by David Beers
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
DARKNESS AND SILENCE: A SHORT STORY
First edition. June 20, 2014.
Copyright © 2014 David Beers.
Written by David Beers.
Darkness and Silence
by David Beers
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Beginning
Middle
End
Dr. Ryan Patent stood outside of his patient’s room. The hallway light directly above him caused him to cast no shadow; all the rooms to his right and left were dark. Only the one in front of him held light, as bright as the hallway he stood in. Strong, halogen lights shining inside—making sure not a single shadow lived in a single corner. Dr. Patent looked through the door’s window, watching the patient sleep inside. Headphones in her ears, probably playing some new age soft-rock.
“Like Sting, but with more heart,” Amy Hillen had told him when she first arrived at the hospital. She’d carried her iPod then too, one earbud in, one hanging out so that she could hear others. Music playing, always. “Just in in case,” she said. In case things got quiet between them, she could wait out the silence listening to her music.
Amy wanted light and noise more than anything in this world. Darkness, silence, they were to her what land was to a fish. Patent had listened for two months—months full of crying, begging, and explaining why she couldn’t take the earbuds out or sleep with the lights off. Explaining exactly what she thought would happen if one of those things occurred, and God forbid, occurred simultaneously.
Two months later, watching the young woman sleep, Dr. Patent considered something he wasn’t completely sure about. It could be considered drastic, could potentially ruin the relationship he’d cultivated. Seeing her sleep under these white lights while music played into her ears, he wasn’t seeing many ways around it. The progress they made about her mother was infinitely slow, and at twenty-seven, this woman could live in the hospital another ten or twenty years if they kept moving at this pace. Twenty years stolen from her life unless Patent acted.
Two months in and twenty years to go.
* * *
Amy never fully got away from the darkness or silence. She saw her mother while sleeping and thought of her while awake. She understood, ever since she saw her mother at sixteen years old, that she would end up in a mental institution. At some point they would put her away and she thought she could be okay with that. Because she wasn’t going to turn the lights off or pull the headphones out. She’d play music all night and pay five thousand dollar electric bills if necessary.
Amy’s mother, Regina, loved darkness—or rather, she hated paying bills and the alternative to paying a high electricity bill was sitting without light. She could have opened the blinds but never did. Regina could always be found in the kitchen, surrounded by darkness, a cigarette in hand and smoke floating to the ceiling. A beer probably in front of her. Coors Light.
That’s where the darkness started for Amy. Watching her mom drink booze and smoke cigarettes.
Maybe she was eight then. Her Dad long gone to wherever Dad’s went when they tired of their children. Even at eight, Amy didn’t like the shadows. She didn’t know the word depression but she understood the meaning behind it, and looking at her mother’s overly tanned, wrinkled face, she saw that meaning. Had the silence started then? Probably.
Regina served food at that same table, almost always putting a microwaveable meal down in front of Amy. Lights still off, the smell of smoke infiltrating everything. Amy would poke at her food with a fork, enough light to see the difference between mashed potatoes and meatloaf, but little else. She ate, her mother not speaking, only staring at her. Amy never wanted to look up because, even then, her mother was becoming scary. Becoming something just as bad as a monster underneath the bed.
* * *
“There is nothing in the dark, Amy. Not a thing,” Dr. Patent said. “Think about your last job. You were in the dark for a full five minutes, and what ended up happening?”
The power had went out. That’s what happened, and while her headphones remained in her ears, Amy lived in darkness for the first time in ten years.
Amy had screamed. Amy had cried.
She attacked three people that tried to help.
One lady lost an eye from Amy’s nail. Another needed stitches across her throat.
Amy ended up in here: St. Martin’s Green Acres. There might have been green and acres outside, but none of it on the linoleum floors inside. There was plenty of light though and they let Amy have her music.
“What happened?” Patent pressed
“I came here.”
“Yes. During the blackout though, what happened then? Did anything hurt you?”
Amy looked out the window behind the doctor. She could see the green acres or what was purported as such. Just a lawn.
What happened?
Amy hadn’t meant to hurt those people. She liked Kathy, had went to lunch several times with her. Amy’s nail hadn’t caught Kathy in the eye, causing jelly and blood to ooze over her finger. It had been…
Amy’s mother. Who else was waiting in the dark?
“My mom came for me,” she answered, still gazing out the window.
“Then where was she when the lights came back on?”
Mom only comes out in the dark.
“She’s in your head, Amy. If your mom had been there, then someone would have seen her. Your mother is dead. You know she’s dead, you’ve told me that plenty of times, right?”
Amy nodded.
“Then how was she at your job?”
“She’s in the darkness, waiting on me.”
“I can prove to you she’s not.”
Amy met Patent’s eyes. “No.”
“I wouldn’t put you in harm.”
He’d put her in darkness, that’s what Amy understood. She’d heard it before from other psychiatrists. Cloaking her in darkness, taking away her music. They all ended up talking like that and she wasn’t going to have it. Up until Green Acres, she’d been in control of her therapy; Kathy’s eye stopped that though. This man now controlled what happened to her.
