Originally, it started with a snap. Not too similar to bark. It would have to be a bit stronger. So, a branch. That satisfying -WACK- when you’d kick an old empty trash bin from school.
Take five of those, string them together, then you have what it sounded, what it echoed.
But as one big mass, so that it seemed as if it grew larger in that last possible second before contact.
Not as small as a baseball. Not that weak.
Something bigger.
If you’ve heard a tree collapse, imagine that but all at once in a swift
-WACK-
A brick. But sweeter.
A log, but made of petrified wood.
It would be a freak noise. One of those where the right combination of sounds would flick the back of your ear
-WACK-
It started with that noise. If a brick could bounce from miles high against a scoreboard. It would be that sound. Or, if a carpet suction-cupped the back end of your foot. Like stepping in thick, sloppy sand. That in-between state that would make that
-WACK-
That first sound kind-of taste and tickle. It would interrupt everything around it. If you screamed under the mud without choking. That’s the kind-of
-WACK-
Two skulls thrashed into each other. A clash that reverberated a sickening melody of bone and flesh. Screams against screeches, the pulling-of-teeth grinding as the bodies would go limp, slacked to the floor in absolute heaps.
-WACK-
A long while. That in-between feel from before. Where you know what the length of time is, but it’s slightly longer or shorter then what you predict.
Enough time. Enough to forget. To bury. Safe and sound, dripping, ringing, against a ting surface.
-Wack-
It was meant to get attention. A stop sign.
That single moment when a bone broke, when things finally got out-of-hand.
The regret was see-through on every person in attendance that night. And there were a lot. Too many to track down as they scattered
-WACK-
She wasn’t prepared.
He wasn’t prepared either.
Hearing the -WACK- stopped everything.
Alive. Dead. Internal. External. All affected.
With every letter of the alphabet.