Sounds

There was a silence left from the resonance of a supersonic whistle.
A gap in the cosmic of sound, which lingers till it deafens you to its mere presence.

In the deep, narrow gashes left in the road of freshly laid tar, that fissured with the pressure of a heavy vehicle radial, words spewed out like silent echoes deafening into sound waves.

No one knew how long those whispers had been rising from the deep gash. Just that the gash whispered a constant cosmos of sound and no one heard now. Almost certain, some passers by paused and would swear they heard a sharp twang of painful cry. But it lasted for perhaps a fifth of a second before dissolving into an inaudible decibel. Some even lent their ear to the road. Like I said, no one knew.

And no one told me about it either, when I walked that little street. “Ssss…” I heard, like a passing train. I was almost sure I heard someone pass by, a breath on the nape of my neck. It was the gash. I bent to cover the gash with my hand and felt this surge of sudden heat. I drew back to inspect a burn I was certain would be there. “It must be my mind again,” I thought to myself. The teacher at the institute was always telling me that. I was having one of those psychic moments. Only there was nothing. Odd, I bent again. “Sssaaveeeee…” I felt an eerie tingle of syllables vibrating across my ear. The gash had a crack line above that lead to the end of the street and fell into the man hole.

I don’t know why I did it. Maybe humanity or curiosity. It just made me tumble to the man hole and lift the cover. A geyser of water slushed out and emptied into the green. And suddenly, silence broke like a blimp of a blank TV screen that has been left on and now is suddenly shut. Audio waves crumpled down. I fell and woke up in a sanitised, blue room with doctors wording sentences. And all I could hear was, “ssssssss…” It had been two days since I was out. I frowned and someone held out the newspaper.

Headline: “The mystery in the gash was water trapped in the under belly of the road.” Lead: Movement made the water ripple and the sound was made due to pressure interpreted as hissing. Reports say, a girl opened the cover and let the stream out. The ghost has been set free.

That afternoon I was ready to go home. But first I had to go to school. I’d missed out on two days. The teacher asked me if I was ok. “Sure I said,” in sign language and a cosmic sound. “It helps being deaf. We can hear things no one can,” I smiled and went into my class of ‘Hearing Disability Students.’ I almost heard her hiss out, ‘psychic,’ behind my back. We’re studying Earthquakes and ocean currents these days.