A Noxious Quietness

It was an early Friday morning in Bogota. Everything was sombre in the studio flat. The blackout curtains were shut tightly, drawing a green shadow over the interior. Outside, a flock of birds twittered incessantly.
The room was small and cheaply furnished, with a single bed, a nightstand, and a desk full of several frugal materials used in daily life. A half-opened box of sleeping pills was spread over the floor like tiny snow balls while a pair of glasses sat on the brown wooden desk with its half-broken frame. Throughout the gloom, a dim lamp glowed wearily on the bedside table.
All around, the air was heavy with the smell of burnt coffee mixed with a woman’s fading perfume scent.
Meanwhile, on the bed, a young woman in her early thirties lay dead asleep. Her long, dark hair swept over her pale, exhausted face. She was dressed in a simple cotton nightgown, and her body was very thin with her knees bent like a scrappy, white paper thrown in the corner.
The young woman was Alicia. She lived in Sydney with her mother. There, she lived a peaceful life and went to work as a nurse in a healthcare centre. However, a few years later, her mother died in a brutal accident while she was accompanying her in her car, which led to an agonising depression for the young woman. Since then, the doctor had prescribed some pills for her to sleep because she couldn’t stop blaming herself for her mama’s fatal destiny.
After a few months, she had to move away following her doctor’s advice to change places and start a fresh year. Luckily for her, she had a warm-hearted friend named Maria who lived in Bogota and encouraged her to come and live there and so to pursue her same job at Bogota Care Centre for the Elderly.
Without much thought, Alicia packed her bags and set off to Bogota and, since her first step there, she never returned to Sydney.
When she started working again in the care centre, she used to stay for the entire day with old people and help them with their necessary work. Her favourite old woman of all was Miss Rita, a lonely old paralysed woman who used to work as a primary teacher. Alicia adored her and cared a lot about her because she reminded her of her mum.
Suddenly, a loud bash cut the heavy silence that emerged from everything. “WAKE UP!! WAKE UP!!!!! WAKE UP, ALICIA!” shrilled a gorgeous green parrot next to the bed, thumping his head from side to side until his silky-smooth feathers started falling off, flying all over the gloomy room.
When Alicia didn’t wake up, he started pecking her on her arms, with a furious stare.
“AIIEE. Aldo, stooop! You hurt me,” shouted Alicia in pain.
“I’m waking up, don’t worry,” she yawned while rubbing her eyes, half-opened.
As the small parrot continued screaming, she shot off the bed like a bullet. “Ok, ok calm down, Aldooo! Look, I’m waking up, okay. And now, I am walking like a robot, can’t you see?” puffed Alicia, while stepping towards the kitchenette.
She sipped her cold, dark coffee at a glance, grabbed a juicy, green apple, and took some bites that she barely finished.
“Today is Rita’s birthday,” she wondered as she prepared a whole box full of multi-flavoured doughnuts for the old woman because she knew she loved them addictively.
Then, in a daze, she put on her white T-shirt, jumped into her pair of pale jeans, and brushed rapidly her long hair.
As she opened the curtains, a bizarre, enigmatic scene stood in front of her black, narrowed eyes.
“Yuck! Aldo, what is this sticky goo on the window?” she shouted, wiping the glass with her palm.
“Why is the sky orange? Is it a tornado?” she added, patting her parrot gently inside her right fist. “But tornadoes aren’t orange, are they, Aldo?”
As Alicia went downstairs, she felt everything was unusually quiet.
“Hmmm…. Everything is strangely quiet inside the building. Normally kids are playing now in the courtyard, Aldo, or maybe the clock changed yesterday, eh?”
When she reached the first floor, she caught sight of her neighbour’s door open wide. “Hola! Señor Alfredo, you forgot to lock your door,” she shouted, but with no answer.
