Silent Room

All at once, the floorboards groaned their last.

At first, this came as a relief, the scraping and scuffing of a cacophony of shoes and voices had been unrelenting. Peace, at last. No longer abused by the snotty-fingered child, or the slopping of tea and scrape of chair-legs. No longer marred and stained and used. Bones creaking, walls sighing, skirting boards never wiped. The occupants had been reckless, aging the room with crumbs, crayons and loud garish laughter. They had left dust and grime to congeal in hidden corners. Allowed a thin-armed spider to make a home in another. And the dog. It was perhaps the worst offender. Hair everywhere, nails scratching on oiled-wood, the drool, the dander, the wanton muck brought from outside.

But then that relief, gave way to endless, prowling months of silence.

Furniture no longer shifted, footsteps no longer landed. The curtains remained drawn, the sun a weak echo of summer days. There was no hum as warm-light clicked on in the evening. The blankets stopped shifting. No vibration of music, or movies. No bickering around the coffee-table or fire kindled into hissing warmth. No footsteps crunched outside. No unbolting of the door, no hinges creaking. No faint scrape of butter on bread. No clattering or muttering or sighing. No more crying, no hushed, begging prayers.

Peace and quiet turned the air turned stale. The kinetic energy released between objects and people and earth had snapped out of existence. And the peace, turned into solitude. And that into- into something else.

Master of nothing, of impenetrable, unending nothing.

The room fell into the void. And the silence, it ate.

A fraught companion of the groaning wind against glass-pains, of rain hammering on tiles. Of the distant, muted rumble of cars or birds squabbling on the nearby oaks. Desolate when the sun tore through the sky, in all its cheery noiseless hell.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Nothing held an acrid flavour. A dimness, a lacking. It was cold too, leaching into the timbers, behind the plaster and pistachio-coloured paint. But the occupants didn’t return. Even when mould began to spore in the highest corners, or when more than one cockroach scuttled across the floors. Not even when a small gathering of mice frequented the room before scurrying back into the deeper realms of the hollow house. Even they forgot to return, finding little interest in the once beating heart of this home. More than one season was spied flickering through the gaps in curtains, yet as stated, no one came.

Not even the dog.

Forgotten now. Winding down the slippery slope towards barren.

Rooms, they could become this way. Not that this room thought this was a fate it would ever find itself facing. Not so abruptly, not so soon.

The room was empty, hollow without movement, without purpose. Dust collected, and then it remained. On top the frayed cardboard of well-loved board games. On top of the mantle, on candles, their wick forever half spent. Coating the PlayStation controller, buttons sticky and worn. It settled on the ivory-framed picture of the small family, a sunny holiday by the sea. The family that had left indents on the second-hand sofa. Disguised in a handmade, thick-knitted wool blanket. It all remained within the room, questioning its sudden abandonment, yearning for the hands that had once frequented it, made use of it.

The room did not know where the family had gone, had not paid attention to the way it had grown darker, stiller, in the days before it’s abandonment. Had not known how to hold its occupants as they wept, and prayed, and their number diminished.

The room was not a room without occupants, without purpose. No room was an island, after all. Life being spent, was, in fact, mutual. Life was shared here, between this room and a family, they created it together. A room could not be loved without its occupants, could not be part of the whole that made a home, without them. And this room held memories, so sweet, so intimate and raw, it cut. This room had been cherished. Loved.

Loved still.

Abandoned, barren. But not forgotten; its floorboards creaked and walls were touched almost every night, in every painful, grief swollen dream.

So, it remained empty, neglected in all ways but one.

The chaos, the noise and thrum of life; the room missed it all.

Even the dog.