Silence Has A Sound...Chapter One

Book title: With Skeletons In Our Closets, & Monsters In Our Hearts, We Are Releasd From Think Lines And Cramped Spaces.

Regan, sixteen and branded, hasn’t spoken since it happened. It will be four years in June. Quiet is her only friend, her only solitary concern, besides her brother Jesse. Regan lives breathes and operates in silence. Will she ever break through to see silver and gold, when she’s been living on the hushed side her entire life?

CHAPTER ONE: SILENCE HAS A SOUND, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU’RE VOICELESS.

I was more focused on folding my crisp twenty-dollar bill into an airplane than I was on his blubbering lips. The sound of his voice reverberated throughout the entire room, but never touched my eardrums once. My silence was louder than his noise, and I had a notion he would get the hint. Creasing and refolding the bill time and time again, my shaking hands could not get it to cooperate the way I wished it would. His voice continued to bore into my skin, hiding my void of silence, as my attempted airplane looked like a piece of trash, and I mean that in the most literal sense. I clenched the bill tightly in my hand with knuckles turning white, soaking up the sweat in my palms. My sigh of frustration did not phase him, as his human face of war carried on without a breath to spare.

My intellect ignited racing thoughts, pulsating through my nervous system like bolts of negatively charged electricity, while I stood parallel against the white wall with my feet dressed in a pair of worn-in Chuck Taylors that I had received on my birthday. I sported them so often that the side seams were bulging out, possibly indicating that the shoes were too small for my feet to be fitting into. But they actually fit me just perfectly. Dirt was collected on the entirety of the pair, decorating and turning the black canvas a dusty brown. The use-to-be white laces were now a faded gray.

The wavelength of the hum in his tone elevated up and down, corresponding to the morphing pitch in every word he spoke. He made it a point to italicize the more important pieces with a soothing voice to that of a therapist. My fingers strived to manipulate the old, green paper into a figure as they danced across the bill, each finger performing a different branch to win the war. My hands were trembling, heart racing faster than his voice was talking. And my ears were still soundproof to his noise.

He wore sadness well, while I wore a smile that outshined the noonday sun. The bill rested lightly on my palm, each corner perfectly folded into the faultless figure of an airplane, each side isometric to one another. My lips curled, opposed to his dark liquid eyes, dark sandy hair and heavily lined face of despair. I Sat still for a moment without breathing.

“Regan,” he said with an unsteady tone resembling that of a fierce competitor. A video might as well survive in performance, the way I can recall the similarity to the guy sitting on the floor next to me, and the over achiever himself. And I see it quite clearly: Light skinned with dark and blonde hair, stands a tall boy with intelligence in his eyes, and infatuation in his heart. He himself the track star, is running towards the finish line to victory in the company of endless vitality, with merely ten more seconds left of the race. But he is a varsity star, he can and will win this race. Stepping each foot faster, exerting energy into the final haul, he progresses steadily towards the line. Gleams of triumph fill his eye. Beads of sweat fall down his shaggy hair, as he clears his vision with a backhanded swipe. Pressure builds. Tension is in the air. Friendly waves and warm smiles bleed past him as he runs and his lips crack a smile accompanying his radiant blue eyes. Eight…seven…six. The clamor of the crowd resounds in his ears. Three… two… Counting down with only one second left, his opponent reaches victory first and is awarded the champion. The smile fades as cobalt eyes narrow in on his rival, as the contender joyously attacks the losing player with a crooked boyish grin. He is sprinting to receive his badge of success when he throws the runner a glance over the shoulder. The track star was incredibly close to winning, but time stole his fate. All odds were against him, just like the odds of the man seated relatively close to me.

Now, is not it amazingly anomalous how justice and equality works in the world’s human race? The competitor, for example, is a perfect illustration for this case in point. He was a splendid entity to the team, a varsity contestant. He was the style of undergraduate that was in on the revelry, but out on the excessive underage drinking. He knew at what time he could have fun, but he also knew how to bring the fun to an arrest. He by no means let situations get out of his control, and it was very seldom in his life when he committed a wrong. So was it feasible for him to be the victor for the team for once in his life? This answer is unfortunate, but it is also true. No, he could not. No matter how hard he tried, his notable team effort never congratulated him.

“Regan…I know this is…complicated…for you…” This was the season of the mans discontent. He sat wide-eyed in wonder speaking each word slowly, but hardly a word was ever spoken. He enunciated on his words as if he was reading from a textbook. It was clearly palpable when my smile blossomed into an impassive blank stare, the re-occurrence of the loss and look on his face reran in my thoughts. Running, running, faster and faster, and it wouldn’t be too long before he would fail. Each time it replayed, the outcome never changed.

