Ball of Silence

Ball of Silence - Chapter 17

Chapter 17

When I come around, I find myself in my bed aboard the Voice. Sina sits next to me, watching with worry and sadness.

"Hey," she says gently and caresses my hair.

She has put the crystal next to me. It nests between my arm and side. It hums sanely again, but infinitely sad, as I am.

I look at Sina and start to cry bitter tears. Sina cries with me, hugging and kissing me. I'm numb from the drugs. After a short while, I cry myself to sleep.

#

         The next time I wake up, Priar sits next to me. I hug the crystal to my chest, like a life belt. Its song is incredibly sad.

         "Hey," Priar says softly.

         I have no more tears left, and a terrible thirst burns in my throat.

         "You got some water for me?"

         "Sure."

Priar hands me a bottle from my nightstand. I drink peach tea, quite sweet. Why do I bother to notice that?

"Where's his body?" I ask.

         "In the station morgue."

         "Did they get Blan?"

         "Blan? No, did you see him?" Anger quivers in Priar's voice.

         "No, I only saw his thug, dead, at the entrance. Blan's partner who pushed me into the ventilation shaft."

         "Fuck. They think one of the attackers escaped. Two are dead."

         "Blan was that third man, I'm sure," I say, not sure at all.

         "I'll tell the station police."

         "Don't bother, he'll be gone by now."

         "We have to tell them anyway."

         "Where is Sina?" I ask.

         "Sleeping. Do you want me to wake her?"

"No, no, let her sleep." I sit up and look at Priar. His normally somber face is even gloomier than usual. "I want to take a shower. You can go to the station police and tell them about Blan."

         He looks skeptically at me. "You sure I can leave you alone? You won't do anything stupid?"

         "I want to kill Blan Friscus, Priar, not myself," I say dryly. I seem to be convincing, because Priar nods and pats my arm.

         "I'll help you with that," he says, gets up and leaves my room.

         I sit on my bed and listen to the silence. The crystal drones in a depressed manner, a mirror of my emotions. My entire body aches. I cannot pinpoint the pain. It's everywhere. I failed Flin. I should have protected him.

I put the crystal into its box without closing the lid and step into my shower. I jerk as the water flows. My hearing has returned. The former heightened sense of sound is back, as it was for thirty-four years, except the past few months. I am too sad and exhausted to speculate why the crystal released my sense of sound. Maybe I have overloaded its circuits for a change. I concentrate on the familiar noise of the water pummeling my body. The crystal's voice rings clear in my head, as if I hear it with a separate set of ears. 

 I wash myself mechanically. I remotely register that I can taste the soap with my skin. I wiggle earplugs into my ears before I leave my cabin, taking the crystal with me. The corridor greets me with a storm of air conditioning noise.

I walk towards the mess hall. I'm not hungry but I have to eat. I have to stay fit so that I can kill Blan Friscus.

How am I supposed to kill him? I've never fired a gun in my life. I should buy one and learn how to handle it.

I don't know how to cook the vegetables in the fridge. None of us do; Flin did. I shut the fridge. I associate the mess hall and the kitchen so strongly with Flin. Tears flow again though I thought none were left. I fight them down. Impossible to accept that Flin is gone. He'll never be in this kitchen again. He'll never come with me to the Heelith home world.

I open a cabinet, take out some breakfast cereal, and eat it out of the box, without juice or milk. They are sweet, hard and terribly crunchy. I hear nothing but my listless munching. After five pieces I stop. I'll vomit if I eat one more.

I put down the box and don't move. I hear it all again: the fridge, the neon lights, the air conditioning, my breathing, my heart, the blood rushing through my veins, and the crystal's song—all wrapped up into sonic static. I can't filter out anything, but the noise is so familiar that it soothes me.

I return to my cabin for its peace and quiet. Without any idea of what to do next, I sit behind my desk. Finally, I take the crystal out of its box and stare at the alien thing.

         "Was that how you felt when they killed your swarm? What was its name? Klad, right?"

The crystal doesn't answer, at least not directly. I caress the ball and it croons a little brighter. The crystal and I sit there like that until Priar returns.

"I told the station police about Blan. They'll look into it."

I nod.

"The morgue has released Flin's body. We can use the station's crematorium if we want to."

         I nod again, not knowing what to say.

         Later, Priar, Sina, and I eat pizza in our mess hall. Priar has thoughtfully ordered it from a shop in the station but none of us have a healthy appetite. We all know the next day, Flin's cremation, will be awful.

Sina stays with me that night. We lie quietly side-by-side, empty, hollow, and sad. I finally sleep and dream about Neverworld, as usual.

#

Only the Voice's crew, a station official, and a technician from the crematorium come to Flin's funeral. I am like in a trance and only mechanically perform what they expect of me. I give the station official Flin's full name, say he has no relatives, and sign some papers.

We sit there and stare blankly at the bright wooden coffin Priar has organized. The station official says a few words, but I don't hear them.

"Can I see him once more?" I ask.

"Unfortunately, that's not possible. The coffin has already been sealed," the crematorium guy says.

Then they shove the coffin into another room and we wait, numb and paralyzed. I lose all sense of time. I sit there, staring and listening.  

Near Neverworld, I float suspended in space with the warm sun behind me. I look at the stars, poised as the graph of Ginlam chocolate tree sales, and yet they are also the first letter of the Heelith alphabet. The empty space between those stars is dead cold.

After a while, the crematorium guy returns and hands me an urn. Priar has bought it: a metallic, silvery urn without any frills. We walk back through the corridors of the station.

A station police officer awaits us at the airlock to the Voice. He wants to talk to us about the attack on the bar.

I hear myself saying, "Please come back tomorrow. I want to be alone now."

The urn in my hand, I go to my room. The door closes and it is quiet. So quiet. I put the bag with the crystal on the table and the urn on my desk. Then I go to the bathroom, and throw up.

I heard the fire consuming Flin's body. I heard it melting the flesh off his bones. I heard his bones cracking in the heat.

I puke my guts out, retching until I gasp for breath. Finally, I stumble to my bed, kick off my shoes and crawl under the sheets still in my clothes. I fall asleep or maybe I lose consciousness.