Silence For the Dead

by Simone St. James

She dried her thin, chapped hands, and I knew that deep down she was hard, but she wasn’t hard enough. No one ever was.

Something sounded in me, deep down like a bell being struck in the depths of the ocean, something that saddened and frightened me and made me exhausted in the same way one is exhausted after vigorously, repeatedly vomiting up one’s supper.

Books were a means to an end, even novels; for the more a person knew, the less she could be taken in.

In the end it was a matter of winning over the words that refused to obey, of comprehending them through sheer determination. No one had ever accused me of a lack of determination.

I was in the grip of something strange. I felt as if someone had slipped me a drug, something that made me see more than I wanted, as if I could peel up the edge of the visible world and glimpse what lay underneath.

My mind was very good at this, at moving my hands and feet and working while the rest of me shut down. My life, for a short time, was happening to someone else, and so I got through one moment, and then another, and then another.

I’d never admitted what was happening, even to myself, because that would have made it real. Who was I to be brave?

A man fighting for his sanity had the energy only for the simple tasks of his daily life. Friendship was a luxury.

This house was a vampire, feeding on the pain, the insecurity, the despair of these men.

I could be afraid, and I could still do this, still do anything I wanted.