Noise

It is a grand and sweeping thing. A city with a face, ugly and old and corrupt. It lives and breathes, consuming the noise of the people. It dines on their dreams and hopes, it is the bubble that cannot be pierced save for a rescue party coming from the outside.

The sky is blackened, devoid of stars. The lights from the city eat the stars and the city eats the memories of the people and then, there were no stars. Dancing laughing screaming mad in the middle of the night, lights on inside of a building impossibly big so as to accommodate the appetite of the Restless Thing, where people drawn and painted in flat expression and color and form live like panels on a comic book page, or splashes of die on a cave wall. There is a certain sort of beauty in this damned module, the sort of thing you can look at from far away. You can hear the gossiping, the noise of the party with women in sequined flapper dresses and frilly feathery hats, long gloves from a bygone era and flat jazz from a saxophone bouncing through the night.

The murmur of a thousand businessmen talking to their peers, discussing those dreams that serve as the feast of the Restless Thing and not realizing that by wishing harder they're only locking the chains; Add another panel to the walls, add another row of bars to the cage. Listen to the chittering and laughing, knowing at once what is being said despite not being able to make out a single

word

It is the work of a madman, it is what sleeplessness writes when given the choice to speak. It is the ghost of a bride that doesn't exist, it is the mirror of self that used to exist, it is colorful flourishes and things that sound cool and meaningless and profound and

noise

It is the insane roar of someone haunted by words they may or may not have written. It is inspiration without an outlet, the dam crumbling and colors, purple and orange and already mixed rupturing forth. It is a birthday you forgot for years and happened across. It is wonderment. It is confusion.

It is noise. Sounds without volume. Words without voice. It is speech without words. Just the mental version of television static. It is a dull roar, turned down from maximum.

Just noise.