Barn of Newly Sonless Man

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The barn’s gaping maw inhaled, setting bits of straw and dust to life-spinning them violently through the air for a few moments before once again laying them to rest on the dull concrete floor.  The behemoth’s door had settled into the dirt on account of a faulty hinge.  The isosceles alcove it had created was home to the odd piece of refuse that would otherwise drift through the country-side, disintegrating until it was no longer traceable.

The little space was a shop of curiosities for the twittering mice that skittered through the barn, enough so that they created a shortcut by meticulously gnawing out a wood-knot from the bottom of a cedar plank-just wide enough for them to squeeze through in the months of plenty.  Lately, the mice had been able to fit through without brushing against either side of the hole.

Two of the mice tumbled about in a light-hearted wrestling match, carefree despite the presence of all of the implements that had the potential to bring an end to a mouse’s useful life, some of them designed exclusively for that purpose.  The characteristic shared by these instruments-in addition to being metallic and either sharp or pointed-was the sheen of barn dust and mildew that had found a home on the surfaces, dulling them to the same opaquey glazed gray as the floor.

Occasionally a gust of wind would set a long piece of metal to song, allowing it to sustain a high-pitched vibration.  More haunting was when the wind would come through a corridor from the barn’s open maw to the smaller open window above the hayloft on the opposite wall, catching it in just such a way to create a low, gravelly hum, not unlike a groan.

Such wind was welcomed however.  It replaced the moist, stuffy air of the barn’s interior with a fresher variety of moist air.  The stuffiest air usually accumulated in the elevated hayloft, despite the presence of the window.  Largely unused, only a few errant strands of hay littered the planking.  Though the wind often struck the barn’s groaning chord, it was never able to generate sufficient force to blow up the layers of dust coating the loft’s planks.  A fall from the loft to the floor was insufficient to rob a man of his life, unless he calculated to land in just the right manner, but it could guarantee a couple of sprained ankles and most of the time would be satisfactory to cause a few breaks.

The fear of that type of fall may have been the deciding factor in the loft’s retirement.  A man would have a poor of a probability of loosing scream from the floor-no matter how bloodcurdling-and having it hit another set of ears as he would have hitting them with a thrown stone, so deeply was the barn set in its isolation.

The winch dangled, lonely, in the half-elevated position on one of two ropes strung from ceiling to floor.  The ropes were still smooth and oily, the individual twines still orderly and obedient.  The ropes were taut between two pulleys-one bolted to the floor, the other the ceiling-which, though hurting for an oiling, sat attentively and were fully functional.

Mice continued to skitter back and forth between various crevices leading to an unseen network of tubes and tunnels, their population unchecked by barn-cats.  Though a barn-cat would have had a mighty feast, he would have lamented the lack of cozy spaces against which to rest his heft as he languored during digestion.  Not so much as a burlap sack to use as a mat.  A barn full of sharp edges and empty corners, with only a few wisps of hay to remind of what was or could again be.