The Sound of Silence

Based on the same titled song by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Take it back."

Nita's voice was flat and deadly as she glared icily at Kit, her gray eyes sparking with fury.

"Why should I?" Kit spat back at her, contempt ladled heavily on his frozen reply. "It's true, isn't it? Jerk."

Nita was on her feet in an instant, her hands balling into fists at her sides, her eyes brimming with tears of animosity.

"Kit Rodriguez," she hissed icily, "get the hell out of this room."

"I was just going," Kit said haughtily, turning on his heel and stalking out, slamming the door behind him.

Kit stalked out of Nita's house and onto the street, where he was nearly bowled over by his dog, Ponch. Ponch, sensing his master's fury, whined disconsolately at Kit's side, wagging his tail appeasably. Kit grabbed onto his dog's collar and, apparently, muttered something in the Speech, as both dog and master suddenly found themselves elsewhere than on the corner of Conway Avenue.

They were surrounded on all sides by an oppressive, enveloping silence. Kit's ears began to sing the high-pitched note that reaches ears when total silence falls. Kit had no doubt that the silence would swallow anything he tried to scream or yell, and, his anger at Nita fading, he held onto Ponch's collar and pressed forward.

As he and Ponch moved through the clinging shroud of nothing, something began to take shape underfoot, and Kit froze, fearing the unknown.

It was a single, brownish-red, circular cobblestone. Kit looked curiously over at Ponch, and saw that his dog, too, was standing on a cobblestone. His brown eyes moved up and over Ponch and took in the spectacle of what suddenly lay before him.

A narrow, tree-lined cobblestone path led off into the distance, blurring as it neared the horizon line, then vanished.

There was nothing for it. Ponch took the lead, trotting down the cobblestone path ahead of his master.

After what felt like an hour's worth of walking, Kit stopped to rest up against the only change in scenery from the huge Ponderosa pines lining the street- a large, iron gas streetlamp that shone brightly in a halo of light, illuminating the path and the trees around it. Kit sighed wearily, noiselessly, ready to turn back, and turned his back on the darkness that loomed ahead of him, obscuring the cobblestone path like a low-hanging fog.

Without warning, something broke through the impenetrable silence; a barely audible pop, and Kit's eyes were skewered by the intense glow of what seemed to be a neon light that penetrated both the dark and the silence.

And, without warning, Kit was surrounded by people. The formerly barren landscape suddenly teemed with people that had emerged from the trees at either side of the path, talking, singing, and doing various other strange acts- all in total silence.

Kit felt as though he had to say something. And so he did.

"Fools!" his voice rang out over the silent landscape. "You do not know that silence, like a cancer, grows. Hear my words that I might teach you! Take my arms in that I might reach you!"

He might as well have been talking to numerous brick walls. His words fell to the ground like silent snow cascading down from the heavens, completely unheeded by the ten thousand that thronged the path, drawn like moths to the pinkish glow of a neon sign.

Strangely enough, these people, primitive and uncivilized as they were, wearing bark and wood clothing, had congregated around the base of the neon and glass sculpture, and most had fallen to their knees in reverence of the strange, glowing god in their midst.

Kit tore his gaze away from the people to gaze up in wonderment at the sign that towered well overhead, and squinted at its huge, almost spectral pink glow.

It is forming.

The words of the Prophets are written

On the subway walls

And tenement halls.

And as Kit read the sign, the sign itself seemed to be whispering these words, over and over, louder and louder, until it was reverberating in Kit's ears, and Kit cried out in pain.

There was a whirl of color, of scent, and Kit jerked his eyes open.

He was lying in his bed at home, Ponch looking worriedly at him from Kit's desk chair.

Was it real? Ponch asked curiously.

Kit, shaking, stared around, and basked in the comfort of familiarity. "Yeah, Ponch… It was," he said quietly, examining what lay on his bed before him.

It was a single, brownish-red cobblestone.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A/N: Hallao, chaps! Jolly good fic, wot? You've read, now review, sounds good and logical, eh? You over there points to a random reader What did you think?

Reader 1: Who, me?

Viper: Nah, chap, the butterfly next to you.

Reader 1: What butterfly? Butterfly? Where?

Viper: Groans Never mind, chap.

Reader 1: goes happily skipping off after imaginary butterfly

Viper: puts on forced grin Anyway, chaps…you HAVE read, now, would it be so hard to push the little button marked Submit Review? Yup, that one… thank you very much!

Over 'n' out,

Viper676