It’s not particularly quiet in silence for the paranoid. And anyone paranoid will tell you that true silence is something to fear.
Everything stops in the moments before. As if the Earth holds her breath and whispers ‘watch this.’
One minute Bleu was there, the next cut them from the page. As if someone sliced them out of the scene with crude scissors.
And so I screamed.
I let the blood vessels fill and burst. Bruise my skin as I beat and scratched at my own chest to rip out my lungs. What use were they to me? I walked further into the bog, willing myself to go under, to search. Choking on the smells that perfume the top note of scum and muck. The density of distinct layers as its liquids graze your body, gently releases bubbles to the top, like homemade stock.
Or stomach acid.
But, there was more than one stomach here. I know what waits for me at the bottom of this bog.
I always feel closest to her at the end of a rope.
And we are at another dead end.