Echoes Through a Silent Hall

If walls could talk, they'd tell tales of laughter and tears, of triumphs and fears, echoing within their halls without a hint of judgment. We stand tall as silent protectors, safeguarding against the elements, yet unable to defend against inner turmoil. Our stoic facade belies the weight of the events that unfold within our walls, where every action and emotion is sacred.

Despite our desire to offer solace, we cannot save those within from their own demons. We can only stand steadfast, witnessing as their choices shape their precious moments within our embrace. Witnessing the most intimate moments of a life as it travels through its own journey, the joys and heartbreaks that punctuate it. Watching every glimmer of hope and crushing despair, unable to scream or even whisper. Eternal observers, incapable of ever becoming anything more, age cracking and chipping away at our foundations just as it has at the lives we've observed along the way.

And so, we remember a young life brought into our walls, one filled with so much promise and hope. Shane, brought home by Debbie and Oliver, whose joy and happiness was palpable. The bickering and strife of daily life was forgotten, replaced by a newfound purpose in the form of their precious child.

But as the newness of parenthood faded, the reality of sleepless nights and a young life full of needs set in. The pressure must have been immense as Debbie and Oliver came to realize that Shane was his own person, with his own joys and sorrows. He also had his own unique journey to embark upon within these walls.

Shane was a beautiful baby. His chubby cheeks often glowed a rosy-pink, as he filled the room with laughter and joy. His bright blue eyes shined brighter than any star, a piercing cyan that gleamed with the hope that only a truly curious child could radiate. He was eager and excited to explore the world around him and learn everything about it. The walls watched with a joy we could never express as we saw Shane's first nights sleeping in a cot of his own, his nocturnal awakenings filled with tears until one of his parents would awaken and come to comfort him, rocking him to sleep and whispering sweet lullabies until he drifted back into a restful slumber. We watched as it began to eat away at Debbie and Oliver, every nightly cry greeted with a muffled argument before either would see to him, slowly becoming resentful of the other for not doing it themselves. We observed the bags under both of their once hopeful and cheery eyes grow and darken as exhaustion began to creep into their daily lives.

We watched as Shane began to crawl, sometimes finding himself bumping into us, but remaining undeterred, persisting until he got the hang off it. We saw him take his first steps, stumbling and falling, only to get back up and try again and again until eventually we saw him running and jumping with ease. We saw as Debbie and Oliver beamed at every milestone, their joy and pride at witnessing their only son grow before them, offering the couple brief moments of respite from the stresses of life.

But those stresses had a way of intruding on life, growing and infecting everything around them as they did. Sure enough, as Shane began to grow older the joy and happiness that he had begun life with had begun to fade away - and a darkness slowly crept in. Debbie and Oliver had begun to argue more frequently, their worries about work and money slowly creeping into their home life, over time bringing back the constant bickering they had once partaken in before Shane's birth worse than ever before. As they fought, we felt the vibrations against us of their constant yells crashing against our cold surface, bouncing and reverberating around the family home, echoing and leaving no part of the house untouched from their arguing. They picked fights with each other about bills, about who had to work later, about anything and everything they possibly could. There was nothing we could do but observe in our concrete stoicism, unable to reach out, only able to absorb their harsh words and the anger that punctuated them.

Shane did his best to ignore the tension that hung over him at home like a dark cloud, but whenever we saw him return from his day at school, it never looked like he had found any escapism from it, the storm of his increasingly tumultuous home life following him around day and night. We admired him in silent sorrow as we watched him bury his face in his schoolwork, almost always reading a book or studying for a test, as the increasing frequency of his parents' arguments continued to echo through the halls. They finished their journey in Shane's room as muffled yells, tormenting him with a constant reminder of the unhappiness of his home. As he got older, we saw him begin to understand that there was more to the fights between his parents than the work and bills they often focused on. There was an underlying anger, a resentment that had been growing for some time. Shane had attempted to question his parents about this multiple times, but always found himself dismissed and brushed off. He was simply told that he wouldn't understand, that he was too young.

