Prompt 75 - Hush - "Postal" - spikespetslayer - OC

[dedra.livejournal.com]

Title: Postal
Fandom/Pairing: None
Warnings: implied violence
Rating: T
Summary: All he wanted was a little peace and quiet.

A/N: For someone that doesn't like guns--well, I don't know where this came from.



Postal

Hush. I can’t hear myself think with the blathering that is coming out of your mouth. Constant verbal diarrhea that never quits—that’s how I’ve come to think of it. Never making much sense or meaning anything, with no substance or quality; just noise to fill the spaces that grow larger between us.

You don’t see it that way, do you? You think that it’s cement, making us closer. You talk about feelings like they were commodities on the stock market, not personal or private, not with any nuance or shading. To you they are stark and plain; you live in a black and white world, where my world is more shaded with grays and whites.

Now all I see is red.

All I want for you to do is shut your mouth just for a moment. Just for a second of time, a millisecond, a nanosecond. Let your jaw rest, the muscles of your mandible and maxilla relax long enough for my ears to stop bleeding. That really is all I ask of you. Just a moment’s peace.

Still you talk. Still you blabber on, mindlessly ignoring me as I roll my eyes and try to ignore the grating sound of your voice.

It isn’t hard to figure out when the love became exasperation or the need became disgust. It was the moment after we said I do; you started talking then, almost ten years ago today, and never stopped.

Sometimes, I wonder how you breathe. I wonder how anyone can breathe and talk at the same time. It amazes me that someone can talk nonstop and never pause to inhale, not once that I can remember. You only stop when you’re asleep and even then you aren’t quiet. You snore worse than a bear in winter. You smack your lips and burp and fart and make me want to writhe in pain with my hands over my ears.

Why? Why do you have to make so much noise all the time?

The only time that I get away from your noise is at work—even there, there are sounds that grate on raw nerves that never seem to have time to heal. The machines that sort and stamp and ping, the whoosh of paper as it goes through multiple rollers and channels and gets dumped into baskets and bins for delivery. The never-ending sound of dings and buzzers going off at the slightest thickness; the sound of the clock ticking and the door as it opens and shuts. They all drive me to distraction; even earplugs don’t help anymore.

Maybe that’s why I find myself doing what I’m doing right now. The cool feel of the metal in my hand as your mouth finally grinds to a halt—it’s a feeling that I’ve been waiting for years to feel. You gape at me now that I tell you this, but I’ve been telling you. The pressure built up until I couldn’t stand another second and then BOOM—it just imploded inside me and made me see red over the grays, the whites, the blacks. It made me so angry that I went to the closet and got the gun, my father’s gun, the one that he held in his hand when they took him down.

I guess my dad and me are a lot alike. He had to be taken down too, you know—seven SWAT team members died when he lost it. His team, his friends, gone in the powder flash of a bullet without a second thought.

I never understood him then. Maybe now I do. Come to think of it, I do. My mother never shut up either, did you know that?

Psychologists say that we look for women like our mothers and men like our fathers. I don’t know about that. I remember that when we were first dating that you never said more than ten words to me on any of the dates that we went on together. You were shy and quiet and I liked that about you.

It was too good to last—too good to be true.

I’m sorry, dear. I’m sorry that I have to do this to you. I would have liked it if you listened, but there was no way that I could get a word in edgewise.

Now that I’m holding this Glock against your temple, though, you’re quiet enough for me to talk. Now. Too bad it’s too late.