Loud Noises

Small things can make very loud noises. Cicadas, for example. The thumping of a beating heart. The hammer lowering on a six shooter.

Day looked up into the nozzle of the gun pointed directly into his face. His mouth tightened from his exhausted, droopy frown into a flat line. His eyes paused there and looked into infinity. He thought he could see a glint there at the back. The loaded bullet that was his ticket out of here. Thump, thump, thump went the echo of his heart.

Almost as if they were possessed, the corners of his mouth turned up. Like a runaway train, they couldn’t be stopped. And then he was laughing.

“Shoot him already,” Thug 2 said in a big dumb voice.

Between contorted giggles Day breathed out “If he was going to shoot me, he would have already.” And the peels of laughter rolled on. His feet pressed against the floor when he rolled forward. Lightning bolts of pain shot up his legs originating from the bloody stubs of his toes. The fuckers had pulled his toe nails off and for what? And now… this kid with this old school revolver.

Scurge slammed his fists into the desk and stamped out of the office. The little detective on the monitor laughing at him as he stalked out into the hall. He had known those imbeciles would screw this up. He’d just known it. But to make the boss happy, to give everyone their opportunity to contribute to the good, he’d sent them.

Scurge threw the door to the cell open, grabbed a syringe from just inside, seemed to slide across the room to inject the needle in Day’s forearm. The laughing ended abruptly and Day slumped forward. Scurge grabbed the gun from the shaking hand of Thug 1, turned, and fired a resounding shot into wall just over Day’s shoulder. He stomped out into the haul and the echoes of another door flying open reverberated in the hall.

Jess hung in the far corner of the cell like a cockeyed hammock. Her hands were cuffed and suspended from the ceiling. Her feet were cuffed and hooked to the wall roughly two feet off the ground. There was a dog bowl half full of gruel in another corner. They let her down once a day for an hour to eat what she would.

“Your husband is dead. Where is the bear?” Scurge said.

Jess seemed to hang tall, if such a thing were possible. Her hair hung lank. She was filthy. Blood dripped from the edge of one eyebrow. Her other eye was swollen shut. Yet looking at her Scurge was overcome with the sense they’d made no progress at all. He felt heat rush to his face as he realized that the more they beat her, the stronger she seemed to become. Without thought, he was across the room swinging the six shooter handle into her side. She gasped.

“Where is the bear?” Scurge screamed.

Jess looked him eye to eye, then her gaze drifted to the wall above her food bowl and she started counting the ants trailing down the wall.

With the beating done, and Scurge gone, a single tear dripped down Jess’s cheek and fell to the concrete floor below. The splash was a very loud noise made by a very small thing.