*Friday, June 4th* *** The windows rattled their typical ominous warning as the hollow wind blew through their outer shutters. He would sleep little tonight, he realized, as he clicked the deadbolt to the front door. Once upon a time, stormy weather soothed his worries and carried him to rest. Today, the howling of the wind and the rustling of the leaves, the cracks and booms and flashes and roars--all of it would wash away in the symphony of silence that would soon fill his nights. At first, it would be tolerable. Strange, but soothing; unsettling, yet somehow inviting. The first night would almost feel like a relief, after the day that preceded it. After years of dedicated practice, he hadn't gotten any better at breaking a heart. Still, he ripped the tape, as clean a cut as he could manage, and retired home with few regrets. He cooked dinner, and he ate half, and as he polished his space--careful to remove any evidence that a living person actually, really used it--he listened to the buzz of the world surrounding him. Even this far out of town, he could hear the busy Friday night turning its noisy, ancient wheels, desperate to keep its grinding gears in motion for fear of them rusting still. The Hum, he called it. The Hum of life; the hum of humanity. The hum never particularly bothered him--it's difficult to find annoyance in something so constant you barely notice. That's the funny thing about the hum, and about so much else: you only really notice when it's gone. It's why, on this first night, he thought his eardrums might burst. The initial moment of silence was, admittedly, unbearable--after the groaning, guttural roar of a night starving to burn forever was stealthily snuffed, leaving nothing in its place, as if everything had just... stopped. But everything had not stopped. In fact, nothing had. The fridge continued cooling, the air continued conditioning, and the old stone cogs of the Friday night lights continued to turn--in absolute silence. On Friday, June the 4th, at 11:03 p.m., the hum of life went completely quiet. It wasn’t deafness. At least, he wouldn’t call it such. The pages of his book still rustled with each turn, crisp in the near-perfect, almost-silence, as if they hadn't received the instruction. His breathing still permeated the dead air. And then there was the drumming—a constant, rhythmic beating that could be heard in the eerie calm—not aggressive, but with conviction; the conviction of a first-ever solo performance. It was this obscurity alone that stole his attention in the first place. And it hurt. His initial instinct to slam his palms over his ears did nothing to quiet the drums, nor to dampen the ringing that seemed to accompany it, and the discomfort that started in his head began to spread throughout his body. Overcome with nausea, he bolted out of bed and into the kitchen just in time to aim the evening's dinner at the sink. Once. Twice. A shiver, then a third time. And then relief. As he washed the sick down the drain, a strange sense of irony replaced the churning in his stomach. He used to hate throwing up. More than hate, really—fear. Since he was a boy he had dedicated tremendous amounts of effort to resist vomiting in any capacity. He couldn't quite put his finger on when he grew out of it—when he came to realize the occasional necessity—but he chuckled to himself as he thanked his stomach for allowing it this once. With the sink basin cleaned, he reached for the handle to cut the flow of water, when irony was replaced yet again with a subtle feeling of confusion. His home was an old one, and a loud one. Nine of ten wood panels would creak on impact, and the rest would groan in sympathy for their neighbors. The windows rattled at the slightest disturbance, and the crudely adjoined bricks even seemed to whisper sweet somethings of the past to any passersby, attentive or otherwise. Most notably, though, was the pipes. Every source of running water in the house—every stream, every drop, and every trickle—was accompanied, spout to drain, by a low-pitched rumble. It was more offensive than the Hum, and something that he always told himself he would look in to fixing. So, as he wrapped his knuckles around the handle to turn the faucet off, he wondered, first to himself and then aloud: *What the fuck?* "What the fuck?" he voiced for nobody in particular. For the second time tonight, another first had occurred. His kitchen sink, running a steady stream of barely consumable water, made not a single sound. The water could be heard rushing out, but without the usual harmonies brought on by the internal change in pressure. He wasn't sure how long he stared at the stream, though he supposed his next water bill would give him some indication. Once he finally accepted that gaping at the faucet would change nothing about the decibels it was outputting, he turned the handle to the right and closed the flow. The typical thump of the ancient pipe’s inner valve slamming closed failed to ring out. Thoroughly confounded, he approached the front door of his small home. Cautiously gripping the knob, not quite sure what he was expecting to find on the other side, he turned the handle and eased the door open. To genuine surprise, the door *did* creak. He watched several cars speed down the highway, just past his vast expanse of unused yard—without making a sound. As if the engines, the tires, the minuscule particles of the very road itself had all been rendered mute. He stood there, as silently as the cars, hand resting on the door, for several minutes. He counted the cars breathlessly zooming through the night, not quite sure what to make of the whole phenomenon. And yet, his lips began to twitch—twitch, twitch, twitch, in time with the ceaseless drumming he’d almost grown to ignore—until a smile had bloomed where his puzzled frown once wilted his features. The hollow feeling in the air, albeit unusual, brought with a sense of calmness—a feeling that, though the world continued to turn, he need not pay it any attention. A third first of the evening. So he retired again to his bed, and resigned from his position in reality in favor of a short story he was particularly fond of. And he read in the quiet, and gradually, his confusion devolved to mild concern, which faded into blissful ignorance. As concerning things often do. Until his stream of consciousness was disrupted with a splash—courtesy of what must have been a top contender for the loudest sound any tangible matter has ever produced. The noise in question was, of course, the low rumble of the refrigerator, announcing its grand return to his fragile eardrums. Its arrival as swift as its departure, the ambience of the universe rang out simultaneously across the void it had left. On Friday, June the 4th, at 11:45 p.m., the world began to Hum again.