“You can’t. You can’t put me in the dark.”
“It will only be for a short time. A few minutes at first. I’ll be right outside your room, watching and listening. You’ll be completely safe.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, her right hand turning up the volume on her iPod. Turning it so that it blocked out one ear from hearing anything else this man said. “No. No. No.”
She stood up, walking to the door behind her, wanting to get away from this doctor. Wanting to get back to her room, to bathe in the white light shining down on her and put both headphones in her ears.
“Okay, Amy. Calm down. We don’t have to discuss this anymore,” Patent said.
* * *
Her mother was still alive when Amy first thought Regina might know more than most people.
“I’m watching you,” she said. “Anytime you think I’m not, that’s when I am.”
Amy’s first kiss was with a boy named Tucker. It caused a warmth in her crotch and a cold in her stomach—her crotch full of lust and her stomach full of guilt. They sat in a movie theater, whatever film they saw long forgotten, buried under the memories of what came after her kiss.
“I’ll know what you do at the movies,” Regina said before Amy left with her friends. She put her cigarette out in the glass ashtray, where it joined another ten butts. “Don’t be a little slut or I’ll know.” She kept her eyes on Amy’s, staring through the darkness until Amy dropped her own eyes to floor.
“I won’t,” Amy answered.
&nbs
p; Silence followed as her mother kept staring, while Amy only looked down, unsure what else to say.
“Go on then,” Regina said, breaking the nearly unbearable quiet.
Amy left the house, her friend’s father picking her up, and went to the movies. The group of girls met a group of boys and Amy sat next to Tucker. They’d held hands, then kissed, and a weight descended on Amy that she had never felt before.
I’ll know what you do at the movies.
Two emotions fought inside her during the car ride home—glee and fear. A boy liked her, had held her hand. Kissed her. All of these things were new, strange, and left her awestruck. Her mother waited at home, though. The lamp over the stove would be filtering yellow light to the kitchen and the table she sat at. She could be drunk, could be sober—either way, when she looked Amy over, she would know.
“Thanks, Mr. Blanche,” Amy said, stepping from the car.
She made the walk across her lawn to the front door. No lights shone from inside, only closed blinds and darkness behind them. At nine P.M., her house was as dark as most would be at two in the morning.
She unlocked the door, stepped in, and looked at the stairs which would lead her to her mother. Did she know? Of course she shouldn’t be able, but yet she always seemed to. Knew what Amy was thinking. Knew when Amy messed up. If she knew this, she was going to be upset.
Mad.
Angry.
Amy began the steps, hoping her mother would be asleep but knowing that was a prayer not to be answered. Any happiness she had felt was gone.
“Come here.”
Amy reached the midpoint of the stairs as Regina’s voice reached her. She didn’t dare turn around and look at the door, wouldn’t think about running. She kept her eyes down and kept trudging up the steps, knowing her mother already knew.
“In here,” Regina said as Amy reached the top of the steps.
Amy followed the directions, entering the kitchen without noticing the smell of cigarettes. To Amy, it was simply the smell of home.
“What did you do?”
The light from the stove shone partially on her mother’s face, causing it to look leaner, more haggard.
“Nothing.”
“Look at me.”
Amy listened, raising her eyes to her mother’s.
“I saw what you did, so don’t lie to me again. Admit to it.”
Amy lowered her eyes, unable to match her mother’s withering glare. “A boy kissed me.”
“Come closer.”
Amy listened.
“Say it again.”
“A boy kissed me,” Amy repeated.
Blood sprouted immediately, from both Amy’s mouth as her teeth bit into her lips and her nose as Regina’s hand brutalized it. Amy fell backwards, onto her ass, hands reaching to protect her face from any more hits.
“You goddamn little slut.” Her mother stood from the table, spilling the can of beer sitting next to her. She towered over Amy, hands at her sides, watching the girl blubber as blood spilled from her mouth. She looked on for a few moments then went to a drawer near the sink, opened it, and pulled out a knife. She went back to Amy, grabbing her leg with the free hand. “Fight me and this will be a lot worse.”
Regina knelt, placing the knife on her daughter’s ankle. Using the delicacy and force of a physician, Regina began to carve. Deep, past the skin but not as far as tendon or bone. Blood ran, dribbling down Amy’s ankle to the floor beneath, and still her mom kept slicing.
Amy screamed.
Regina kept the business end of the knife working.
* * *
“You know she didn’t have any idea what happened in that theater.”
Amy rubbed the scars. Three of them, side by side like Roman numerals. Right above her shoe, long things that had turned red and been doused with peroxide daily to keep them from growing infected. Mom wouldn’t go to jail for her actions and so Amy wasn’t going to the hospital.
“She knew because you told her,” Patent said. “She guilted you into telling her.”
Amy gazed out the window and Patent fell quiet, wanting to let her think about what he said. Her reaction to his suggestion of a trial bit of darkness had shut down that line of talk.
