Your Turn to Suffer by Tim Waggoner (the ebook reader .txt) 📕

you wince and grit your teeth, make you look around to see if you could pinpoint the origin of the non-sound. But of course you never could. This non-sound was like that, and it quickly grew stronger, more intense. Shivers began to run up and down his spine, and a cold fluttering took up residence in his gut. He felt a headache building rapidly, and he thought of Lori’s migraines, hoped his headache didn’t grow into one of those monsters. But damn did it hurt. Another wave of vertigo came over him, different than the last. He felt imbalanced in every part of his body, as if his very atoms were quivering so violently the binding forces between them might break and he’d fall apart into nothing.

He became aware of a deeper non-sound then, one so vast it seemed to permeate all creation. It was the silent scream of the universe dying, a scream that had started less than a nanosecond after the Prime Event and which had continued ceaselessly for trillions of years. The universe was born to die, and it had been doing this since the beginning of time and would continue to do so after time itself had become a meaningless, forgotten concept. Hearing the deathscream of all existence was far more agonizing than the heightened sounds of before had been, for this non-sound affected him on a mental and spiritual level rather than merely a physical one.

He remembered what Goat-Eyes had said.

Now you can hear everything…and nothing.

She hadn’t spoken metaphorically. He had been able to hear everything before, and now he could hear Nothing with a capital N. He was hearing the unvoice of Nonexistence, of Nullity, of the Void, of Oblivion…and it wasn’t simply killing him – although it was doing that as well – it was obliterating him, reducing him to nothing piece by piece, bit by bit, and he knew that soon there wouldn’t be anything left of him. The consciousness that thought of itself as Larry Ramirez would be gone, and capital N Nothing would take its place.

Wild, unreasoning, animal terror gripped him. Although the thinking part of his mind knew he couldn’t escape the unsound, the instinctive part, the part that, when confronted with danger, reacted first and saved thinking for later, shrieked at him to flee, and that’s what he did. He ran into the street, mouth wide open as if he was screaming at the top of his lungs, but he could not hear his own voice, had no idea if he was producing any sound at all. Cars swerved to avoid him, the drivers behind their windshields looking shocked, confused, angry. When he reached the middle of the street, the rational part of his mind started functioning again, and it informed him that he had done something extremely foolish. Vehicles continued streaming toward him, and he knew he was in serious danger of being struck by one.

The deathscream of All receded in his consciousness as survival instinct kicked in, but he was still aware of it in the back of his mind, and he knew he always would be. He needed to get the hell out of the street before—

A big black car of indeterminate make came racing toward him. He caught a glimpse of the driver, a man wearing sunglasses even though it wasn’t particularly sunny this afternoon. He thought then of what Lori had told him of her dreams – no, her nightmares – of riding along the Nightway in a black car driven by a man who had no eyes. He didn’t question that this was the same man driving the same car. He could sense it, and even if he hadn’t been able to do so, the bastard’s cruel grin would’ve told him the man had come to kill him.

The black car came at him fast, so fast that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to avoid it. He was tempted to stand there and let the vehicle run him down. Now that he’d heard the deathscream of the universe, he understood in the deepest level of his being that death was the ultimate end product of life. There was no point in continuing, of delaying the inevitable. The only reason he didn’t let the car hit him was because he feared the universe’s deathscream would follow him down into nonexistence and he’d never be free of it.

The black car was mere inches from hitting him when he threw himself to the right. At first he thought that despite his expectations he was going to make it, but then the edge of the vehicle’s front bumper struck his left foot. The impact spun him around, flipped him over, and he hit the asphalt on his back. Pain shot through his body like lightning, and this time when he cried out, he was able to hear his own voice. His cry was a needle that punctured the bubble of silence, and the sounds of the world rushed in upon him once more. He heard the screeching of tires as drivers fought to avoid hitting him, and he heard people on the sidewalks shouting, although he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He still heard the non-sound of the universal deathscream, though, and he knew he always would. It was part of him now.

He hurt all over, but he pushed himself up on all fours anyway, ignoring the fiery pain in his left leg and his back’s shrieking protests. He faced the direction the black car had gone, but he saw no sign of it. He turned his head toward Grinders, and among the crowd that had gathered on the sidewalk, he saw the goat-eyed woman. She smiled at him as her hands began moving.

Next time, she signed.

Then she turned and began walking away. Larry tried to follow her with his eyes, but a wave of weakness came over him and his arms could no longer support him. He fell to the ground, and the