ether.
In effect, I can take the edge off its annoyance altogether and sleep
peacefully for the rest of the evening. If only I could identify its
source!

Still, it was so very still in the room now. It was as if the advance
of light had checked the noise, whatever its origin acting as a
deterrent to its raucous splendour. Yes, that's it, he thought. The
light in some fashion interfered or dispels the racket that spawns the
darkness. How irrational. What a repudiation of his earlier thesis that
man, as a rational being, manipulated his surroundings as opposed to
being the mere lackey of circumstance. Yet, there was but one way to
determine the logistics of his theory, he reasoned. Apply brakes to the
light and brace oneself for the possible resumption of the unearthly
noise.

Did he dare? Did he, in a Profroukian sense, care to challenge the
impetus of the moment--that crackle of sound made as it darned a wavy
edge over the liquid crack of an audible wave? Could he presume to roll
up his trouser legs, eat the allegorical peach or clutch the parchment
of his being to prepare a loosing onto the gates of night? A strange
synthesis for a man priding himself on logic, he muttered quickening
the thought process. Carefully, he prepared himself for the venture.
Barely a flick away, he imagined a surge of electricity to go rifling
through the inroads of his body, illuminating in garish sequence the
duality of his true nature--lucidity and ghost fear. He was ready to
examine the Hegelian fusion of his private universe.

The light remained off. Unbearable became the mental jousting going
forth across the diameter of his brain, that circle of intense inner
reasoning. Yet nothing threatening had yet developed. No formidable
barrage of sound like the last time just bare minutes before when the
noise had tormented him so. No creeping need to silence the unexplained
droning that parried his sanity. But where did that place his theory on
darkness and a correlation with the heightened noise's proliferation?
What if the noise should return when, say, he awoke tomorrow in the
luxury of a room bathed in morning's warm gaze? How might he cope amid
sheer inconsistencies, such contradictions like that?

Now the uninterrupted silence assumed growing dimensions. There was
nothing amiss, yet nothing resolved either. The sound and fury existed
in a mute silence, growing within the totality beyond categorization.
After all, it was darkest befo