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    <li> Reminisce </li>


    </ol>


    Even now, two years after the accident I’m still unsure of whether I can still keep leading a normal life. Aside from slight control over sound nothing else has changed, I don’t want anything else to change either. I want to continue through this life without the burden of the unnatural and if I can’t avoid that then I’ll stick to being someone that doesn’t stand out. I’ve gone two years keeping my head low and avoiding incidents, I believe I can keep it going, I have to keep it going.


    “Elijah.” I hear mom call from downstairs as I continue to dry my shaggy mop like hair. I pat it in place before putting on my black full rimmed plastic glasses. I look at the scars left on my palms from that night, it almost makes me wince thinking about it. But more so it makes me reminisce on what has happened these past two years.


    I remember closing my eyes in that night with aspirations for the new day.Though the sun came much too soon though. Evaporating my peace of sleep and distinguishing any aspirations from the night before. From the moment I opened my eyes I felt nothing but sheer pain, not the pain of waking up early or the attack on my mental fortitude with the idea that I had to go to school after being carefree all summer. No, what I felt was a physical pain, I felt my body fall into paralysis. I felt tears running down cheeks as soon as I opened my eyes. The sunlight began to burn my eyes. I willed myself to close the curtains along my west wall before burying my face back into pillows displaced from my restless sleep.


    That wasn’t enough, I heard so much, not like super hearing but normal sounds made my skull and ears fill with stabbing sensations that wouldn’t disperse. I let out a muffled scream from my pillows. Which prompted my mom rushing into the room and staring in disbelief as she saw my ears begin to bleed, I couldn’t stop myself from letting out muffled cries. Mom had grabbed a wet towel to cover my ears which had began to drip blood on the white pillows cases. Soon my room was covered in complete darkness and I was engulfed in pillows in an attempt to stop the sounds from piercing my head.


    It wasn’t working, even in complete silence I felt pain. The silence which was never true silence kept disappearing and the knives of sound would continue to stab at my ears and the occipital area of my skull. In those brief moment of silence, I would feel the pulsation of the veins surrounding my forehead and eyes. It was a calm pulse but what followed was an indistinguishable thumping that only made me want to forfeit my head and become the new headless rider of the night. I felt that my head would burst at any moment and that would be the end of me. I had stopped audibly crying as to stop mom from panicking but I couldn’t stop the tears from escaping. It was utter, unescapable torture.


    Was it God’s plan or did I do this to myself? Can I stop this with prayer or hope? Can my will to live be enough to be my salvation? In the brief exchanges of silence I muttered these words. Eventually I broke, as the veins around my head felt like they were going to inevitably burst out. I begged; I begged for a stop, I begged for a pure silence, and for a calm nothingness. While mom had gone downstairs to call the E.R for advice and perhaps an ambulance, I was pleading for my life. I wasn’t pleading to God or to a higher power. I was just pleading, to anyone that would take my words.


    I often wonder if it would have stopped if I didn’t plead, or beg, or cry out mercy. Would my suffering have been eternal, only stopped by the slight bliss of a silent death? I show appreciation in the fact that I didn’t have to find out. As the piercing sounds continued to consistently attack my fortitude of thought and physical anguish fill my body. I gathered courage and perhaps a bit of defeat. I clenched my fists so tight that I had felt the nails from my fingers dig into and draw blood from the flesh of my palm. That pain which was nothing compared to the searing pain growing throughout my skull. As the blood from my palms began to drip to either side of my hands and drop to the white lenien on my bed, I gasped and muttered defeatly,


    “just make it stop” pleading to anything.


    In a sudden swiftness, as if a wave was washing over me. Silence pushed away every sound that had caused me so much agony.