“No, that’s not what I mean.” The man’s dissatisfaction and apprehension spoke for themselves.

“This is hard for me too…for me as well…” The sound of his voice jumped me out of my concentration. I questioned myself the interval and extent of which he had been talking while he sat in a penetrating gaze. My hand leaped, releasing my creation from my hands, and my gentle eyes fell to the perfectly folded design, falling, as the object , sounding like the crunch of sand under bare feet. Gravity was not even be bothered by what kind of item was withdrawing and losing ground in its presence. Life did not anything to impede its prevalence. Falling and falling faster with the fluidity of unfurling silk, it finally plummeted to the floor, and like a crystal vase against a brick wall, all sides shattered. My eyes immediately glued to the failure a few feet away from my shoes.

I heard him sigh. My eyes took a fleeting look at the man who had been conversing, as I promptly washed away my thoughts, resuming to stare at the masterpiece in shambles. My work was never congratulated either. I felt instantly remorseful for the student in the competition. My happy, open face suddenly darkened at how blue his eyes glistened. He thought he had won while his glassy apples unraveled to eyes of fire. My heart skipped a beat. Losing was such a let down, and his feelings were now my own.

Each time I paced into his world, just like every other Thursday, my entire world smoldered with brightness. But the second I walked out, my world would become one big, blurred and distortion, like a smudged image where everything and everyone wasn’t what it seemed to be. And when life was like that, my perception of everyday occurrences came across as different. Like today, the shiny exteriors of the countertops, as well as the window’s glass seemed to glisten noticeably more than its usual glow. The linoleum floor reflected back my face like a mirror, showing gleaming eyes and a confused face. Perhaps the lights were messing with my senses. I glanced at the clock to see how much more time I had to waste. It read 12:18 AM, twelve more minutes.

The man inhaled a deep breath in. I was once again dazed out of my parallel universe, as a combination of my thoughts and his actions brought me back to the surrounding world around me. Breathing staggered, and with eyes of crimson, the wetness of his cheek seemed clear that tears had rolled down his pale face. I could feel his eyes wander my glassy crystalline eyeballs, trying to align with mine, but my eyes focused on staring at mutilated airplane on the floor. My lips were dry, chapped, but slightly parted, trying to figure him out before he spoke. My inquisitive perception to sound told me if I knew any better, the moment my eyes would re-connect with his, I would be instantly turned into stone.

It is like he is the track star himself in the spur of the moment. The track star is lingering on the top of a twenty-story apartment, conceivably in New York or anywhere evocative to the busy nature wherein New York presents its peripatetic eyes. His body is leaning, leaning, leaning over the tiny five-foot guardrail, which traces the building’s outline, as he takes a nearer glance at the metropolitan streets that never sleep. He wants to take his rebel behavior to a higher standard, as his feet balance on the ten-inch width of stone. His body crouches down, hands holding the frame of the barrier, the only thing keeping him from prevailing over the edge. His feet inch nearer and nearer towards the boundary as his body launches in the position of that of a sprinter. His head is faced towards the spot he is going to meet. He is waiting for the gun to sound, waiting for his final cue. His eyes search the city, looking for a green light indicating that it is time. Five…four…three, he counts down in his head…two… His mind is racing, body shaking, and making entryway for mistakes. He needs nothing but for somebody to give him a good shove. I seem to fallaciously lend a helping hand to hold him back, but instead of holding, it is used for sending his body in motion. His grasping hand slips and his body is launched. Nothing stops him from declining. He will keep going, and going until he welcomes the bottom with blue eyes wide open, and just like the masterpiece I had created, he will be torn to pieces. His feet lose touch with the edges of the cement, and I watch his body freefall without a parachute, as the concrete eats at his skin. Seconds pass, feeling like hours, feeling like days and years and months of waiting. A sting infuses his body, a feeling like a thousand knives being stabbed into the back spreads throughout. Pain and hurt scuttles to his head. But he doesn’t fall forwards onto the pavement. His body hits the rooftop as he curses in distress.

My body shuddered and shook. Blood rushed through my veins as the taste of the thought of the escape of his tears being the blunder of my own, from top to bottom soaked me to my flesh. The mixture was something like salt: the feat, and vinegar: the notion. Neither one could well carry on unaccompanied, but when merged in concert formed something inconceivable. But its beggaring descriptive taste, despite how good it did give the impression of being, it did not delight to every creature’s senses. I’m the individual who stood single-handedly, as I was the maker of these thoughts. Fluorescent lights in the ceiling lighted up the dark in his eyes and his tough skin looked like it had been in the course of many battles, such as the ones I created, ones of which he had not yet won.

