Unzip and Other Compact Stories

  …hardly notice how it started, it was as if it had always been there, the ticking of a clock, or the hum of a fridge. It had arrived stealthily, like an underlying doubt, and although it would be almost impossible to pinpoint now, there must have been a starting point, a beginning, a moment in time when the silence was broken.

  Broken? No, silence is not a piece of fragile glass to be shattered by piercing notes. Silence is a bar on a pentagram; it is music’s perfect partner.

  Let us say then, that there came a time when the sound grew loud enough to be heard. It nagged at our daily lives, invaded our dreams, eventually imposing itself on us totally as it moved

  from imperceptibility

  through dissonance

  into deafening noise.

  SYMPHONY