The thunder of water drumming on wood. The screaming of wind between headstones. Sounds of sorrow and anguish from humans standing there, in front of a casket. Death on the faces of all the people. Their eyes red and baggy, cheeks and noses blotched from crying. Their loved one now dead and worlds away.
Brentley felt as though he couldn’t breathe. His throat was constricting around some invisible lump that was lodged there. His mind felt hazy and blank as though nothing in his like had ever happened. The gentle twitching of his fingers and noise ringing like a church bell in his ears. He couldn’t hear the thunder, or the preacher, or the others grieving. All he could hear was a shout of surprise. Then a thump on the floor. The moment of his wife’s death playing over and over again in his mind. It wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop it.
The littlest things in life began to get to him more and more as time went on. He was no longer able to go into his bedroom. Soon the rooms in his own home he couldn’t stand to enter began to grow. The ticking of the clock getting louder and louder. His ears started to ring.
TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK.
His body began to move with the sound that to most people would be unnoticed. His fingers would jolt. Eyes moving side to side. He began seeing things. Things that weren’t really there. He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t say. No one would believe. The bodies. The monsters. The gore. Nothing was really how it seemed to others.
He saw his eyes roll across the floor. Maggots crawling under his skin. Making his mind travel back to his wife, under the ground, the was the worms would eat through the wood just to get to her stiff, dead body. Crawling through her skin, through her flesh, her organs. They would eat right through her to the heart that once belonged to him.
Brentley wasn't sane. He couldn’t see where he was anymore. His hair matted in clumps, face unshaven and dirty. His body still ticking to the sound of an invisible clock. Back and forth. Tic tock.
