Stories
It was a quiet sort of afternoon. The street they lived on was usually filled with playing children and backfiring cars, but a conspiracy of ice and driving wind kept the first inside and the last parked elsewhere. She worked in the quiet, enjoying the muffled sounds of a good day.
It was a quiet sort of afternoon, and she treasured the quiet. The soft humming of the refrigerator and her computer were the only sounds in the house, and they soothed away her troubled thoughts. True silence enhanced the cacophony in her head: the sounds of her own demons and their destructive ideals. This was better than silence. This was the peace that comes with solitude and easy quiet.
It was a quiet sort of afternoon, until the man returned from his day and brought the noise with him. He brought the slamming of doors and the banging of boots. He brought music made of cymbals and wailing women and his own booming voice demanding her attention: her action; her additions to the noise.
“It was a quiet sort of afternoon,” her demons whispered through the new clangor, “and it can be a quiet sort of afternoon again,” and it was once she shushed him with a well placed blow. She struck him with the poker. His head softened with a satisfying soft crack. She struck him on the carpet, where his fall would not upset the quiet and his blood would drip without a sound.
It was a quiet sort of afternoon, and cold. She built a fire, which dried the blood from the poker. She curled by the hearth, book in hand and fancying herself a Jane Austin heroine in the peaceful, low-tech, quiescence that enveloped her. She lay his sleeping head gently in her lap and marveled at how sharing serenity with amplified their love.
