Ball of Silence

Ball of Silence - Chapter 18

Chapter 18

When I wake up, I lie in my bed and stare at the ceiling. Something is weird. I don't know yet what's wrong but something has changed. My mind stumbles along the edge of sleep. I look around the room. Everything is exactly where I left it.

Then it comes to me.

I am deaf.

I hear absolutely nothing. I can't hear my breathing nor my heartbeat.

"What..." I say, but I don't hear my voice either.

It hits me like a hammer. I can't hear the crystal! My panic is worse than when I saw Flin's dead body. I hear nothing, nothing at all!

In the hospital after the ventilation shaft incident, I was deaf, too, but at least I heard the crystal. Now it's a vast blanket of utter silence.

I jump out of bed and stagger towards the table. I tear the crystal out of its bag and open the box with trembling fingers. The crystal still rests there, but I can't hear it. I take it out of the box. It has ceased to be anything special, just a pretty-looking crystal ball with green and red lines inside it.

"No, no, no," I whisper or shout—no idea which. I can bear Flin's death, but not the complete loss of my hearing.

In a panic, I put the crystal back in its box and jump at a wall, tearing off the acoustic foam. Maybe I can hear the air conditioning system when I pull down the foam?

I can stand Flin's death, somehow, but not this silence.

What a fool I was! I sought silence all my life. I should have gone to the noisiest places, not the quietest ones. I should've tried to hear the most beautiful sounds with my incredible ear, not the least amount of noise. All those years and I got it all wrong! My ears are made to find sound, not silence.

I will seek the beauty of sound from now on, I swear! Please! Give me back my hearing! Let me hear the song of the air conditioning system. Maybe the most beautiful sound in the universe hides in its hurricane. I have to listen! I have to find it! Please!

In a frenzy, I tear at the acoustic foam, ripping it away. My fingers start to bleed. I climb onto the table and tear at the foam on the ceiling. It comes off in tiny bits and pieces. I jump from the table to my desk, to rip out the foam overhead. A piece of it cuts deep into my finger and I finally feel the pain.

I start to cry, I crumble—I am deaf! I crawl across the floor to where the crystal lies in its open box. I can't even hear myself crying. I want to hear! I need to hear to survive!

As I take the ball into my bloody hands, my blood flows into a subtle crease of the crystal, almost invisible to the naked eye. My finger bleeds badly, pumping in more blood. My blood spreads through the crease, branches throughout the veins of the crstal. It flows deep within, into the red and green lines inside it.

I didn't know they were hollow. My dark, thick blood paints the tiny red, green and white funnels black. My blood spreads through the entire thing. It looks like empty blood vessels filling up with the juice of life.

In terror, I stare into the ball and it answers with a pulse of light. A terribly bright flash emits from the very core and knocks me to the floor.

I see through the crystal's eyes.

And for a brief moment, I understand.

The crystal experiences the universe with senses alien to biological life forms. I grasp a sensation—let me call it feel-hear-see—that goes beyond anything a human or a Heelith can fathom. The crystal has insight into the state of the matter around it, living or not. For a moment, a split second, I can see, hear and feel as the crystal does. The sensation is of incomprehensible beauty. For a brief, fleeting moment, I become one with the universe... and pass out.