off-air

Behind a busy town is a small cabin. Rumor has it that a man always sits there at night, under his old dusty porch light, with a bottle of beer in his hand. During the day, he leaves his house and work whatever job is available in the woods. He seldom goes out to the city. In the afternoon, people had seen him sitting at the side of the river holding a notebook and a pen for a couple of minutes before taking his shirt off and float himself in the river. At dusk, he goes back to his house, cooks food for himself and when the night comes, he’d sit again on his porch until midnight. It is a cycle and people had notice it. Nobody ever tried to go to his house and offer him some food, even on holidays when everyone in the town is so generous to each other, but he did not mind. He is the most silent person in town but he creates the loudest noise in the villagers.

His name is Joe, and he calls his cabin Marylyn, his deceased wife. Marylyn was diagnosed with cancer two years after their marriage. She did not die of cancer, in fact she could not live with it so she decided to slit her wrist in their bathroom. It was a tragic loss for Joe. Unfortunately his love was not strong enough to make Marylyn feel safe in his arms. Joe left the city and went rural where he found the small cabin. For ten months he was seeing his wife every night preparing their dinner at the table, he was hearing her sing their favorite song when he’s alone in bed, he was feeling her whisper on his neck like how she told jokes when she’s still alive. Joe cries because of these, falls asleep on the kitchen floor, wakes up in the morning to a same painful day that he has to face without his wife. It was long before Joe picked himself up from his situation. He started going out in the woods, fixed his small cabin, got his first job at the gasoline station, and realized that Marylyn would not be happy seeing him discontinue life just because she decided to. Joe called his cabin Marylyn, his home, the place where he always comes back to no matter how long the day.

Before Marylyn died they had a dream that they get to write a book together. Marylyn was the writer between the two, so even though Joe could not figure out how to write effectively he still tries his best. He tries finding inspiration in the woods, in the river, in the dark, in the looks of the villagers towards him, in the rumors about him he had heard, in the absence of his one true love. No one in this town knows about this dream held on pause. No one knows about the tragedy. Only one thing that this town knows about him is his voice that they used to hear on the radio; the voice that brought them to sleep at night when he tells stories of heartbreaks; the voice that went off-air because of a happy ending; the voice that has cried in pain; the voice that has lost its sound.

A sequel to ending