Tabula Rasa

After a few seconds I pulled my strained face away, waiting for the noises to die down, but they were as loud as they had been before. That’s strange, I thought to myself, I normally feel like my outside self again after a successful silent scream, but this time the soft murmurs of despair still lingered as I continued to remove the pillow from my face. Did I do it wrong? I tried again. I screamed harder this time. Longer. Veins pulsed and throbbed with every passing second. I could feel the blood shooting from my heart, filling my head, which swam with a dizzying high. I stretched my mouth wider, pushing more oxygen from my frame. I made sure a peep never escaped my lips - silence was key - but my throat tensed and my nostrils flared as if I was hollering into an abyss, a passionate war cry hurtling towards the canyon before me. Again, it didn’t work, my foggy head was still dense with thunder. I was perplexed. Thinking backwards I ran through every second leading me to this point to make sure nothing was amiss. There was every second that had taken place this morning, there was the second before the moment, the moment itself and then there was right now. Nothing out of the ordinary, except this moment, of course. What was I doing that had driven this episode of hysteria to a level deeper than any of those that had come before? Then it hit me. The trigger was the memory of her. In the second before the moment, I was acutely aware that she would have been there - should have been there. The moment it dawned on me that she wasn’t coming, that’s when the noises started with a volume and velocity that they’ve never exuded before. We were all there - him, them, me - but no her. There would forever be an empty seat at the table for her. Taking myself back to that moment now, I could hear the noises rising, their choral efforts becoming more pronounced, more defined, more ominous. I felt my chest tighten with panic; I’d never been this deep into the fog before. I gave it one final go. Taking a slow, deliberate inhale, I clenched the pillow in my fists with all my might, and at the peak of my breath I threw my head and my hands together, the collision causing a muffled thud to reverberate around the room. This time I forced every particle to expel from my body - from my mouth, my eyes, my ears, I could feel life fleeing forth. As the excruciating seconds passed, a single exclamation escaped my mouth. A pained cry of her name; something I never intended to speak aloud again. Just like that, silence crept in. Through the darkness of my vice-tight eyelids I saw an outline of her face, her eyes, her smile. I winced, expecting the noise to immediately flood over me. Nothing came. I was free.