Laughter

I hear that laughter, so loud. It wakes me in the middle of the night, a seemingly never ending cacophony. It drives me to the brink of insanity, it laughs at me, taunting me. I awoke today, as always to the sound of that sinister laughter. 3 AM  in the morning, so loud, so sinister. I lay on my bed shivering in fear, for i have yet to find out what makes that noise. I look around my room, everything is as it should be. The closet door closed, a chair propped up against the handle. The bathroom door is closed shut, the window beside my bed is latched. I turn on my lamp, and take a look around my room. Never leaving the comfort of my bed, I use my eyes to scan over the entire room. Nothing. I see nothing at all, besides what’s supposed to be there, I see nothing. The laughter, it stopped. It actually stopped, I felt like I was safe. I decided to leave the lamp on, what harm could it do to leave it on? Since when we were savages we always relied on the light to keep the monsters at bay. As I closed my eyes, I could not help but notice how quiet it was. The presence of the laughter was my world, it was everything. From the very early hours of morning to the heaviness of late night. It was always here with me, always around me. Now with the light on, in the middle of the night, the laughter had left me. I slept though, exhaustion got the best of me. I work as a teacher at the local high school, I love working with the students. Yes, there is always those students who refuse to learn, to listen. Though they never really ruined the entire experience of teaching, in a way they made it better, made it more of a challenge. My entire life was a challenge, I like that. My father abandoned my mum and I when I was but seven years of age. School was my only escape from the world, in school I found that I could rise to any challenge. That I could succeed and overcome anything. I awoke at 7:47 AM, late, I only had 13 minutes to get to school and get the class ready for first period. I quickly got ready, it surprised me as to how fast I got all the necessities taken care of. I ran to the car, though mid way, I realized, the deathly silence was still there. Lingering in the air, suspended in time it seemed. I had no time to ponder on matters concerning the silence around me, I have a tendency to be paranoid anyways. I arrived at 8:05 AM, 5 minutes late. The class was already inside the class room, though they were making so much noise, just so much noise. I screamed at them to be seated, and they followed suit. The day proceeded as normal, until 4th period, the last period of the day. Two girls were whispering, not really paying attention to what I was lecturing, as I went to silence them, one of the girls started giggling. The sound was the same as the laughing I awoke to every day for so long. I silenced them, and when the day was over, I decided I would leave school around the time the students left. I would only miss a meeting after all. I got in my car, and I saw the girl going on her way home. She walks home, and I had an urge to follow her. I did just that, I went behind her for about 5 miles. Strange I thought, she really has to walk a long way home. I decided to ask her if she needed a ride home, but when I ask her, she gets nervous. She starts to walk away really fast, I ask her to come back, and then she ran. I don’t know what came over me, but I pressed on the gas as hard as I could, and I rammed into her. She was knocked unconscious, I thought she had died. I quickly got her in the car, and drove on home. The silence was still there, every where. When I arrived home, I got her out of the car and put her in the basement. I tied her to a chair, I didn’t strip her or anything, I am not a pervert. No, I tied her to a chair and awaited for her to awaken. When she finally did she demanded to know where she was, and why I was doing what I was doing. I got upset, my anger gets the best of me i’ll admit, and slapped her. I heard something then, a sound that broke the silence. I couldn’t hear it at first, but I knew what it was, and so I hit her again. She looked at me horrified, the expression caused me to laugh, she told me to stop, and I didn’t. I kept on hitting her, oh how she screamed. Though simply smacking her was not making the sound clear. So I got a knife, and started skinning her from the legs up. Oh, she screamed, so loud when I began, and then a painful whimper as the blade kept peeling away her skin. That’s when I heard it, the laughter. I was not frightened, no I was excited. The silence was no more, and with that I started again, more urgently. She must have seen the fire in my eyes, for she let out a mortified scream. Her screaming was starting to drown out the laughter, so I cut off her lips and sewed what was was left of her mouth. When I finished I couldn’t help but laugh, I laughed and laughed. Then I realized that there was no laughter, no it was all me. I couldn’t stop laughing, oh silly me.