[Diamond18]

Vogonwë traipsed up a fight of stairs, pausing in his stride every now and then to do a cartwheel. He hoped that Pimpiowyn was watching his impressive gymnastics, but when he got to the top and did an upside down pirouette, he looked around and around and around and noticed that she was nowhere to be found.

“Drat,” he thought, resuming his stance upon his feet. Not only had she deserted him, but the top of his head had a vague burning sensation. Any normal full-blooded elf or man, or, let’s face it, even any normal half-blooded elf or man, would have paused to worry about his lady love being alone in a foreboding tower. But Vogonwë had other, more pressing matters to muse upon. Namely, how he was going to dispatch with Gravlox.

He began to wander aimlessly through the corridors of the castle, whilst his mind wandered aimlessly over various methods of murder. “Strangulation?” he pondered. “No, his neck is too thick for me to get my hands around.”

“I could poison him!”

“With what?”

“Well, I could make him a mixed drink of something…I have some ‘Mudwater left over, and perhaps I could see what Earnur has…”

“But that isn’t heroic enough. I mean, poison? Poison is for little old ladies, you dipwad.”

“All right, then. I could sever one of his arteries with a knife.”

“Too messy, and too close. If you succeeded, think of all that black blood all over your clothes. I don’t think Pimpi would be very attracted to that.”

“Well, you never know…”

“Try again.”

“I could drop an anvil or a piano on him. That would work from a nice, safe distance.”

“How cheesy. Again, not heroic enough.”

“I could challenge him to a duel with pistols.”

“But pistols haven’t been invented yet.”

“Hmm… I know, I could hang him! Hang-uruk is a game I used to play with O Lando back when we were kids.”

“But how would you get him in the noose? Do you think you could really swing it?”

“You’re right…it would be a bit hard. I mean, he’s so big and burly. When we were kids we never used real Uruks, we used computers.”

“Any more bright ideas, then?”

“Well, what about you, if you’re so smart?”

There was no reply, and Vogonwë stopped walking. “Hello? Strange and Mysterious Voice With Which I Have Been Conversing? Are you there?”

Silence. A heavy, oppressive, massive, ponderous, unwieldy, fat and obese silence in which there was no sound. Vogonwë could not even hear the sound of his own breathing, which was slightly disconcerting. That is to say, the fact that he could not hear the sound was disconcerting, not the sound itself, because there was no sound, as I have already mentioned.

The suddenly, in the blink of an eye and a split second (which is cousin to the split infinitive), before Vogonwë could say “Jack Robinson” (why he would say it I don’t know, but he didn’t get to anyway) something happened which will take another sentence to relate.

The torches that lit his walkway flickered out. They were quenched, quelled, dampened, extinguished, doused, soused, and otherwise very put out. This was done by an invisible hand. How Vogonwë knew that it was a hand when it was so obviously invisible (as I have already mentioned) is a debatable point, but lets not mince words, it was dark. Very dark. It was, in fact, dark as a moonless night—that is to say, pitch black, and not lit by any light. Inky shadows pervaded the hall, though how there were shadows without a stitch of light I do not know.

Vogonwë could not see a thing, not even with his super-duper sharp half-elven eyes. They were so sharp that they could puncture paper, but at that moment they did him no good, because it was dark (as I have already mentioned).

“So this is the look, the sound, and the feel of cotton, the fabric of our lives,” he mused, the original intent of his sentence derailing like a freight train (though there was no such thing as a freight train yet). “What I mean to say,” he tried again, “is that this must be the sound of silence, thought it is not silent anymore, because I am talking.”

Vogonwë then did what any character in a horror story would do—he walked forward. He cautiously made his way down the corridor, using his spiffariffic six-and-a-half elf sense to guide him. No air stirred through the hall, and the air was as stale and stagnant as a tomb that has been shut up for a long time, (though previous to which it had been a very talkative tomb).

As he walked, he thought that he could make out a dim light up ahead. He made for this light, as any character in a horror story would do, and as he advanced it began to grow brighter, as any strange light in a horror story would do.

Vogonwë saw that the light was peeking out from a keyhole in a massive oaken door (though why he paused at this time to ascertain the wood grain of the door is beyond me). Slowly, cautiously, in agonizingly little tiny nanoseconds of slow-mo movement, he reached out his hand to the door. He took hold of the door handle (which was shaped like a serpent’s head) and took a good five minutes to curl each finger around it (as any chara…oh you know).

Let’s skip ahead in the narrative a bit. After a while, he opened the door and stepped into the room. His eyes were stabbed by a flash of neon light, and in the naked light he saw ten thousand people (eh…maybe more). He wondered for a moment if the naked light happened to know the pregnant silence, but let it slide, because his eyes really hurt.

He turned his attention to the people. Their appearances were those of corpses dug from their grave, their skin was a livid white and their eyes were hollow and black. Apparently, he assumed astutely, they too had been stabbed by the malicious neon light. That is to say, he assumed astutely that they too had been stabbed, not that it was apparent that he assumed astutely. The people turned to him and stared at him out of the hollows of their eyes, and he was slightly bemused to notice that from each empty socket there ran rivulets of vivid blood, which stained their livid cheeks red.

The people, previous to his interruption, had been engaged in ever interesting activities such as talking without speaking, hearing without listening, and writing songs that voices never share. Their tongues, it should also be mentioned, slithered out of their mouths, licking at the air with forked tips. As soon as he entered, or I should say a little after that, after they turned to look at him, they proceeded to bow to the neon god they’d made.

And then the sign flashed out its warning, in the words that it was forming. And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls, and whispered in the sounds of silence.”

It then directed everyone’s attention to a nearby slide projector and screen. It continued to further flash out its warning upon that—an ever interesting depiction of (you guessed it) a subway wall. The words that were written on said walls were as follows:

I had a dog, and his name was Spot,
And Spot he liked to bark a lot.
He barked all day, and he barked all night,
The neighbors put up an awful fright.
And now unfortunately Spot, is not.

The neon sign slapped the screen with a stick and said solemnly, “Let that be a lesson to you.”

And then, before their eyes (and eye sockets) the picture changed to a tenement hall. This was even more interesting, as the message it conveyed was:

Kill Vogonwë Brownbark.

“Well,” said Vogonwë. “This is disconcerting.”