Silent fragment

Why is there silence?  The room practically quivers with the silence.  There they sit, facing the window, looking out at the trees in the yard, silent as the grave.  There is no twitching, no sound of breathing, yet I sense  that everyone in the room is very much alive.  There is no sound of a ticking clock, nor is there the whisper of air through the duct work.  The only sounds I hear are my own:  my breathing, a slight hum in my ears that has always accompanied me throughout my life.

It's eerie, the way they all sit, unmoving, un-vocal, sub-aural.  Have they all been hypnotized?  There is no one in front of them, nothing to indicate that someone is in charge, or responsible for this. 

There is only the silence.

I walk toward the window, weaving among the people, who are seated on the floor on colorful yoga mats.  Some are pink, some green, others are the color of a tropical ocean.  They themselves are also a riot of color - blonds, brunettes, redheads, even one or two with pink and blue streaks in their dark hair.  Their clothing is as varied as they are, from cheerful tank tops to more drab cut-off tee-shirts. 

And still the silence.

The window offers no explanation for the silence.  All that is offered up by the view is a close-up of the oak trees outside.  Their leaves are the bright, fresh green of early spring, the branches only just beginning to show the signs that the long winter has finally come to an end.

The silence rages on.

I tiptoe away from the window and kneel in front of one of the participants, if it can be called that.  Moving as close to his face as I dare, I snap my fingers in his ear.  Nothing.  There is no response, no reaction to the sound.  In fact, the sound created by my snapping fingers has been swallowed up by the room, sucked away almost as soon as it began, again leaving me to only hear my own sounds and nothing else. 

And yet the silence continues.

If I were to turn around suddenly, would I see what is holding their attention out of the corner of my eye?  If I were to sit down on my own bright yoga mat, would I, too, become part of this silence?

And then, without warning, sound.  The full-bodied tone of a bell rings through the air.  It is mellow and strikes me to the core - I feel, rather than the the sound as it echoes throughout the room.

The spell is broken.

They stand up, chattering quietly with each other, shaking hands, rolling up their yoga mats and heading toward the door.  They do not acknowledge my presence, they look through me rather than at me.  The young man at whom I had snapped my fingers stands and walks toward me, holding hands with a girl with two blond pigtails.  As they come nearer, I brace myself; surely they must see me, surely they must alter their path or walk straight into me.  My muscles tense and...nothing.  They walk through me as if there were nothing there. 

As if I were merely a figment of my own imagination.