3.7

Before.
The sound of the gun crashed into him like being slapped by a wave--the sort of impact that shudders through the entire body but doesn't do anything more than shake feet and limbs. He clenched his eyes tighter and vomited between his feet.

"Sick." The voice sounded like a hissing snake and felt in his soul like the smell of a dog two days dead.

"What do we do with this one?"

"Leave him. He can look at her corpse until he starves for all I care."

His eyes were still shut to all light, to all possibility of a world outside his head. If he didn't open them, it was possible that the outside was all an illusion, that his ears were playing a trick on him. He wouldn't open his eyes until his ears told him the truth he wanted.

The lie of his ears told him that the thugs were packing up their things and opening doors and slamming them. The lie of his ears told him that they were driving away, leaving him here with Deception. He shuddered as well as he could under the ropes. The room felt cold and full. The van peeled out and silence settled on the house, Deception continuing its perilous course in his brain.

The silence was full. It stuffed his ears and pressed on him and took all the air. He found that he was taking short, fast, raspy breaths, so he tried to calm down. Slowly, he gained mastery of his breathing. After a long time full of the Lie of silence, he dared to hold his breath. The space that his breath used to take was filled with Nothing, and Nothing met his ears.

Until

plink

plick

splick

Slow drops, like the heartbeat of a dying star. He gasped and drove the Silence back. When he got his breath back he held and

splack

plack

plick

slow. He gasped again. The Lie was becoming more real every second. He felt like vomiting again, but he didn't close his eyes. He thought of the happy times they had: swimming in the creek near her house and finding a cowskull and how she had shrieked when he tossed it to her. Running through traffic in the pouring rain to get to their restaurant for their reservation, and stopping to catch her as she fell, pulling her up, and kissing her as taxis honked. The lists of baby names that she forbode: Cyril. Agnes. Mathilda. Louis. Byron. Penelope. Tracy. Asking her to marry him by writing it on her bedroom roof in glow-in-the-dark stars. Their honeymoon trapped in Arizona by bad weather at their destination, pretending instead that they were the first humans on Mars while running around in the desert like idiots. Learning to paint and dance and live with her. Supporting her when she ran for mayor. Smiling like an idiot when she came in from the storm on election night and being the first to tell her that she won.

He tried to remember the good times, the Truth, and he could almost hear her breathing next to him--the light, shallow breathing of early morning right before the alarm goes off. He tried to remember the Truth to block out the Lie. And Right and Wrong did battle in his head.

plick

plack

"I will never, ever name my child Marabel. Why? Because I knew a Marabel in college, and I never liked her!"

splack

plack

"I put in my name to the committee this afternoon. Ugh, you know that's not how it works. Besides, I have to win before you can be first lady. Haha, no."

plickter

plac

"It's me. I saw the stars. I do. I will. Yes, a million times."

And he waited.

And waited.

The pause was so great that the Silence died and greyed and shuddered and turned into dust and spread over him and the floor and everything and time shook and the earth slowed and everything stopped for him as he waited to hear the next drop.