my erection, he knew he struck a nerve in this young boy. “Ever kissed a girl, kid?” I shook my head staring at the instrument in my hands but not really seeing it. “It’s okay, bud. Give it a little time. Trust me, you picked the perfect instrument. It might not be cool like a Les Paul and a giant stack of amplifiers.” He made air quotations to emphasize the word cool. “When it comes to knowing what a woman wants you to do with your lips, there is no better way to learn than getting a beautiful tone out of that piece of Grenadilla in your hands.”

It took three weeks of struggling a constant stream of goose honks and owl screeches behind my closed bedroom door before I finally found the right placement and pressure on the reeds to push a middle C out of the thing.

 

***

2:30AM - I’m at the door again, pressing my ear against the cold, hard surface. I know it’s stupid. There is no possible way I can hear anything from inside beyond all the concrete and the baffles or even the darkness. My teeth ache. My eyes push inward to the back of their sockets. My ear pulls against the flat surface creating suction that wants me to become a part of it. My heart beat is racing, the tattoo of a great army’s feet marching to war.

 

2:35AM - The crackle of fire, damp logs popping as they catch flame on a cold, wet night. The distant cry of children lost from mother’s embrace. A mountain awaking from eons asleep to trample all who dare to appear in its path. Beneath it all…laughter, quiet, slow and… satisfied.

 

In high school I placed an ad in Musician Connector looking for like-minded people to start a band. Nothing remotely like what’s on Top 40 radio or the YouTube charts. My new compatriots would require a powerful sense of adventurousness and bravery in the threat of physical danger.

This was the ad:

Do your ears yearn for substance beneath the lies of what our modern, corrupt society deems listenable? Are you ready to break waves and steam ahead into tomorrow’s quiet revolution? Is your will as strong as your mind? Will you scream praising the silent gods by my side and face the ignorant masses when they attempt to drown the true message of emptiness?

I called the band Anticipa… The philosophy was simple. The execution would be much more difficult than expected. I mean, what did I think was going to happen? We weren’t your typical Frat party band. We sure wouldn’t wear tuxedos at weddings or Bar-Mitzvahs. I intended on attacking the Providence club scene, striking with only precision gigs, sucker punches, in and out. No muss, no fuss.

Fuss did happen. Definitely more fuss that I wanted. I guess it’s fitting the first bit of messiness happened at a former X-rated movie house on Broadway called The Kingswood Theatre. In the early 2000’s a group of community hipsters revamped the dilapidated old building and restored it to its former glory becoming an in demand, beautiful venue for music, dance and other touring performances. Local artists were offered first shot at opening act slots. You can find a couple of TEDx talks in the main room online.

I cobbled together a mix of experimental noise tracks that I stole from obscure Eastern European artists buried on deep web music blogs that nobody read. I used a free domain builder to quickly put together a simple website with pages of solid black or white. If clicked in the upper right hand corner, the hijacked sounds would play and a message form would appear to be filled out in order to contact the band for booking.

Three months later the Kingswood messaged me with an invitation for Anticipa… to open for the most popular underground Post-Rock band of the moment, ConsentOfTheBullet. None of the members of Anticipa… owned musical instruments and I mentioned this in my response to the club. This apparently made us seem more insurgently titillating and contrarian to the mainstream, so they offered to provide us with a back line of gear free of charge.

I met with the band inside the Anechoic Chamber leaving the door open; I gave them my list of songs for the performance. Each member agreed to my terms and expressed their dedication to the cause. We didn’t meet again until the night of the show at sound check.

The four of us inspected the rented guitars and amplifiers with an air of authority adopted by watching ConsentOfTheBullet handle their equipment. I watched Kevin, our drummer, accept a pair of sticks that the headliners loaned to him.

“I’ve heard some great things about you guys.” Long brown hair hanging over his eyes, a sweaty rocker dude elbowed me on the arm. “I’m Rick. I play bass with Consent.” I nodded and backed away a step. His clothes looked slept in for more than one night. My first impression of the guy was “Moist.”

“Can’t wait to check your set.” He said giving me the thumbs up. “We should all grab a drink after.”

I turned to focus my attention on the wide array of knobs on the amplifier. With no idea what each one did, I turned them back and forth two or three times making certain they all were set to 0. Going around the stage, I did the same to the bass and keyboard amps. I then set about unplugging all of the microphones. I watched Kevin remove all the cymbals from the drum set and carefully place them flat on the floor behind the stage.

