'When man first took foot on the earth, what was it that gave him the most joy? Was it the rewards from his painstaking hunt? Or the natural beauty of the world surrounding him? No, it was the sight of home'

2015 Sunday. 5:21 AM.

Silence, a commodity that I had considered lost to me until today. The house which I experienced 32 years of my life was finally peaceful, it was what I wanted, what I yearned for, what I prayed for, and yet, it felt worthless.

I turned off the lights and made my way out to the front porch, upon opening the door, the cool still air entered my nose; the smell of cedar trees had a relaxing effect. With porch light dimly illuminating the way, I closed the door behind me and proceeded to take a seat on the porch stairs.

I noticed the flaky sky blue paint that I had chipped off by sitting; a mental note was made to repaint the stairs in the future. Smiling, I recalled my grandfather's past lectures "Henryk always make sure the house is painted, it lets people know that you are living here. And take pride in your house colour, in my homeland they did not let us have bright colours, but people had more to worry about than painting" and with that, he would always laugh a warm joyful laugh.

Grandfather and grandmother had always raised me to be grateful for the mundane things in life, but as I grew older, it became easier to forget just how good life was. I lifted my hand to my chest as I stared it down, the golden band around my ring finger no longer bore its illustrious shine "I blame you" I whispered, gently removing the ring from my finger.

With a deep breath, I hurled the ring into the darkness of the twilight day and waited for the sound of it landing. The silence was what greeted me, a silence that seemed unnatural, there were not the usual sounds of the forest at night, no sound of the wind brushing the leaves of the trees, no chattering or chirping of the forest fauna, nothing.

A twisted feeling began to develop within my gut, the lack of sound was extremely distressing, I turned my head left and right, searching for something to throw into the darkness, my eyes landed on a discarded bottle, laying on its side by the porch. Standing up, I tread towards where the bottle was, as I picked it up a sticky slimy substance covered my fingers, passing the bottle to my other hand I noticed bits of slug dangling off my fingers. After flinging bits of slug guts to the ground, I turned my attention back towards the darkness, it was then that I noticed lights.