The Peace Deal

Noise.
It was their weapon of choice.
Their preferred method of torture.
The noise started before she pulled her eyes open and stopped sometime after, or so she assumed, she succumbed to sleep.

You can close your eyes, and actively NOT see something. You can shut out an image completely. But not noise. Covering her ears just dulled the sound, it became muffled and unclear...but still present. In actual fact, she was sure when she tried to cover her hears they just got louder.

The pitch ranged from tranquil and melodic to shrill and abrasive.

But it just. Didn't. Stop.

She had made it as far as Thursday, and knew if they were to all survive to the weekend a peace deal would have to be made...in every sense of the word.

But with the constant noise dulling her senses and ability to think with any clarity, the exact terms of this peace deal were hard to fathom. She would have to lead her tormentors into believing that this was in their interests. She had to convince the wider world that she was doing this for the benefit of her tormentors and not for her own sanity. She had to be smart. And smart is something that is hard to be when you had a constant irregular sounds permeating the eardrums almost every second of the day. She also had nothing to bribe them with. They had taken all she had, every last penny. Anything that was of any value to her had been destroyed by them in some form so that it was now virtually worthless to anyone else. She had nothing to bargain with.

She had tried to be active to escape the noise. Running, with them at her heels. But they just chased her. And rather than tire, they just got fitter and ran harder and longer than she could manage any more.

She tried to join in. But they were on different wavelengths and they were hostile to any of her attempts at engagement with them. The noise changed when she tried this approach. It would almost always convert to a drone, or a whine. They were impossible to win over.

As Thursday wore on she came closer and closer to the end of her tether. She could see its frayed knot at the end and with each new scream, shriek and moan she moved closer and closer to the end of it.

Then it occurred to her. With careful wording and the right tone of voice and the appropriate facial expression she could convince them. She was sure.

She practised. Over and over until she had the exact tone she needed. She anticipated their questions, their protestations, their 'alternatives'. She came up with answers for all of them.

She planted the seed. A little idea for them to mull over...as they continued with their frantic crashing and banging it hardly seemed to have been noticed. But like any seed...it isn't obvious its been planted at first. But it was there, working away beneath the surface.

Then she waited. The noise didn't seem so bad for a moment. Maybe because now she had hope. Hope that it would soon be over. And slowly but surely it begun working. She had their interest.

When eventually they came to her. They had a proposal for her. A first. Normally it was demands with no gratitude or grace. But now they wanted something and were prepared to negotiate.

They sat down and negotiated their peace deal.

Within the hour the noise had stopped. Totally.

It was their idea. Naturally.

The rest of the world wouldn't judge her or chastise her. No one had come to harm. In fact everyone seemed happier than they had in a while.

And for an hour she was able to sit, with a hot cup of tea. And think. And write. This was a new experience for her. Half Term and an hour to herself. What a treat!

But then the thing she wanted, craved, prayed for; the quiet she so desperately felt she deserved started to haunt her. It dawned on her in an instant. With a sudden sense of foreboding. She put down her laptop. Stopped writing. Left the tea cup half drunk.

A quiet toddler is a very dangerous thing.