“Hey guys, fifteen minutes.” The soundman’s voice burst from the monitors on the edge of the stage. I flashed him a quick smile and waved. “Cool.”

Kevin and I walked off stage to our dressing room. He wore a Red Sox cap sitting at an angle on the top of his good sized afro. With no shirt on, the octopus tattoo covering his back became more dramatic than the tentacles poking out of his sleeves that were normally all you could see.

We sat quietly in the dressing room. No one paced nervously or fidgeted hands in our laps. Each of us gazed ahead, unfocused on any object present. The burble of multiple voices in overlapped conversations in the club got louder. With the number of people in the room increasing, the energy followed close behind. There was a noticeable vibration in the walls coming through from the excited crowd.

The lights dimmed signaling us to move to the stage. I asked the owner not to introduce Anticipa… before we went on, so the audience continued their buzzing and took little notice of us putting on our guitars. I fiddled with the tuning knobs on the headstock and approached the microphone.

I opened my mouth wide then closed it and stood in silence with my hands at my sides. To my right, Sharon flattened her dress under the bass’ strap. The stage lights teased at the purple stripes she’d put in her hair the previous night. Greg sat with his fingers hovering just above the keys bending forward waiting for a signal to start playing. Behind the drums, Kevin hung the pair of sticks straight down from his left hand.

The crowd slowly settled down and waited for our first song. I stood still not touching the guitar with my hands. The rest of the band remained frozen in place. The lights were hot and close. The only movements on the stage were the beads of sweat dripping down our faces.

We steadied ourselves through the first few uncomfortable minutes. I remembered not to lock my knees for fear of passing out. Each time I felt the energy of the crowd shift I leaned slightly into the microphone and opened my mouth. I’d immediately close it again and lean back without making a sound. In the corner of my eye, Sharon snapped her head to the right flipping her hair. The moment it settled down her back, she returned to the identical position she stood in before.

“Come on already!” a voice shouted from the crowd. None of us moved. We were broadcasting almighty silence. The quiet was louder than any riot band performance the Kingswood had before us.

“This is bullshit,” a woman said close to the stage. I opened my mouth at the unplugged mic again in an attempt to regain control of the show. Instead, a plastic cup half full of beer flew against my cheek. The cool liquid felt refreshing against the heat of the stage at first, then we lost the crowd.

“You suck!” “Fucktards!” “Bring on a real band!” “Yeah man, we want some music!”

“ConsentOfMyCock!”

More cups of beer, candy bars, potato chips and other food items purchased from the snack bar rained down on us. Sharon ran to the wings. Kevin stayed in position until an apple caught him on the temple and knocked him backwards off his drum throne unconscious to the ground with a limp thud.

Greg held tight until a man with a long red pony tail behind his deeply widow's peaked scalp ran on stage and grabbed me. He tried to rip my guitar away and head-butted me. I remained still despite his attacks and watched in shock while Greg punched him in the throat and kicked at his crotch.

Before any further damage could be done, three large men wearing yellow windbreakers with the word “SECURITY” in large white letters across their shoulders pulled us into the dressing room and slammed the door closed. I wiped my bloody nose on my sleeve. Everyone else sat on the couch breathing quickly. I smiled at each of them, clapped my hands and said, “Good gig guys. That was perfect!”

“Perfect?” Exasperated, Sharon threw her hands in the air. “There’s a riot going on out there.”

“I know.” I laughed. “Isn’t it great?”

“You are seriously fucked up man,” Kevin growled.

“This is what you signed up for.” I pointed at the door. “So a song is good or bad, who the fuck cares? Every single person out there is going to remember us. They’re going to look back ten years from now and tell people that they were at the Anticipa… show! They saw a band pay tribute to emptiness in the greatest way possible. They saw the bravest band in the world.”

“That wasn’t brave.” Sharon put her face in her hands. “That was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, and I ain't doing it again, that’s for sure. I quit, man!”

“Yeah. I’m all about peace and quiet too bro, but I’m a pacifist. No violence for me.” Kevin squeezed Sharon’s shoulder.

I looked at Greg who hadn’t said a word yet. He put his hands up in the air shaking his head.

