Static
by effervescent-sentiments
started: 3AM, 07/27/09

A/N: A quick pronunciation guide before you begin. Uaine = "OON-ya." Caingnigh = "kag-nee." Danyl = "dan-yill."

They pulled our names out of a hat, and when he broke down crying in the parking lot, I wondered if I was making a mistake.

“Taariq,” I mouthed at him, brushing back his brown, matted hair. He turned his face into my chest and I pressed him closer—his hot, choking breath warmed the top of my ice-bitten breasts, and I bit my trembling bottom lip as I felt a tear trace down the center of my stomach, stopping to pool in my bellybutton. He cried on, as my back began to ache—I squatted in the dirty puddles that littered the parking lot, glaring over his shoulder at the strangers. They just stared at me, shuffling their feet. One of them tied her sneaker, never breaking eye-contact. I looked away.

“Taariq,” I mouthed again. “We have to get up now. We have to see what they want.”

He dropped his other knee to the asphalt, flecking my eyelet lace with mud. Moaning, he cupped a palm around his gaping mouth and propped himself up on an elbow, almost licking the dirt, he was so close. “You look pathetic,” I mouthed at him, forcing my lips to make the talking-charade crisp and demanding. “This isn’t my fault, that they chose your name. In fact, if it weren’t for me, you’d be going alone. Now get up. The sooner we know what they want, the sooner we can get back.”

I tugged him to his feet, trying to ignore the humming that threatened to penetrate through my constant state of static. Sometimes I thought about the music, how nice it would be to dance all day, completely unaware of the notes eating away at the small bones of my inner ear, and then moving inwards until I my head was completely gutted.

Then I remembered the day Danyl saved me.

I was visiting my brother Caingnigh in St. Dominic’s College for the Deaf when it happened. We leaned against his twin-long, laughing as we tried to decipher his roommate’s illegible biology notes.

“Shit,” Caingnigh said aloud in his whining, alien-sounding voice. I never learned sign language. “Why didn’t I take notes? We’ll never figure these out.”

“It’s like they’re written in code.” I laughed, leaning my head against my brother’s shoulder so he could see my mouth move. “Danyl’s fucked if he thinks he’ll survive deaf and with bad handwriting.”

“Really, Uaine? I always was prerequisite engineering students illegibly,” said Danyl as he walked through the open doorway. His speech was worse than my brother’s—all of his words slurred together so much I missed half of what he said. But I appreciated that he tried, and never said anything about it.

“No, that’s for pre-med students,” I said. “Engineers have to be neat. Which means you’re fucked. Class over?”

“Finish midterm early,” he said, crossing over to his unmade bed and sitting down, leaning his head back and closing his eyes.

“You can’t see what I say, sitting like that,” I told him.

“Idiot, he can’t hear you.” My brother laughed, and I smacked him on the chest, blushing. Danyl still had his eyes closed, and I felt myself growing jealous. As Caingnigh pored over his notes, I kept stealing glances, running my eyes over Danyl’s long legs that hung off the side of the bed, up to his sloppily tucked-in shirt, the way only half of his collar lay flat. His hair was greasy and uncombed; I doubted he’d touched a shampoo bottle in a few days, even after I’d bought him green apple Suave. His freckles were too dark, his skin too pale. His nose too thin. His lips too serious. I compared that to the jealousy I felt that he wasn’t reading what I was saying, and wasn’t surprised to find it didn’t add up—nothing ever did when it came to me and love.

When he did finally open his eyes, I was glaring at him—willing his eyelashes to crack apart, and for him to pay attention to me. I didn’t visit my brother very often, but when I did, I was ashamed to admit that Danyl was much of the draw. I loved Caingnigh, but my parents had shoveled him off in a school for the deaf when he entered high school, and I had only seen him on holidays.

“What I do?” Danyl said, rubbing a blood-shot eye with his wrist. Caingnigh signed something at him while I said, “What are you saying? Hey, stop it. Say it out loud!” trying to slap at his hands. Danyl signed back, and they were off.

“Guys.” I moaned. “So unfair!”

But they weren’t joking around. Caingnigh slapped my hand away, staring intently at whatever Danyl was signing. Danyl looked scared.

“Guys,” I said. “What’s going on?”

