A Blanket of Ash

Elias stood at the kitchen window, hip pressed against the cold aluminum frame, a cigarette burning down to the filter between his fingers. It was well past midnight. The snow, a slow, steady fall for hours, had finally smothered the city. Not a sound. Not a goddamn whisper. Just the heavy, plush quiet of winter, the kind that makes your ears ring, makes you feel like you’re underwater. From the fourteenth floor, the streetlights below were dull, haloed orbs, struggling to pierce the thick, white air. Every car, every dumpster, every ragged bush was softened, rounded, like the world had been carved from some enormous bar of soap. He flicked ash into the sink, the grey powder landing with an almost audible puff against the porcelain.

His breath fogged the glass. He leaned in, peering through the condensation. Sometimes, he’d hear the distant whine of a police siren, a drunken shout, a car horn. Not tonight. Tonight, the world was a mute. This kind of quiet, it got into your head, didn’t it? Made the things you usually kept shoved deep down, behind the clatter of the day, rise up. Like sediment in a shaken jar, slowly settling, revealing the ugly muck at the bottom. He felt a familiar ache behind his ribs, an old soreness he usually ignored. Tonight, it felt like a dull knife.

He pulled his worn robe tighter, the cotton scratchy against his skin. The heat in the apartment was shit, always had been. He hadn't bothered to turn on many lights. Just the dim glow from the living room, a cheap lamp casting long, distorted shadows of his furniture across the walls. He wasn’t tired. Hadn’t been truly tired in years, not in the way that meant sleep. Just exhausted. Bone-deep, soul-weary exhausted. The kind that makes your eyelids heavy but your mind race like a trapped rat.

The silence called to him, a siren song of introspection. He found himself thinking of Anna. Not the Anna from last year, frail and distant, but the Anna from twenty, thirty years ago. Her laugh, sharp and bright, a sound that always cut through the noise of any room. He remembered a night like this, years back. They were young. Broke. Lying on a mattress on the floor of their first place, a tiny studio with peeling paint and a busted window. The snow had been coming down then too. They’d whispered, planning futures, silly things, serious things. He’d promised her the moon. Promised her a house with a garden, a life where she wouldn't have to work her fingers to the bone. He felt the cold creep from the window pane into his shoulder. A hollow laugh escaped him, sounding loud and ragged in the overwhelming quiet.

He never gave her that garden. Never gave her much of anything, not really. Just struggle, and later, silence. Different kind of silence. The kind that builds between two people who've said too much, and then nothing at all. He closed his eyes, pressing his forehead against the cold glass. He could almost smell her perfume, faint and sweet, just for a second. The way her hand felt in his, small and warm. What a waste. What a goddamn waste he’d made of it all. He'd traded that laugh for… what? More hours at the mill, more booze, more stubborn pride. He never once thought the quiet could be so loud, so accusatory. Like the world itself was holding its breath, waiting for him to explain himself.

He pushed off the window, the movement making a slight creak from his knee. He walked into the living room, past the threadbare armchair, the stack of unread newspapers, the dust motes dancing in the weak lamplight. His hand went to the mantelpiece, finding the framed photo there. Anna. Mid-twenties. Her hair, dark and curly, pulled back from her face, a wide, genuine smile. Her eyes, full of something he hadn’t seen in years. Hope. He traced the edge of the frame with a thumb, the glass cool beneath his touch. The quiet wrapped around him, not gentle, but heavy, a suffocating blanket. He didn't want to break it. He didn't want to move. Just stand there, letting the cold and the silence gnaw at him, pick at the edges of everything he thought he knew about himself.

His eyes, raw and dry, fixed on the picture. He knew what she’d say, if she could. She’d say, 'Elias, you always were a fool.' Maybe she'd be right. The snow kept falling outside, a soft, relentless falling, adding another layer to the world, erasing old tracks, making everything new, clean, and utterly, achingly silent. He just stood there, watching her smile, and for a second, he almost heard it again, that bright, sharp laugh, swallowed whole by the falling snow.