Ari did not plan it.
That distinction mattered to him, even later.
The progression happened the way everything else had—incrementally, logically, as if following a path that had always been there. Breaking objects had brought relief. Objects were safe. Objects did not bleed. Objects did not look back at him.
But objects also stopped working.
The relief they offered grew thinner with repetition. The silence afterward shortened, the noise returning faster, louder, more insistent. Ari found himself breaking more things, harder things, chasing the same quiet that had once arrived so easily.
One afternoon, walking home alone, he heard it.
A sharp, frantic sound near the alley behind the convenience store. Scrabbling. High-pitched distress that cut through the air like glass.
Ari froze.
The sound hit him immediately—piercing, overwhelming—but beneath it was something else. A strange clarity. His pulse steadied instead of spiking. His breathing slowed.
He followed the sound without thinking.
A small animal had gotten caught in a piece of loose fencing, its body thrashing in panicked bursts. It squealed, a raw, repetitive sound that scraped against Ari's nerves.
The noise inside him surged in response, rising to match it.
Ari crouched nearby, heart pounding, hands shaking. He watched the animal struggle, watched the way its movements became more erratic as panic took over.
Something aligned inside him then—pressure meeting pressure.
He reached out.
The moment was fast. Unconsidered. A reflex shaped by months of overload and release.
When it was over, the sound stopped.
Completely.
Ari stumbled backward, chest heaving, staring at what lay still on the ground. The world seemed to tilt, then right itself.
The silence that followed was unlike anything he had experienced before.
It wasn't just the absence of noise—it was depth. Spaciousness. A clean, wide quiet that stretched in every direction. His thoughts slowed to a near halt. His muscles loosened. The constant ache behind his eyes dissolved.
Ari sank down against the brick wall, breathing deeply, deeply, as if he'd been underwater and had just surfaced.
He felt sick. He felt calm.
The two sensations existed simultaneously, layered without cancelling each other out.
Footsteps sounded nearby—someone passing on the street. Ari flinched, panic flaring briefly, but it faded quickly. He wiped his hands on his jeans, stood shakily, and walked away without looking back.
No one stopped him.
At home, he washed his hands carefully, scrubbing until his skin reddened. He expected the noise to return, expected guilt or fear or something sharp and punishing.
None of it came.
That night, he lay awake, staring at the ceiling, replaying the moment in fragments. The sound. The movement. The sudden, absolute quiet afterward.
He did not justify what he had done. He did not excuse it. He simply acknowledged the result.
For the first time in his life, the noise had stopped entirely.
Not dulled. Not delayed.
Stopped.
As the memory settled into him, Ari felt something unfamiliar stir—not pleasure, not pride, but recognition.
He had crossed a boundary.
And on the other side of it, he had found something he had never known before.
Silence.