Young Writers Society

Silence.He senses it,the kinship,the closure he feels amidst it.It refills him in a way he hasn't known before,a cascading nourishment of sparkling life.It is reassuring in its presence.It 

Is attentive to his troubles and reassuring to his woes.And yet,the line between loneliness and solitude Is ever so thin.Silence drags his mind to the crumbling edges of its Ashen Brilliance.It creates creatures for its amusement.Or perhaps,it takes Amusement in his torment.The creature is a little boy of about Nine years old.Dirty blonde hair and Pallid skin.He does wonder where his mind conjured it from.Strangely enough,it reminds him of Ivan.At that point,the silence becomes stifling.Like the strangling hand of a Giant Madman hovering over the world.

Memories of the room jockeys around in his mind,fighting for room.The Inky, Implacable darkness.That was the first thing he had felt on waking up in that cold, dank room.He remembered the initial moments of confusion.And the crippling, pervasive terror that had followed.His blood had run rigid,leaving his skin hyper-sensitive to every small stimulation.And yet,he had not moved,the sheer dread rooting him in place.His fear Simmered Under the surface,like a second skin.It had seemed like a Sentinent thing,winding up through his legs,drilling through the pores of his skin and Excavating his worst nightmares.He hadn't Crawled to the door, hadn't scraped his knees bloody.He had sat still, trembling and shrunken in the dark.

The sky is a dusty blue.There is a pre-winter chill in the air, effectively dissaiding any wannabe walkers.The houses were mostly empty,the day being the first of the week.The pavement is motionless.Well-maintained gardens line the street.He should eat something.He had made cinnamon rolls with his son once.His son had loved it.

He couldn't see the man clearly when he had entered the room.The door opened only by a silver,revealing a corridor of endless gray.He asked questions then,equal parts tentative and Eager.The man strode straight past him,his footsteps echoing in the heavy silence.His resolve had flickered.His mood had tipped to the murky waters of uncertainty.

Something had stirred in the corner then.Another boy in the room.The fear that had burrowed ever deeper into his chest had snapped free and thrashed around,sending his insides twisting and coiling.He had probably screamed.He doesn't remember.

He does remember the thwack of a muscled arm grabbing the boy.

He rummages through the shelves,one after another.They are all neatly stacked with gray containers,with varying degrees of wholeness.Unfortunately,there is not nearly enough flour for what they had done earlier.Flour was important.Ryan has told him that.He would manage.Ryan would have done so easily.Ryan was a better cook.Ryan would have done it easily.The knife in his hand shakes.There Is a wobble in his lips.The edges of his defenses have been chipped away by the silences.With a guttural Roar,he wheels around and brings the knife down down on the table,feral and untethered.The empty spaces thrum with things Unsaid, Undone.The table shatters in an explosion of white, the pieces tinkling on the floor.So many 

glass shards glimmering under the light.

The boy's screams had ripped through the cold air.It was pain like he had never imagined.Raw, bloodied noises wrenched from the Inside.He had moved then.He had scarpered to the wall and had banged his fists on it.The steel surface has trailed vivid bruises on his fingers,with him sucking on it in vain consolation.He had barely been able to keep his eyes with the tears streaming down,the stinging moisture on his skin the prize for his efforts.Ivan's screams had eventually subsided to hopeless sobs.The dejection had hung in the air with the Inevitability of a death knell.

His fear is a force of nature.It had Spilled Into the flat planes of his mind,all the bottomless terror of the world.He feels something swelling in him,like a rushing tide.The old panic.The same dark edges.A voice rusted with the stuff Of Eternity.

He shivers,calloused fingers clawing on the smooth marble floor.

The man had come and stood over him.Even without any light,the figure had towered.The man had then passed a light hand over his shirt, insistent on the buttons.The man was sweating profusely.He had flinched.His next nudge was considerably firmer,brooking no argument.His throat had gone impossibility dry.Ivan was still present on the other sides of the room,the anguished half-sounds a constant prod on his barely-held sanity.The man had chuckled knowingly as he complied.The fetid breath had washed over him.He had choked on it.That action hadn't Incurred any favour with the man's subsequent…touches.

The fan whirs above him.The clock ticks.The noises have stopped coming from upstairs.Maybe the leg broke after so much kicking.The corners of his mouth ticks up.How adamantly the man had resisted when he was brought In.He had denied his identity,had made some Half-Baked excuse of Mountain Climbing

The man has haunted him for thirty-five years.Ryan has died because of him.

After the man has finished with him,he had stood up calmly,washing off some invisible dust from his coat.From that hazy aftershow of pain,he doesn't recall much.He had lain there whimpering as pinpricks of needle-sharp agony lanced through his bloodstream.Disgust and shame had peeked in whenever the pain waned a little.Alien sweat clung to his skin.The man has looked back once when he had opened the door.Why,he can't say.He has pondered on that fractional turn of a head for years.Maybe he was guilty,remorseful.He doesn't like that answer.He likes to think he was afraid.Fearful.

The light hadn't revealed much of his face.All he had seen was a scar, running from the temple to the ridge of his left eye.An angry,red scar.

He is at the stairs now.The steps do not creak.The hate pulses through every fiber of his being.There is a fever in his blood.The rage constricts his veins.He can barely see anything straight.He is doing this for Ivan.He had mutely watched as the man had rampantly destroyed an innocent boy's identity.He remembers Ivan after the rescue.He was completely unresponsive.Heedless to the calls of his family.Only blank terror written in his eyes.

Ryan had died because for him.Poor Ryan.He was always so gentle and resolute,even with the absence of a mother.He had only gone on a trip with his friends.He was supposed to return on Wednesday.Instead,the man had knocked on the door.The same scar still gleamed on his forehead.He had revelled silently as the panic and fear had welled in the man's eyes as the disguise failed to fool him.He had himself thrown the man bodily into the room,bound and gagged.

He is at the room now.The revolver sits in his coat pocket.The door is opened with a brusque motion.The windows are open.Sunlight filters in through the dirty curtains of the room,illuminating the dust motes that hang in the air.There he lay.Writhing and twisting on the floor.He walks up to the middle of the room,and crouches down beside the man.After a long second,he pops open the gag.

"What are you doing!",Ryan screams aloud to his father's looming face.Red suffuses his face from the gagging and anger.His father doesn't react.Godamm it ! Why doesn't he !

The man screams.He can't hear the words.The left arm reaches to his pocket and brings out the gun mechanically.The Scar.Oh,the scar.

"It was an accident,damn it! Thats how I got the bloody scar.I am not some goddamn stranger of your childhood!",the man howls now,convulsing in his bonds.His face is a rictus of rage.But he can see the terror lurking beneath,straining against its bond.He wants to let it out.He wants to gorge on it.He wants to feast on it endlessly.After all, doesn't all things end in fear ?/After all, aren't we all just the faded tapestries of the primal terror ?

"Please."

The wind whistles.Leaves rustle.Gun bolt clacks.

Time ticks.

He pulls the trigger,and the man screams.