Silence... A blackout...

He was awake late at night, one that had been really cold and clear and in spite of that, he went out to smoke a cigarette before going to bed. He lived in a building with strange corridors and complicated architecture. This building was in the middle of a big noisy city where the cars never stopped and the people never stopped to think about anything but work and money. As the city was too noisy he didn’t expect to find much quiet in his favorite place to smoke, a corner where the fluorescent lights of the building never lighted. So, he started to think about how he could find some peace there, where noises were dominant. Suddenly, he realized that everything worked better if one tries to ask questions the other way around: to get the perfect silence isolating every sound and paying attention to none.

The first thing he heard was a car running down the street. It stopped at a red light in the corner while an old and loud motorcycle from telepizza reached the corner. The light must have turned green because both vehicles continued their way and their sounds faded away. After that, a dog started barking some houses north. He had come to ignore those sounds and others like the guys upstairs playing poker and dinking, the ring bell every five minutes and so on. After this, he noticed a buzzing, searched for it but didn’t find where it came from until a blinking from the corridor gave him the idea that it was a fluorescent light. Little by little every sound was being left behind including his own breathing and body shaking.

A guy laughed on the upper floor. They must be drunk already he thought. The cigarette in the box began to scream: Smoke me! Smoke me! He delighted with the sparks of the lighter and the sound of the paper burning, and even the sound of the first smoke was a pleasure now that he had found the perfect silence. When he released the smoke he remembered a Pink Floyd’s video. Finally he realized how quiet it felt to concentrate on just one sound. He sat in (on??) the stairs and continued smoking. His feet were cold and his toes felt wet, but he didn’t mind after a couple of smokes.

Then, the blackout came. All of a sudden everything went dark, the boys upstairs hauled and the dog barked louder. Even then he was able to ignore those noises and returned to his peaceful darkness and quiet.

There, in the middle of the city, hidden in a corner of a building, a place were the moonlight never reached, a little red light shined and faded on and on. This cigarette poorly illuminated his freezing-pale face. Maybe he felt as if he were in the perfect loneliness, sad, obscure, cold, freezing shaking, smoking and hearing every sound but paying attention to none.

This was the color black, the absence of light. And with this absence the perfect silence came. The only thing he was able to hear was his own heart beating. The rest of the noises pretended to have gone and no other disturbance dared to alter that hidden place.

Gradually he started hearing his beatings louder and louder. Not because of his heart actually beating stronger but because of the silence. It was indeed weird, but he got scared that someone could hear his heart, though nobody was near. In fact he didn’t think of it.

After a while he really got mad about it, he tried to concentrate in this sound as he had done with the others but it was worse. Every second was harder and he couldn’t figure out how to stop feeling that awful sensation. He had started sweating cold and got madly nervous. He hurried the cigarette and lit another right away. He was shaking, but not because of the cold. This time was truly because he was scared and nervous. He felt as if his chest was going to explode because of his heart beatings. His veins were too narrow for his blood to run through them, his hands shaked as his fingers tried to catch some calm from the cold air.

He couldn’t stand this any longer and decide to lit his lighter to have some light to drive off the complete darkness, and when he did the electricity returned to the city. The boys upstairs screamed in happiness, the dog ended barking and the buzzing returned to his normal annoying routine.

He breathed now relieved, dried the sweat off his forehead as he continued smoking. His heart calmed down with the light on again but still the silence insisted in taking over his place where felt safe, so he gave up to the silence. It made him fell like dead, like if he didn’t exist. After all, nobody was near and the only company he had was the buzzing of the fluorescent light from the corridor.

Again, in the middle of the city, in that hidden place where the moonlight never reached, there was him, smoking and hearing to every sound but paying attention to none.