The Sound of the Dead

Can a person really go insane from boredom and loneliness?

by Sophia Huang  (age 12)

So the night had somehow come down to this, with Molly pacing around the barren room waiting for him to return after his night’s work in the office. She had called him over and over again with no answer and had grown increasingly agitated. She knew that this was not good for her because when her temper went up, her sense of reality plummeted, and she couldn’t tell what was happening.

Instead the house was filled with only the sound of her feverish footsteps pacing on the worn out floors and of her calling her sister after he did not answer. She was once again met with silence “I guess silence really is the sound of the dead; one has already gone but the other will be joining them.” She said when she slammed down the phone.

She heard the clunk of footsteps and her heart suddenly stopped when she thought about who might be there, but it was only him. She called the man “him” because she found his name to be irrelevant and he would not be staying with her long anyways; not after what he had just done.

“Where have you been so late at night?” she said. She knew where he had just been and it was certainly not at work; she also knew what he had been doing.

“Just working in the forest; I buried something there that was bothering me.”

She knew he had killed her sister; she knew that he was not the person her mother thought he was when she told him to keep her ill daughter safe.

“You didn’t have to wait for me you know?” he said, but she knew he was just trying to make small talk. He normally never spoke to her and when he did, he only spoke formally, as if he was talking to a child.                         

“Of course I waited for you; in fact, I haven’t even made dinner yet,” she said as she slowly made her way to the kitchen.

This was met with an agitated reply, “Well, then what have you been doing at home if you haven’t been cooking?”

“I’ve been calling you and when I couldn’t reach you I called my sister…” She let the words hang in the air hoping to get some sort of reply that let her know for sure what had happened.

He stepped into the kitchen with a sunny smile, but she was too fast for him. In a swift motion she slit his arm and ran up the creaking stairs, trying to run away from the terror she felt. He swore loudly but did not pursue her, leaving her to lock herself in the moldy closet muttering into the silence.