“She knew before I even made it up the stairs,” Amy said, maybe to herself, maybe to him.
“No, she scared you before you came up the stairs. Then she scared you worse when you went into the kitchen. You were a child and she used your fear to manipulate you into telling her. Those scars you’re rubbing were to punish you, surely, but because your mom didn’t want you turning into her. She hated your father. She didn’t want to see you pregnant. That’s why all of the scars on your body are there. To keep you from making the same mistakes she did.”
“She got her way. She never ended up in a mental institution.”
“No. She killed herself.”
Amy met his eyes, a sharpness in hers, some anger brought up from the mention of Regina’s death.
“What bothers you about that?”
“She’s alive, in the dark.”
“You saw her when she died, Amy. How does someone return from that?”
“Ask the Christians. They’re certain Jesus rose.” Amy put her other headphone in, signaling she was done conversing.
“Not yet. Just give me a few more minutes.”
She pulled an ear bud out. “What?”
“Tell me what you saw. Describe it to me.”
“Why? There were photos. I’m sure you can find them.”
“I’ve seen them. That’s how I know your mother couldn’t survive. She couldn’t live in darkness any more than she could light. I want you to recognize that. Your mother is dead and she can’t come back.”
Amy squatted to the floor, her hand finding her scars again.
“Tell me what you saw,” Patent said.
* * *
Regina Hillen knew two types of evil existed in this world. Her ex-husband and herself. Neither better than the other, but both worse in their own way. Her ex left people to die on their own and Regina killed them. Not quickly, but slowly, they died inside when she was near. Maybe that’s why her husband left. Certainly Amy would too, because whatever life she possessed was dying. Regina was stomping it out. Killing it.
She didn’t want to anymore.
She didn’t want to hurt her daughter. She never had. She just didn’t want her daughter to turn into an alcoholic, chain smoking, used up, old maid. She didn’t want her daughter to end up depressed, alone, and full of rage.
What had Regina done to keep this from happening? She scarred Amy’s perfect skin. The soles of her feet. The top of them. Her ankles. The middle of her back. Anywhere she could put a knife and not have the rest of the world see. Why? For kissing a boy? For having a cigarette? For lying?
For nothing.
Amy would die if Regina kept it up, and yet, she couldn’t stop. Any little thing Amy did, no matter how normal for a sixteen year old, would throw Regina that much closer to the edge. Even the slightest infraction would cause this brief bit of rationality she now felt to disappear like a grain of sand in a tsunami. The knives would come out, or the stove would turn on, cutting, burning, or any other thing Regina could use to teach her daughter—because ‘normal’ ways never occurred to her.
No, she couldn’t stop from doing these things. Sooner or later, one of the wounds Regina inflicted would make sure that Amy could never make a mistake again.
That couldn’t happen.
And.
Amy couldn’t turn out like her.
So this would be Regina’s last lesson for her daughter; the one she hoped would keep her in line forever.
“Come here, Amy,” she called from the kitchen.
* * *
Amy rolled from her bed, her bare feet landing on the carpet. She turned the television off knowing the hell that would come if her mother saw she had left it on.
She walked from the room towards her mother’s voice.
Her room, praise God, faced the sun as it set, allowing for light to shine through in the afternoon—obfuscated by no trees or obstructions. As Amy left the room, the light faded and the darkness of her mother’s house took over. Less light in the hallway. Still less in the living room. Finally, the kitchen, where her mother waited. The darkness here not quite night, but as close to twilight as Amy thought she could find outside of nature. As Amy’s eyes adjusted, what her mother held grew in importance.
“Mom?”
Regina held the knife which knew too many inches of Amy’s skin. The knife, that as far as Amy knew or cared, held the sharpest point on Earth.
“What did I do?”
“Come here,” her mother answered.
Amy stepped forward, her subconscious propelling her. Ingrained in her to listen when Regina commanded.
“What did I do, Mom?” Tears came to her eyes, knowing the pain the knife meant. Knowing that she would bleed, and scab, and then itch, and eventually scar. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to,” she pleaded, begging forgiveness for a crime she wasn’t aware of committing.
“You know that I know everything you do?”
Amy nodded, squatting to the floor and holding her knees as she cried. “I know, Momma. I’m sorry. I didn’t do anything.”
“You know, there’s nothing you can hide form me. That if you ever tried, I’d find out and then I’d find you.”
Amy kept nodding, unable to stop that or the tears dripping from her eyes.
“Don’t ever forget that.”
Regina opened her throat. Plunging the knife deep and beginning to pull across.
Amy stared in disbelief, hugging her knees and trying to blink away the tears that blurred her mother.
A gurgle came from Regina’s mouth, then a lurch, and blood spit down her chin. Both her grip on the knife and the pull across her throat faltered. Blood streamed down the shining blade, onto the black handle, and across her mother’s knuckles. Her fading eyes looked across the shadowed room, the only two sounds both coming from her—gurgles of blood and the wheeze of air out her throat.