“I expected some kind of reaction from the crowd, but I didn’t think they’d throw stuff or try to kick our asses.” His bottom lip was beginning to swell from being punched by the red pony tailed man. “I took piano lessons for ten years too. I really do know how to play. This is all just too out there for me, dude.”

“Wow.” I couldn’t understand them not seeing the beauty in this moment. Being witness to how a few short moments of silence could drown out years of cacophony changed me. I felt loneliness more hollow than the vacuum of space. I knew then I had to find the right way to spread the silence so that everyone would understand what I knew. No more shock totems or performance art for the static seeking masses. It needed to be something more subtle and profound to rise up from below. Proof that truth hides in the quietude.

 

2:41AM - The WAV files are flat. Bethany isn’t breathing. There isn’t any sound in the chamber. I should open the door. I’m so scared.

 

2:53AM - My legs won’t stand me up. I can’t get to the door. My eyes are burning. My ears have anachronistically returned to their vestigial urges and are twitching at the hint of any sound. The nothingness in the room is crawling through the microphone cables into the computer and flowing in all of its empty glory from the speakers. My wish is becoming my deepest fear. My beloved silence is now a horror. Silence is not God, but the opposite.

 

2:59AM - Where is she? I can’t contact her unless I open the door. I refused to install a talk back mic and speaker for fear of noise leakage inside the chamber. The room must remain pure with as complete a silence as physically possible. In all of my extrapolations, I never once considered this outcome. I need to open the door.

 

3:01AM - No. I will wait until sunrise. The weather channel says sunrise is at 6:30. Only three hours more.

 

3:10AM - I smoked a cigarette to calm my nerves. I quit years ago. Rummaging through the kitchen drawers I found a half-crumpled pack of Camel Light 100’s. A bit stale, but the smoke felt good on my throat and the nicotine is giving me a nice buzz I needed even more than I thought.

 

3:15AM - Bethany is breathing again. I think. There’s more than enough evidence on these audio files to show more than one person in that room. She doesn’t seem to be frightened. The breathing is long and slow. I walk to the door. The breathing continues hushing at me from the speakers. The farther I walk from the control room, the louder the breathing seems to get.

Next to the chamber door I press both my hands flat against it. Every breath surrounds me. The warm air moves through me. It lifts me to my toes. My arm hairs stand at attention. Rough bristles of my twenty-four-hour shadow climb high like leaves on trees following the sun across the horizon.

Bethany stands behind me now. I feel her. The smell of cooking flesh is overpowering. I am having difficulty breathing. My hand is on the doorknob. I can feel it the metal turning against the skin of my palm. The keys are in my pocket and the door is locked from this side. She puts a hand on my shoulder. Sharp fingers dig deep making my muscles tremble. Vibrations slip down into my fingers wriggling like worms on the end of a fly line.

The door opens, Bethany peers around the inside corner grinning wildly at me. Her face lifts up staring with blank eye sockets, looking past me to the owner of the hand digging angrily into my shoulder. I tell myself to turn and look. Bethany reaches up with the burning remains of her hand. She gently caresses my cheek and mouths the word, “No.”

I don’t look. I follow the hand’s insistence and enter the chamber. Illuminated only by the fluorescent hallway bulbs, the acoustic wedge shadows stretch long and sharp. I glance down at the mouth wrapping around the floor.

“Come in. Come in.” Bethany waves me to her side. “We want to welcome you, Allie and me. Yes we do.”

A shape slithers from between the wedges, rises from the dark floor and drips from the ceiling. Shorter than Bethany, a gray, cloudy hand holds her older sister’s through the smoke, swinging it back and forth.

I turn a slow circle taking in the forms of the chamber I know so well. All warmth leaves my hand as it drops to my side. I stand by myself in the center of the chamber. Bethany and her shadow sister have gone. I want to move my right foot but find a bit of resistance. A small sliver of white fabric sticks out beyond the toe of my shoe. Lifting my leg, the crispy brown and red bandage unravels to the floor. I pull against the gummy residue and drop it wiping my fingers on my pants.

The sliver of light is thinning. The breath sounds from the control room are fading away. Bethany is outside the door. The shadow wraps its small, girlish arms around her leg. The door opening has closed to no more than a crack allowing only a glint of light inside from the hallway. Enough inside to let me watch the shadow turn and face me before the sound sucks away, my ears pop, everything turns deeper than any black I understand and perfectly, completely silent.