Death's other kingdom

Silence, heavy, hanging. Damp as a foggy wash day, hung the heavy silence, shrieking with the unspoken as they carefully moved around each other’s brittleness.  Carefully, carefully not touching the edges; the intense tango of a dreary Sunday afternoon.  Despite the potential of glassy acreage letting in the world, nothing less than a sonorous doorbell would break the spell.  This self-inflicted muteness could only be penetrated by a witness.  But who would brave the tension long if they came a-calling?  And if some guileless, breezy caller did come, would the hastily proffered offer of thick coffee - something stronger perhaps, an aperitif - afford sufficient respite from the piercing unspoken knowledge that too many days like this will break them?  Too many years left to shift and slide around.  Too many weeks - too many Sundays and too long - feeling that silent chill creeping into veins and bones, killing them softly as softly as all the atrophies of age by a lingering, suffocating, damp, heavy, silence.