Archive 501
Vivian Galván García
Ida is scared of silence
By Mariana FolacheIda is scared of silence, but she doesn’t know.
Noise is all she has ever known.
Her siblings were terribly noisy growing up. She still remembers the rattling lullaby of the distant train.
Ida was quickly trained to connect quiet to problems, peace was never an option.
Chaos soothes her, therefore so does the noise.
Or more like noise stops other noise; and that soothes her.
Every time there’s silence something bad happens.
New technology allows people like Ida, that thrive in chaos, to not have a complete shutdown of their system in their day to day life.
Since headphones were invented Ida has had at least one always in one of her ears.
Sometimes she just has static noise playing or nature sounds or music; but there’s always something playing.
Always.
When she paints she usually has them on unless the speaker in the corner of her studio is playing something.
Today she paints as everyday. Her headphones are on, whale sounds softly emanating from the headphones into her ears.
*battery low*
Beep, beep.
*OFF*
A pit forms at the bottom of the stomach.
There’s a system malfunction. There’s a missing input.
Her skin almost looks grey and she slowly starts to slump in her chair as if melting due to existentialism.
When her own noise starts it becomes scary. The voices are harsh, spiteful, full of rage and doubts.
She’s loosing all control, the voices are reining in her head, hers a mere whisper, a plea to bring back their silence.
The voices don’t cease but instead become louder and more violent.
She can’t control them, she never could, she only made them quieter by distracting herself with other noise.
There’s no control but simple mind tricks, imagination.
She realizes that she’s nothing but a ruse, an act.
And she most definitely does not have her shit together.