The sun shined through the window on the left, adjacent to the potted plant in the center right of the wooden stand. The luminous light cast an orange fiery red coding to his skin and his crust received degrees of color each time the sun met with his face. I was squinting in the glare of the sun. My eyes fixed onto the burning star, as reminisce thoughts of the summertime motioned through my mind. I could see the speeding cars down the highway as they weaved in between each other, sewing up a wound. The sunlight reflected off each mirror causing an absence from his face as they passed. The silence in the room was a spine-chilling cry of agony, a defining and deafening to shatter my heart. The dry air bled with unspoken words, causing a head on collision with the white walls surrounding us - the only comfort inside a place like this - besides the ticking of the clock. His hand continued to deposit his thoughts in writing. Something in me wanted to crumple his pages of inadequate words, but instead, I picked up a piece of hair that had fallen in front of my eyes, brushing it back with my hand. If spoken words were to be heard, like ripe fruit hanging fresh off the vine, its drop would cause the earth to shatter. Only two minutes had passed.

My chin rested nonchalantly on my fisted hand, as the drumming of my foot orchestrated the ticking of the clock. The faster it strike the faster the timer seemed to progress. Faster, faster my foot hit the sooner the clock ticked away already wasted soon to be shattered minutes. Pangs of burning pain sent flames to my calf. My muscles were begging me to stop. Just a few moments longer…just… a few moments longer I told them.

Something sent my thoughts soaring into a world that wasn’t turned upside down, as I recall sitting at the waters edge, watching the waves turn white at the tip, rushing in to touch my toes. The gravel mixed with sand was sharp to my heels as the water felt like ice to my skin. Beauty and adversity interlocked. The wind was blowing, hard like a razor, throwing sand into my eyes. The continuous cycle of the waves, a harmony in motion up and down as they fell and rise, provided me with comfort. I sighed at this thought. The slightly courtly man paused and gazed at me with such pensive eyes. My eyes were fixed somewhere in the distance as I continued to gape out the window. I heard his pen dig into the paper. Colorless, like a rainbow without its rain, the silence between us fell in the air and caused a head on collision with the whiteness around us. My eyes without a word to speak confessed the confessions of my heart, and the sun sent fractions of light upon our skin.

Is it plausible for myself to sew up old seeds of habit, or will I forever live frozen in silence? You know, they all have said to me more than once, “You can trust me,” or “I’m here to be your friend,” and even go to the extent of saying “What we discuss is confidential. You can tell me anything,” thinking that the gravity of the matter would draw in my undivided interest and I would unwrap the secrets held deep within my heart. I was masked behind a wooden wall, a piece in an unspeakable puzzle that I never seemed to fit into. And I knew a testimonial statement such as that was merely a rehearsed, maybe naturally unrehearsed line filled with deceit. Personnel kept their clients’ juicy secrets just inches away from their spilling lips they were bound to plead blameworthy for leaking the data found in their unlocked file cabinets. In the last few months, I learned to disburse my concentration to several other things that I been in contemplation and inspection about, taking my judgments to heart. So far, I learned the following: there is always a crescent curve in the road called breakdown, and a circle called uncertainty, but forbearance is the window to peace.

I envisaged my hand letting go. Like grains of sand the bill mistakenly slipped through my fingers. It still was holding its crumpled position. The clock told me I only had ten more minutes left sitting in silence before I was to leave. I thought about reaching for it, but only to realize it would create a combination of merciless terror and elegance. Dramatically increasing the tension between us, my eyes needed something to stare at besides the window and his words. I left it alone.

I’m the kid who use to amuse myself with fire. I’d steal the lighter from on top of the kitchen stove after mom came in from her smoke. I’d lock myself in my room, conducting experiments with the flames, as the fire flickered in and out of existence like fireflies on a moonlight night. On occasion, I would douse a piece of paper in hairspray, watching a sparkle of the flames as it went up in a blaze, just to see the blue burn orange. I was in full control of what I was doing then. I could have set my entire room on fire if I wanted to, but I just didn’t feel the need. And once I smothered the burst of flames with water, everything exhilarating would expire. The stripes would vanish in a blue gray haze and my exciting world would terminate. To tell the truth and run, I seemed to enjoy life better then.

NOTE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE: I'M NOT SURE IF THIS CHAPTER IS FINISHED OR NOT. I REALLY NEED BOTH NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE FEEDBACK TO DETERMINE ITS QUALITY. BTW: THIS IS MY FIRST STORY. I'VE NEVER SUCESSFULLY WRITTEN ANY EXTENSIVE PIECE WORTHWHILE BEFORE, BUT I'M LOOKING TO CHANGE THAT WITH YOUR GUY'S HELP, ADVICE & COMMENTS.