Stockholm {{ Two (FIN)

Dad always told me pain was never permanent.

"Body was found by the kid. Apparently the Dad left early in the morning for work. What we're thinking is that she overdosed."

I remember her death being loud. Voices of the mist screamed at me with snakes for tongues and fires for hair. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your-

I would have moved the earth for her, split the clouds for her. But she was too demanding, and my body couldn't keep up.

"He just won't talk. It's like he's shut down, Ma. I can't get him to talk to me, I-"

When her casket dropped into dirt I fell in love with the silence it left. The noise was loud, repulsive, deafening. But the silence, oh, the silence.

It intoxicated me, drugged me to perfection. Dipped me down in the moonlight and stole my heart with its romance.

Silence moved the earth for me, it split the clouds for me.

"It's not your fault, Stock. Please, it isn't your fault."

I had danced with silence in the moonlight, but when silence had moved the earth for me it'd shot us so far away from the moon that its light no longer illuminated the darkness.

Nine years and I was still in love with the silence and its beauty.

Nine years and on the seventh year the silence hit me. It plucked me from the darkness and threw me across the void, split me apart like the clouds and slammed me through the walls of my mutism.

"Stock, why won't you talk to me?"

Silence screams at me, poisoned fangs and claws tearing into my skin. I'd run to silence to escape noise, but the silence had given way to the thing I was running from.

My head turns.
"I guess I just never had anything to say."

He's silent. I'm silent, and I hate it.