I realized that I haven't really written much about hearing even though life isn't all about seeing.
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He tried. He really did. I know because he told me so, years and years ago.
But no matter what he did, the noise always got to me first. The constant blaring of a flat line in your ears, immortal and relentless. I could feel my heart buzzing with the sound.
When he came, he usually whispered - or just spoke at a normal volume. I couldn't really hear him over the discordant clamor in my head either way. Once, a long time ago, he had finally raised his voice, screaming for the world to hear. And the world did hear, but I just couldn't listen. Eventually he seemed to realize the constant clattering and chattering of the defiant calls in my ears was too overpowering, so one day he settled for sitting next to me in silence forever instead.
Over time, the commotion of the raucous fray began to erode my other senses as well until my world was reduced to a blank, white cacophony of hard chairs and closed doors and thin walls and chafing ropes and spraying bullets and frothing blood and just sound
And him. Always him, never him. Though I never admitted it, we both knew it was all his fault. But he paid very, very dearly for it.
In fact, he is sitting next to me right now. Slouched into an unflattering position that perfectly embodies the very essence of teenage angst and attitude. His muscles are completely relaxed but rotting. Yellowish bones are peeking at me from behind a web of decaying flesh in place of formerly bright eyes. A curtain of soft, dark hair that has long grown coarse and dusty. His mottled hands, calloused and hard, reach towards me as if trying to hold my own even after his death. In my mind I can still hear the vivid crimson splash onto them as they steadily cut into me and change who I am; what I am.
I'll listen to him next time.