Weekly Writing – August 17 2024

The rule for surviving the night out here is simple – ignore whatever calls for you from outside. Keep the doors and windows locked, the record player braying brassy cheer if you’re lucky enough to have one, and just don’t listen to what can’t hurt you if you don’t go outside.
It’s simple – that’s the first thing they say, clapping you on the shoulder and welcoming you to frozen hell. What they don’t say, what they never tell you, is how it eats at you, trying not to listen. How the things outside don’t try just one siren call, but will keep picking voices from your memory, shames and desires that no living creature aside from you should know, and calling you from the frozen dark with those.
They don’t tell you what it does to you, hearing the voice of your mother, your son, the person you promised to have and to hold but let slip away, screaming for help from somewhere in the night. In pain, in terror, lost, dying in the cold, and they know you can hear them, so why aren’t you coming to save them?
Hearing them, night after night after night, and ignoring them. Hearing what sounds for all the world like the agony of everyone you’ve ever loved, and pouring yourself another cup of coffee. Closing your heart to their voices.
It devours you as surely as the things outside would, but slowly, gnawing the heart out of your chest with teeth of keening sound. If I ever truly hear their voices again, will I be able to feel anything but dread?
Will I love you ever sound like anything but a lure? This is why none of those who move out here for money or solitude, locking their doors against false promises at night, ever leave. How could we live in the world again after this?
How can we ever truly believe anything again except that it isn’t safe to open the door?