I felt it before I heard it. The air went stale—I could taste it in my mouth, like a heavy dust had fallen in the hush—and the floor rumbled, sending vibrations through my tailbone to settle in my fingers. And like I was some kind of magician, my fingers moved on invisible piano keys, as I played the most beautiful melody I had ever heard. I moved my legs so I could stand up without stopping playing, and I danced to the music, the beautiful music, twirling my arms above my head, spinning, laughing, singing—my head ached, but I ignored it, kept tapping my fingers against my brother’s closet door, his dresser, his head. Danyl grabbed me around my waist, pinning my arms to my sides and I wailed, “What are you doing? Let me listen!” Caingnigh stuffed his fingers in my ears and I wept bitter tears, kicking my legs as hard as I could, trying to knock Danyl down so I could hear the music again.

Setting my jaw, I concentrated on the static, on putting one foot in front of the other, on not letting Taariq stumble away, on not hearing that beautiful music again. My life should have been forfeit, and yet I still kept it tenuously between my fingertips, and I would not let go, no matter how heavy and terribly beautiful the memory of the music felt in my mind.

The strangers stopped staring at Taariq and I as we moved closer, like they hadn’t known we were there. One idiot had the audacity to raise her eyebrows, look surprised. I noted to watch for her; actresses were always trouble—thought they could lie.

“Those earmuffs won’t protect you for long,” I mouthed at them, pointing to my own rudimentary attempt to stay human. My headphones were shoved so far into my head it would take tweezers to pull them out. Taariq no longer had eardrums. And this gaggle of children somehow managed to retain their fine motor skills just by strapping a pair of ‘muffs on. I turned my head so they couldn’t see and mouthed to Taariq, “Do they look dangerous?” He watched my lips move out of his peripheries, his red-rimmed eyes never leaving the strangers’. His head twitched. No. “Then calm the hell down.”

“We don’t lip-read very well yet,” the tallest, a blond pimply thing, mouthed at me, his lip movements comically exaggerated. I didn’t read what he was saying for a moment and just watched his mouth open and close like a big-mouth bass, or like he was from a building with his mouth open, letting the air contort his cheeks.

“Say it again.” I sneered while mouthing, something that took weeks of underground monotony to perfect. “And this time, try not to look like a fat-lipped imbecile.”

It took about two seconds for all four of them to start fluffing their offended peacock feathers at me and strut around, pointing fingers. The blond one flipped me the bird. I crossed my arms as Taariq played peacekeeper, shushing the excitable, fresh-faced morons.

“We just want to know who you are and what you’re doing here,” Taariq mouthed slowly, trying to help them understand. I could tell he wanted to vomit, he was so scared. I allowed my eyes to take a sweep of the parking lot—still deserted. My eyes trailed a lone piece of newspaper tripping across the faded white lines with the wind, and then watched as it skirted the edge of the tall, imposing buildings, unable to find its way out. This was our ideal location. The only entrance was right where these four suckers were standing. The wind tunnel created by the oddly placed buildings made the humming more bearable for me, so I could turn down the static when I was inside the concrete walls. For the past six months, I had called this parking lot home, and these kids were not about to take it away from me by running their big, fat mouths.

“We’re from the children’s hospital a few blocks from here. We’ve been looking for survivors,” the blond mouthed. He avoided eye-contact with me, but I saw him making a conscious effort not to open his mouth too wide as he spoke. I hoped the blood vessel hard at work in his temple would pop.

I shifted my weight from my right leg to my left, cursing our lack of shoes and my unnaturally large feet. My toes felt like they would burst out of the soles any minute. “And, what? A hospital somehow managed to survive the initial broadcast? The only people who survived the first song were deaf or were around the deaf and extremely lucky.”

“We were in comas,” mouthed the actress. “All four of us. When we woke up, we had earmuffs on—but when we took them off, we still couldn’t hear.”

“Someone removed your eardrums,” I mouthed at her, pointing at my ear so she’d understand, and she nodded, as if I were just confirming her suspicions. Smart cookie, I thought.

“And then we all started getting headaches—Blake suggested we put the earmuffs back on, and that stopped them. We’ve been wearing them ever since. That’s good, isn’t it?” The actress tilted her head.

I nodded. “You’re lucky you’re still alive. Come on. Follow me.”

The kids had the brains to keep their heads low as we stalked across the parking lot. People learned to be silent here, subconsciously not wanting to break the impregnable hush that could not be broken. Everything looked gray to me, and I wondered if that was from camping inside for so long, or if that were truly what the world looked like now. Before everything turned gray, I would crouch just inside the door and peer out, watching the sun inch across the parking lot.

Once, I danced along the edge of light and shadow and Elsa saw me from inside.