She continued dashing down the stairs, but when she saw the Janitor’s bucket and his mop lying on the floor since yesterday evening, she knew something seemed out of the ordinary, “Hehehe. Looks like the sleeping pills got me to the weekend. Did I sleep for two days, Aldo?” She added in disbelief while noticing all her neighbours’ cars still parked in their places.
“Ugh, this rubbish isn’t working.” She let out a long whistling of anger as she checked her radio car to listen to the news but, unlikely for her, nothing worked.
“OK OK, Alicia. Everything is fine,” she started talking to herself in a high comforting voice. “Just take a deep breath and calm down. Okay. Lemme check my phone first.”
But the last message she received was eight hours ago when Maria texted her: “Hi Alicia, how are you?” She started reading her friend’s message loudly. “Haha. Looks like you’re sleeping deeply tonight. I can hear you snoring from my house haha. Have a nice dream, amiga!”
Alicia tried to text her back but her message kept loading and never got sent.
As she drove her car to the care home, everything was quiet as if everyone had disappeared. Along the road, she still saw the dusty orange sky all over the town, while a stinky, toxic smell suffocated her trembling breath. As long as she was driving, a maze of dark thoughts and perplexed questions chased inside her dizzy, small head, looking for answers, but in vain.
As soon as possible, she reached the care home and rushed to Rita’s room. Her heart sank when she found it empty. Rita’s white pillow lay cramped on the floor, just next to her grey, orthopaedic shoes. The young woman continued roaming through the long corridor, her short footsteps echoing into the weird silence. All the rooms were wide open, their beds empty.
She soon realised she was alone inside the deserted care centre.
“Hmm… What happened, Aldo? Where is everyone!” murmured Alicia, a heavy shadow of anxiety covering up her heart.
As she reached the vast garden backyard, she caught the strange sight of an enormous white van with no registration number. Just behind it, two masked men, dressed in dark-blue onesies, were shoving several patients inside the van.
Their cruel roars filled her ears as they barked at the threatened faces of the elderly: “YOU, FREAKING GUYS! GET INSIDE NOW!!!”
Their strange North American accent caught her curiosity.
“Who are these strange men?” she wondered,“What are they doing here, in Bogota Centre Care?”
Suddenly, her heart started beating rapidly as she spotted a third strong guy, stepping behind and pushing Rita viciously into the dark interior of the mysterious van.
The old woman was slouching in her wheelchair, her eyes closed tight as if someone had given her some strong sleeping pills.
A sudden bitter feeling started to devour Alicia’s aching heart. Kneaded into her cramped corner in the garden, she felt still, frigid, and entirely helpless.
She knew she had to do something. She couldn’t just watch these helpless old patients taken away against their will.
But what could she do? She was just alone, with her parrot in front of unknown dangerous men with hooded faces much like how their souls were hooded with cruelty and violence.
Tongue-tied, she began sobbing silently when suddenly, Aldo started screaming nervously, “RITA RITA RITAAA…”
As Aldo continued yelling, the three men immediately stopped and turned their heads to see Alicia and her parrot running rapidly from the distant corner. One of them started bawling loudly, pointing to Alicia as another one ran towards her and chased her through the corridor towards the main gate and then along the car park.
The young woman ran rapidly across the car park, holding her parrot tightly between her fingers, her breaths burning with fear, when she quickly grabbed the car handle, shoved herself in her seat, and locked the doors.
Immediately, the strange man reached the car and began hitting the window fiercely, shouting at Alicia to unlock the door.
“HEY, YOU!!! How did we not notice you?” he yelled furiously while trying to smash the car window with his heavy foot.
The young woman could feel her heart bouncing out of her shivering chest like a trapped prey. She looked desperately here and there, searching for any help but, alas, there was no one in sight.
“GO AWAY, STINKY RAT,” she shrieked as she pressed down on the accelerator and sped away, leaving the unknown man gazing at her with his icy, chilling stare whilst, not far away from the Care House, an enormous military helicopter prepared to land.