{"id":674,"date":"2019-01-11T13:15:04","date_gmt":"2019-01-11T13:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=674"},"modified":"2019-01-12T20:05:02","modified_gmt":"2019-01-12T20:05:02","slug":"the-worst-sound-by-tyler-miles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2019\/01\/11\/the-worst-sound-by-tyler-miles\/","title":{"rendered":"The Worst Sound by Tyler Miles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tyler is a journalist from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who holds a Bachelor’s of Arts in English from Penn State University, and is trying to rekindle that creative fire news writing beat out of him. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Worst\nSound<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s an\nunforgettable sound that precedes death\u2014recognizable as the scratchy gasp from\na grandparent or pained whine from a family pet seconds before they leave our\nworld for the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a boy I had grown tired of death.\nEven then, at such a young age as I was, grief gave way to anger at the loss of\na life I adored. Once I stared at a\nfaux candlestick behind my mother\u2019s patterned curtains. Through them the light\nappeared muffled, dim. When finally I unplugged the plastic flame, it slowly\nfaded into nothingness like the dog’s eyes when he arched his back, kicked out\nhis feet, and howled one last time earlier that night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a sad episode for my family,\nbut I imagine it must be sadder for he who caused it. That\u2019s why I decided to\nmeet him: Death; ask why he would turn off someone’s lights when people loved\nthem; and why he would make them make such a terrible sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had it in my mind to wait under my\ngrandmother’s bed each night after she grew sick and forgetful, and came to\nlive in our spare room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cold room. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wasn’t supposed to be in there, I was\nwarned, but I had some words for this fellow hurting me, hurting everyone,\neverywhere in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When late one night he cracked her\ndoor and silently glided through, I slithered from beneath the bed. He stopped\nand stared (probably), I wasn’t sure since he was faceless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He heaved a sharp finger at me,\n“You\u2026 think it\u2026 fun?” the voice sloughed from somewhere beneath that\nblack hood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I froze, unable to remember the speech\nI had prepared to skewer him with. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy?\u201d was all I managed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He stood unmoving for what seemed like\nminutes. I was unsure if he heard me, or even understood with how he turned his\ngaping black hole sideways when I spoke, as if pushing an ear he didn\u2019t have\ntoward me to better understand. It was what my dad did when he practiced French\nwith his drinking friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You\u2026 don’t understand.\nCannot.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His arm waved toward my grandmother\nwith a rattle of bones and he floated away. His lanky shoulders drooped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And she didn’t gasp when she died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She chimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What an odd sound. It sounded exactly\nlike the wind chimes that hovered above our English Ivy on the porch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Death did me a favor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although all the years after, and\nstill, I remember my grandmother’s death, and that hazy interaction with Death,\nwhenever I pass a house and the wind stirs the chimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tyler is a journalist from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who holds a Bachelor’s of Arts in English from Penn State University, and is trying to rekindle that creative fire news writing beat out of him. The Worst Sound There’s an unforgettable sound that precedes death\u2014recognizable as the scratchy gasp from a grandparent or pained whine from a … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-aS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":766,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions\/766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}