I kept dancing, twirling my hands above my head, loving the way the wind caressed my calves as my eyelet lace skirt lifted even with my hips. I heard the door creak open and paused, my arms still in the air. Found myself staring into the barrel of a gun. I switched my focus to the man trembling his finger on the trigger, peered into Danyl’s determined eyes, watched his jaw muscles unclench as his mouth fell open. He slowly lowered his gun and we stared at one another, me, my arms falling to hang by my sides, him, his eyes changing from determined to horrified to sad.

“Were you going to shoot me, Danyl?” I said aloud, wondering if he could still read my lips.

“I thought you took your headphones out. I didn’t know what else to do.” His hands shook. “What would you have had me done?”

“Checked if I’d actually decided to kill myself, for one.” My lips quivered as I tried to snarl, but I really just wanted to sit down and cry in the fading light. The sun had left the lot entirely, so all the light was coming from a glow through the grimy windows of the west buildings. I wanted to tell him that I’d never kill myself, not after what he’d done for me, but my lips wouldn’t form the words. Instead I mouthed, “If I want to die listening to the music, you better damn well let me,” stalking over to where he leaned limp in the doorway and digging my fingernail into the center of his chest. “You will not shoot me like a lame horse. Do you understand?”

We locked gazes, but instead of looking vulnerable and seeking my forgiveness, like I expected, Danyl’s eyes were hard. “Uaine, if you think I’m going to watch you give in to the music, you’re sorely mistaken. You’re going to die fighting, with a bullet through your chest. Listening to that…it’s a disgusting morphine drip so you’re smiling as your skull collapses on itself.”

I grabbed the side of his face and bent him in half so he could look only at my lips. “Violent images. God forbid I die in my sleep.”

He wrenched away from my grip, stumbling into the door hinges and wincing. My lips curled as I watched him rub where my fingers had bruised along his cheekbone. “We both know none of us will ever be fat and happy and old,” he mouthed, his face softening.

I couldn’t take his look. “I’m dying how I want, Danyl.” My jaw clenched as I looked him up and down. He was still in his boxer shorts. Must have run out of bed to shoot me after Elisa warned him I’d decided to bite it. A few weeks before I would have found that romantic, but now I just wondered why he was so easily convinced. Maybe all of them thought it was just a matter of time. “Just leave me alone.” I pushed past Elsa, Ree, Brummet, Hadley, whose eyes latched onto my back and followed me down the hall to my room. I slept just inside the door that night, so I could see the interruption of the light under the crack when combat boots paused for a few moments on the other side.

The center building was the grimiest, the darkest, the one that blended with both night and day. We all chose it without even a beckon from Danyl. We followed him inside, and as we squinted at the green velvet couches and glossy coffee tables and ignored the two dead bodies sprawled at awkward angles on the plush rug, we knew we’d found home. The Sisters of Charity Orphans Asylum had never boarded so many people over the age of eighteen, and had certainly never housed so many guns.

I knocked on the door and waved at the peephole. Elsa opened the door a crack so I could see her mouth move.

“Who are they?” Her eye appeared to watch my response.

“Just a bunch of kids. Open up.”

The door swung open without hesitation, revealing Elsa in all her obese glory. The teenagers judged her immediately, I was disgusted to note, ignoring her wide arms and her kind eyes and writing her off as some fatty. I stomped further into our living room and didn’t particularly care if the kids followed. Someone tapped my shoulder and I spun around, my chest heaving from my too-deep breaths (an attempt at anger management).

“What?” I yelled, relieving tension and alarming no one.

“The kids have questions and I have to go puke. Excuse me,” Taariq mouthed, and I allowed him to pass, patting him on the shoulder as I did.

I glared at the snotty teenagers. “Yes?”

“Where are we?” the actress mouthed, looking around.

“It’s an orphanage. I’d call it deserted but that’s not exactly how it played out.” The kids stared at me blankly and I realized I had moved my mouth too fast for them to understand. Rolling my eyes, I mouthed, “Or-phan-age,” and recognition sparked in their beady little eyes. “Plenty of beds and an absolute warehouse of shitty food in the kitchen.” I didn’t care to ask if they’d understood.

“How did you all survive?” The blond boy shuffled his feet, still embarrassed from earlier. I snorted. He’d have to grow a spine if he was going to spend more time with me.

“Most of us are from St. Dominic’s College for the Deaf. I’m just a lucky-ass tagalong.” I repeated “St. Dominic’s School for the Deaf” again when I saw their blank faces.

“Why didn’t you stay at St. Dominic’s? They’d have nicer facilities, and just as much food,” mouthed the other girl, the one with bad bed hair.

“Because some of us thought that was the first place they’d look for survivors.”

“Who?”

“Whoever is playing the music.”

“The music?”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, Jesus. I can’t handle this. Come on.”

