Seconds collapsed and time stopped. It felt like Ethan’s heartbeat took a pause longer than it was supposed to. And his brain froze in the moment. Cold wind from the door slapped Ethan’s beard covered face as if mocking him for the adversity that had just struck.
Unfocused yet attempting to make some sense, the curious boy’s eyes tried to look out for any sounds. Maybe a hiss from the sighing stars or the night’s typical chirps. But no owl hooted like it did every night. Or was that Ethan who couldn’t hear the owl that was hooting in some distance?
Without a command from his paused mind, Ethan’s feet tapped the floor. When his ears picked nothing, he hit his foot to the side of the door loudly, the pain came but no banging made it to his ears. Desperately, he kicked a few pebbles that rolled aimlessly but the ground or the stones never crunched the grain under the weight of the young man’s feet.
He turned around in a mad-dash to the kitchen counter and turned over the tap. Quickly, at the same time, Ethan looked for the TV’s remote and turned it on to a high volume. He played with the volume control multiple times but no sound made it to Ethan’s ear. It was, as if, they had suddenly stopped working.
Ethan sat down on his purple couch, looking at the lines in the ceilings; tracing the mindless patterns with his eyes. Realization failed to settle in Ethan’s mind, it only hovered thick in the air, like the scent of heavy smoke that hangs as a remnant of some deep loss. Sleep came though in small episodes of worry. It wrapped up Ethan in a hug of forgetfulness of what had happened.
In between sleep, the full magnitude of what had happened hit Ethan. With heavy curtains of sleep in his droopy eyes, the young man understood the complete intensity of what he had asked for. Life does not store adversity in its obvious, predictable forms. Rather, life encourages adversity to dress in attires of deception and unpredictability. And adversity always came in a form that was previously unimaginable and uncomprehended by the mind.
Mornings came and went. Days bled into more days but Ethan stayed in bed. Occasionally, getting up to fetch water for his parched throat or for grabbing an apple for calming the hunger drums rolling in his belly. But no sounds came. It was a constant vacuum in which Ethan lived. No sound crossed this bubble.
It was only when the sun rays hit Ethan’s eyelids that he learned that the darkest hour of the night had shifted to dawn. Before that, the sound always told him the hour. Now, he couldn’t rely on his auditory senses, which was a pity. After all, he asked for it himself.
The only thing was that Ethan was not prepared for such a heavy punch to his soul. Of all his calculations, an adversity that he couldn’t think of came to him and swept him off his feet. Now there was something else that Ethan had to deal with in addition to the pain of anxiety. Regret.
