The End

For seventy years, the house had been silent. Wrapped in a soundless cocoon, even the creaks of ancient wood were muted. Birds did not sing in the trees, but stared with beady black eyes. Footsteps were muffled. Passersby moved on tiptoe without knowing why.

In the attic room, an old man wrote with a pen into an open book. Similar tomes littered the ground and the shelves. With a flourish, he finished the final line. He was nearly at the end of his self-imposed exile. He looked up at the narrow window and smiled.

He opened his mouth to speak…