Deepest Quiet: A Short Story

By Andre Farant

This odd, darkly funny short story is approximately 2100 words.

Included with Deepest Quiet are the first three chapters of my novel, Deer Lake.

Do let me know what you think!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andre Farant
• Release date: Dec 17, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465854070

Andre Farant

I studied English Literature at Carleton University. Since then I have developed an indescribably aimless resume. I have worked as a security guard, a Court Services Officer, a model, an actor, a teacher of English as a second language, a project coordinator for an NGO, and a Research Officer with the Government of Canada. I have eaten whale in Iceland, live octopus in South Korea, and beaver tail in Canada. I am a working writer and have had pieces published in Micro Horror, Weird Year, The Midwest Literary Magazine, and the “Off Season” anthology. I currently reside in Montreal, Quebec.

Book preview

Deepest Quiet

By Andre Farant

Copyright 2011 Andre Farant

Smashwords Edition

www.andrefarant.com

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Table of Contents

Deepest Quiet

Contact Andre

Deer Lake Preview

Deepest Quiet

The base throbs like an infected wound. I can hear it through the east wall. That's apartment three. I hammer the door and a boy-man answers. He's wearing a baseball cap indoors. Behind him, the music is a living thing, tumorous and spreading. I ask him if he realizes he shares this building with others. I ask him if he's an idiot or an asshole. He rolls his eyes and tells me not to freak out, that I'll get a stroke.

*

Inane, insane lyrics bleed through the west wall and into our bedroom. Apartment six. My earplugs fail; the music soaks through them, drenching my brain. Lila sleeps on. She once slept through a parade. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks.

I pull on a pair of old jeans and a flannel shirt. I knock on the door and a young woman answers, laughing and cradling a wine glass. She wears pyjama pants and a tight t-shirt. No bra. I keep my eyes on her plump face and ask her if she realizes some people have to work in the morning. She asks me Aren't you retired? and I tell her that's not the point, not the point at all. She tells me Fine and laughter like breaking glass drifts out from deep within the apartment, mingling dissonantly with the music.

*

The cars are mobile carnivals. Only one, maybe two, passengers per vehicle. Young men wearing sunglasses at night. The back seats have been sacrificed to speakers the size of washer-dryer units. The cars vibrate sonorously with every beat and so do my windows. I shout at them, demand that they turn it down, but my voice is lost in the clamour, my breath wasted.

Do women find these men and their travelling noise pollution attractive? Do women mistake the biggest, loudest speakers for signs of genetic superiority? Stupid women drawn to stupid men, producing successive generations of wasted flesh.

I want to throw an empty wine bottle out my window and watch it explode across their windshield, punch a hole in their woofers, or shatter against their teeth.

*

Lila says we should go on vacation. She says we can afford it and that I can no longer afford not to. She may be right. She makes her suggestions—Hawaii, the French Riviera, London—and I hear only laughing, shouting, jostling tourists and loud, obnoxious, rude locals. Finally, she says What about Iceland? I stare at the Atlas page, at the tiny white island nestled between Greenland and mainland Europe, and I imagine the wind's lonely voice, a desolate moonscape that stretches cleanly to the horizon, and void-like nights that last all day.

I realize I am nodding.

*

At the airport, a couple’s argument worries my nerves like fingernails at a scab. On the plane, an infant’s