    This silence was different though. It was incompletely like glimpses in a morning day or as fulfilling as a dark filled night. It was pure blackness, a blackness that can only be achieved in a limitless space devoid of any form of matter. It was calm, yet hyperactive. It was a silence that wanted to be filled, regardless of whether what filled it was pleasant or not. A silence so strong that it went through to the core of my very being, filling every fiber of my body with a certain uneasiness only achievable in solitude. I pondered on whether this was salvation of life, or salvation in death. As the tears from my bloodshot eyes began to dry up on my flushed cheeks, and as the pulsing that made me plead for a salvation of indeterminacy began to settle into calm rushes of thumps. I felt a peace, that made the uneasiness of silence appreciated. Though that peacefulness didn’t last for long, as the unsettling silence became more and more tense. The blood around my ears had dried up and everything that had caused me a world of suffering had yield to minor pulses. I began to feel my body’s inner workings in the absence of environmental sounds. I felt my heartbeat like a large bass drum, each thump was felt through my whole being. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    This percussion was followed by a rushing similar to a rapid river, it was the rushing of blood coursing through out my body. The feelings and pulsings throughout my body summed up to an agitated and restless symphony. The relief that I had felt from the influx of silence was soon retained by the agressively disturbed wave of that same silence. I was caught in a trance, unaware of anything but myself. Mom thought I was sleeping, finally free from the pain and misery that illuminated sunny day brought me, but I was being suffocated, drowning in the one thing I had begged for: silence.


    It wasn’t as painful as what I had woken up to but to some extent it made me feel as if I was sinking into oblivion. It was painfully ironic, that what I had begged for, what I bargained my life for had suddenly taken it’s grasp on me. Yet here I am, complaining and becoming distraught at the very idea of being deprived of the sound I had begged salvation from. I don’t know if I would have been okay with immediate death to stop the pain, but the silence that came forth so swiftly had made me wonder about other possibilities. I was panicking at first, the switch from a painful noise to an unsettling silence had taken me whole. I was perplexed, it wasn’t until moments later when I had opened my eyes and realized that the light from the citrus sun that had so restlessly agitated most of my senses had now felt like a warm blanket covering my body. Nothing hurt, nothing bothered me for that brief instance. I felt a slight relief after the pain and anguish that had filled my body and mental fortitude. I was calm, yet worried. Worried about the lingering silence, worried that it would never dissolve into blissful bird chirps and pleasant conversations.


    I sat up, looking at my bloodied palms and the towels and pillows that had strong pinkish marks all around them. A clear reminder that it wasn’t a dream, it was here and now. I needed sound, I began to feel uneasy again, remembering the thumping of my heart and the pulsing of my veins I couldn’t help but picture a life devoid of sound. I know it’s selfish, the idea that I was becoming frustrated over something people all over the world deal with. I thought of those people in complete disbelief of how they lived. I couldn’t imagine it myself, perhaps I had no courage or bravery. I was scared, I wanted sound, not the sound that drove me to this point but the sound that I had taken for granted all these years. These thoughts were immediately replaced with the falling of footsteps. I could feel the light pat-pat-pat of steps nearing my room. I immediately dove into my pillows and shut my eyes, mimicking sleep as I had done many times as a kid. I figured it was mom, I didn’t want to worry her, that was the only thing on my mind. I didn’t want her to feel dismay, guilt, or pitty.


    I don’t pray often, and if I do, it’s usually not for me. When my best friend had been in a car accident earlier that year I immediately prayed for their safety, I didn’t listen to the details of what had transpired and the outcome, I just sat down and prayed. I suppose I do it when I’m scared or worried, not for myself but for others.


    I sat up from my bed when I felt the pat of steps slowly faded, I looked around my room. I clasp my palms together so that my fingers were parallel to each other. I tilted my head down slightly and crossed my legs. The sun was still brimming even through the thick beige curtains, I felt warmth. I closed my eyes, and began to pray. I prayed selfishly, I prayed for an ability to control the events that had occurred that early morning. I prayed indiscriminately, to anyone or anything that would listen. I prayed for a return of well-being. More than anything I prayed for control, control of the sound and silence, control of the things that caused mom so much worry. Control of what sourced my pain. Even while praying I didn’t know if there was a higher power, such as God. I still don’t, I don’t know if God gave me this ability, or if it was just a strain of scientific paradoxes that lead to this inevitable evolution. Prayer itself didn’t prove useful in changing my condition, it was only through idiotic thinking gathered from watching countless action hero and sci-fi shows that I came to the brilliant conclusion that it’ll take sheer willpower and mental fortitude to create a trigger between silence and sound.