"Where's Danyl?" I mouthed to Ree as he passed, his overgrown, dirty blond eyebrows looking smugger than ever.

"Mess hall." Like my home was some kind of barracks.

"It's the cafeteria, Ree, you military bastard."

He ignored me. I saw his nostrils flare as he stared at the kids playing follow-the-leader behind me. "I can’t believe you brought them down with you. Should've gotten rid of them, Uaine. Danyl isn't going to be happy with another liability brought on by you.”

"Who's Danyl?" The actress had to walk backwards in order for me to see her lips. I ignored her.

"You're going to be the liability when you can't move your legs, Ree," I mouthed, rolling my eyes. Ree had gone deaf from the “moaning minnies in ‘Nam,” or so he said. He and Elsa were the oldest survivors in our group; everyone else other than Hadley and Ruiz were college age, and had been deaf to begin with. “Taariq is puking in the bathroom—want to go hold his hair back for me? Thanks.” I pressed on before Ree could respond, heading for the cafeteria.

I noted the “Wet Floor” sign on the linoleum and turned around so the brats could see my lips move. “Watch your step. Elsa just mopped.” I glanced over my shoulder and smiled a little as I watched them slip and slide in their hospital slippers. The actress fell on her ass and I laughed out loud, not paying attention to where I was going, until—WHAM.

“Shit!” I fell on my ass, sending a weird tingling sensation throughout my torso and arms. “Is there a funny bone in your tailbone?” I mouthed at Danyl, who stood far above me, looking down and laughing. He reached out a hand and pulled me to my feet.

“I’m not even commenting on how much you deserved that.” He mouthed it out of the corner of his mouth, but I still understood perfectly. Danyl had been my tutor; I could probably read his thoughts just from his facial twitches, if I tried hard enough. “So, who are your friends?”

“These morons?” I mouthed, my back to the brat pack. “Walked here from Presbyterian Hospital. Woke up from their comas with their eardrums out and earmuffs on. Think it was Caingnigh?”

Danyl twisted his lips, considering, and approached the four of them. I watched Danyl’s back muscles tense; was he nervous? Did I make a mistake, bringing them inside? I groaned internally. The first time since the music incident last week that Danyl and I speak and I had already fucked up.

I tapped his shoulder so he’d look at me. “They don’t lip read well. Pretend they’re mentally retarded.”

“Do you need to go sit in a quiet corner for a while, Uaine?”

I bristled. “They annoy me.”

“What are their names?”

I pointed to them in turn, making sure they could read my lips. “Actress, Blond Boy, Bed Hair, and Silence.” I grinned when Bed Hair touched her rat’s nest self-consciously and then frantically patted it down.

“What are your names?” Danyl mouthed at them patiently, turning away from me without even cracking a smile. I grimaced. Why do you always have to be so annoying? I asked myself. I don’t know why he keeps you around. Idiot.

“I’m Nat,” mouthed the actress, pointing to herself. “This is Blake—” Blond Boy “—Helen—” Bed Hair “—and Mark—” Silence.

“Welcome, Nat, Blake, Helen, and Mark,” I knew he would never forget their names, now that he’d repeated them, “My name is Danyl, and this is Uaine. We’re very glad you’re with us.”

The kids were almost cute, with their chubby faces hopeful and smiling, beaming up at their savior. I knew the way they were feeling, the way Danyl made them feel. I still had a horrible, clenching feeling in my gut that I’d done something wrong, bringing them here, but Danyl wasn’t jumping down my throat just yet—so maybe I was just getting paranoid. I followed the five of them back into the living room, winked at Elsa who looked like a five-year-old at Christmas, she was so excited to have new people in her family, and sunk down into an old, green velvet couch.

I thought about Caingnigh going through Presbyterian Hospital, performing surgery and putting earmuffs on all the children in comas. I never would have thought to do that. I wasn’t sure if my brother was brilliant or just insane, but I couldn’t wait to find out. Because unless my brother had the time to fish through the massive Presbyterian for coma-victims before he left, Caingnigh was back. And that could mean only one of two things: He was going to finally admit Danyl was right and fall silently into his ranks, or there was about to be a civil war in our silent world.

A/N: So, this is my new story. :) I hope you're intrigued and not too confused. Let me know if you are, and I'll try to clarify in my second draft (or third, or fourth. You know there will be multiple). I'm thinking this won't be terribly long, but I'm still a little iffy on the plot line, so god only knows what this'll warp into.

Anyway, I appreciate any feedback you guys have for me - and please forgive me for any typos! It's six in the morning and I haven't got to sleep yet. :P

3 Jules