• Where was the ticking? The tocking? The steady rhythm that lulled her to sleep? Each night, cradled to a cushion, lush with soft fabrics and coated in warmth, she would listen to all the sounds and all the silence and decide which she preferred. Most nights it was the sounds- her breathing mingling with the beat of the old, rusty metal clock that hung just beside the bed. But tonight, there was no clock, only the sound of her chest rising and sinking.
    Sick in the mind, they'd said, wild and delusional. That's what all the men in long coats would call her, some when they thought she couldn't hear and others when they knew she could. And she decided it was fine, so long as they left her and her pills alone. She didn't even mind the small bottles of distilled water.
    It was only at night that she could prove to herself her normalcy. After all the visitors had left her room, she'd pause and listen to the steady 'tick tock, tick tock', almost like the secondhand was quivering after each moment. But tonight after she'd settled down, taken her pills and such, she didn't hear the clock. There was nothing to pin her up and distant from her false reality without the clock.
    A moment passed, then another. She heard her breaths, ragged and uneven, like the hair on her head that had faced the mercy of her once scissor-wielding hands. The lack of ticking was comparable to a lack of a drum in a rock band- absolutely nothing kept her steady and collected.
    "Very well. Tonight, I think I shall prefer silence."
    And so she began to mute the only sound in the room- her breathing. One long, shaky exhale but no inhale. Now the room was truly silent.
    Convincing herself she was content, she didn't inhale again, she only relaxed more and more as her mind slipped into what she thought was sleep.
    It was when she was almost completely at rest, so close, really she was, when the door burst open, light shocking her into gasps of air.
    "Don't tell me my daughter is crazy! I know what crazy is and it is not my daughter," came an unrecognizable voice.
    Her small hands gripped the blankets and tugged them tight around her face, blocking out the sound- and the air. The muffled voices hadn't noticed she was still awake, so distracted in their arguments they were. A miniscule struggle against her thoughts went down, until she blissfully could hear nothing. A few moments more and finally, the girl was able to rest- forever.