As he entered his teenage years, we stood steadfast, the one solid thing around Shane as his world unravelled. We watched his hidden struggles and despair alone in his room at his inability to fit in at school, at his constant feeling of not truly belonging anywhere. We saw him making muffled screams into his pillow and felt the slamming of his door when he came home vibrating through the frame and travelling across our often icy surface. We observed his mental health growing continually worse as Shane's parents' arguments increased in severity and frequency, with his home life eternally growing worse. Debbie and Oliver's fights had grown louder and angrier. As much as we wished we could, we couldn't block them out from him completely, their voices ricocheting around the home, tormenting him with the muffled vitriol that every fight featured. Shane had tried to block them out as much as he could, often burying himself in books and listening to music in his room, but it was never enough. The tension in the home was palpable.

Soon, we saw a change in Shane. He had began to experiment with drugs. At first it was just weed, coming home lightly smelling of it after smoking with his friends. Sitting by the window in his room, keeping it slightly ajar with an air freshener canister in his lap to hide the smell from his parents as he blew the smoke outside, Shane would often sneak hand-rollen joints as his parent's arguments intensified. Hiding himself from the world - hiding himself from them. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he had found some escapism from the unhappiness of his home.

As time went on, he found it helped him less and less. The initial numbness and peaceful feeling it provided him as an escape simply wasn't there any more. He'd smoke more and more but never manage to get back to that calm feeling he once felt from smoking alone. That's when we observed the most drastic change in Shane's behaviour. Before long he was hiding in his room, sneaking opiate pills he'd brought back with him before drifting into a near lifeless haze. Strips of Codeine and Tapentadol were often left emptied and abandoned by his bed and on rare occasion he would manage to get hold of a bottle of liquid morphine. Near zombified, Shane would lie down in his bed with the music on, take a few pills or some of the morphine solution and find himself weightless. Lifted free from all the burdens and responsibilities of daily life. It was an addicting feeling. It was addictive all around. The walls watched as Shane's dosages and frequency of dangerous drug use increased as he chased the feeling of numbing his pain.

We watched as his mental and physical health degraded rapidly. His skin had begun to look pale, his eyes sunken in and darkened with bags. We saw how he had begun to get tremors and shakes if he went long sober. His parents should have seen it too - but they had never really truly considered Shane nor paid attention to him. They had been too self-involved to notice the drug addiction that was rapidly overtaking the life of their teenage son. The walls watched though. We always watched, it was all we could do. Watch as the teenager we had seen grow from a cute hopeful baby had hushed conversations with friends on his phone, as he snuck out of the home at all hours and came back with more drugs, ready to once again accelerate the decay that had slowly penetrated his body and mind through his addiction.

If walls could talk, we'd tell Debbie and Oliver to pay more attention to their son. We would tell Shane that it wasn't worth it, that the drugs would overtake his life. We would tell his parent's to go and check on him tonight, before it's too late. We would tell him not to put that needle in his arm, that if he did he wouldn't wake up. If only walls could talk, we would be screaming, pleading and begging for someone to help him. But we can't. We're the silent protectors from the elements, but from nothing else, and tonight, all we could do is watch as Shane plunged a needle filled with heroin, his latest escalation into a vein, falling backwards against us he removed the tourniquet he had tightened on his bicep. All we could do is bounce the vibration of Debbie and Oliver's argument in the living room off us as usual, making the sound that had haunted his life and filled it with so much darkness already the last Shane heard as the body of this once adorable little boy we had always watched over began to choke on it's own vomit, slowly becoming lifeless and as cold as us as he drifted away to be discovered by his parents the next morning.

If walls could talk, all we would ever do is scream. We'd cry out in agony at the pain we felt. We'd wail day and night at how we'd been capable to do nothing but observe as the joys we once protected became horrors before us.