The Never-Ending Notebook: Book of Books

Spoken in Silence: Stifling Silence

Just gave you a forking long A/N soooo.... none for this chapter! 

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3: Stifling Silence

Once again, another party, another night. Another night alone in a silent house, on a silent street.

Left alone, deemed to have no social purpose because of my 'capabilities.' Don't they understand I got stuff to say?

Not like I would rather be at a stilted party with rich people who only believe that they are right and that everyone else is ugly.

The boy closes his eyes as he inhales. As he exhales, he stands in the dark room. With a glance in the mirror, one dark brown eye is covered by a lazy strand of hair, dripping like ink from a calligraphy bottle. He dismisses the boy in the mirror turning to the corner of the low-lit room.

There sits a polished wood guitar with soft strings, played since forever.

A smile lights his face.

He graciously picks up the instrument. Strumming a few strings. He sits up in his bed, propped against an embroidered pillow. His long fingers slide up and down the frets, his other hand gently caressing the strings as if worried to break the harmony. He smiles and moves his head to feel the sound, Hear the sound drift around his room. He purses his lips together.

Inhale

He tries to push air out of his lungs and through his lips. He tries to match the notes to his breath.

Trying to make a sound.

His smile fades.

Why do I even try? Why did God give me music, give me happiness, to take it away from me? Take the true ability for me to share both body and voice. Why me, me of all men? Why was it me?

His guitar crashes against the sheets. The boy stands.

Why can't I scream when I am mad? Voice my sorrows when I am sad?

He crunches his fingers together. He faces his cement wall. He raises his fist.

Laugh when I am fucking happy. Why can't I?

He drops the clenched fist. His knees give out and he falls to the floor, following the wall to the floor. There he slumps, his head on his knees, his hair flops. Silently sobbing when he can only on the inside.

He looks up. Stares at the reflection. Tears cascade down the twins face. The identical twin raises his arm to wipe the dripping tears.

Why am I a mistake? A stupid, worthless, kid who can't do shit. Can't even tell the world he's stupid. Can't even tell a friend. Well, I guess I would need to have a friend first to tell them I suck.

Instead of a snort, he exhales sharply.

See! I can't even laugh at my own jokes.

The boy diverts his eye away from the twin and to his window. He stands up and looks out the window where a large oak tree sits. When he was young, he incessantly gave his father post-it notes to help him build it. Instead, he paid three men to do it. His two sisters enjoyed it well enough but, often times abandoned it for their dolls, horses, or pets that their Father and Mother would give them. Their two perfect children.

The boy, however, who seize this opportunity to play imaginative games as a pirate, prince, explorer, all planning out the plot in his mind. To his parents, or passerbys, it might of seems odd to see a boy bouncing all over a decrepit shed in a tree but, nobody minded the mute boy.

Tonight, however, across the backfield, under the large tree, he saw a silhouette of a blob against the tree.

Probably another weirdo. Odd in this neighborhood but, everybody gots one.

The boy sat back on his bed, beginning to close his eyes.

Then he heard a melodious harp flowing with the shifting wind through the leaves and singing with the larks.

With a raised eyebrow, he straightened his torso to be perpendicular to his legs. The symphony continued as he rolled his legs out of bed.

He opened his bedroom door. He turned around and opened his closet, grabbing a shovel and a drumstick.

He stalled for a second as he listened to the lullaby sounding so familiar to his childhood when his mother would rock him. When her sister and his mother would sing and dance. Giggling around a room, twirling around his crib.

Being on the first floor, he strolled out of his room and into the foyer, opening the front door with a soft creek. He closed the door silently and carefully snuck around the garden to the back end of the tree.

Pausing to hear the stranger's voice, he arched to see a glance of the blob from behind the carefully groomed shrubbery.

Hey! Would you look at that! It's not a blob! GASP, it's a girl! Still might need the shovel, though. Who knows.

The boy saw the girl with long ebony hair in a mess of leaves and twigs with stray strands stuck in the bark of the tree and drifting down her front. Her face was damp in the leaf-shadowed moonlight but her eyes glimmered a sea-green as her mouth was open and singing sweetly.

Still gripping his shovel and drumstick, the boy climbed up the treehouse. Grabbing a dirty and forgotten blanket he curls up above her in a corner.

 Silently, he listens to her voice waltz around the tree under the painted sky they share.

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He seems to have inherited my sarcasm. :)