Short Story: Invisible

Her silence took over the entire room. It was the uncontrollable silence, where voice is completely lost in need of nonexistence. And the world where she was living in a big, booming, self-declaring voice was the only way to claim importance. So her silence was like a rebellion against all. But none saw it. None understood it as a rebellion, as when you think revolt it is aggression passive or the active kind in a visible form; not fading away. Her method was foolish, harmful, and in a way only hurting her, but she wasn’t sure any other way to state life sucked, this world is doomed, and she doesn’t matter any longer. Now, it would be easy to think of her silence as a nihilistic kind. Not at all. All around, she saw lives to matter, meaning to exist. The trouble was… not in her.

Now she was face to face with eyes who hungered to see inside her, bringing forth sound to declare that all along, she had been invisible and insignificant. Those eyes didn’t see it that way, nor the words accompanied by them. They bombarded her with endless questions, request to nod or shake her head when they had hit the correct remark. How can there even be a correct remark when all there is an emptiness in the shape of human flesh? Her exist into the real world was controlled by the man who guarded the society’s concept of mad and clear-headed. She was the latter. Who in the right mind would choose silence when the shouting was more effective? And all day, that was what they did. They shouted and shouted without knowing how silly the babble coming out of them was and how they, the clear-headed, saw it as the sane way to exist. 

To prove she was fit to be amongst the others, she only had to make a sound. That was all they wanted. Then the man could write in the notebook they had cured her and she could go buy groceries in the store, clean her house, and wash her teeth. She just couldn’t. Not even when her freedom, her state of sanity was in question. Not even when she hated to stay in the ward locked there by the clause: harmful to herself. They rather have her babble onward, disregarding the consequences of words and be noxious to others. That was the line between sanity and insanity in her book. In the doctor’s book, not so much. He wanted to dwell on who she was. He asked about her hobbies, her past, her routines, her values, her rituals, her thoughts, her feelings, her experiences: too many words, too many requests day after day. She waited for the day he grew tired as the others before he had done. They eventually did. Then she could celebrate her little revolution, knowing well the pain of her silence would never leave them as the disappointment of not filling the world once again with voice was denied. Was she cruel?

She tilted her head, which made the doctor’s eyes shine, giving him an excuse to repeat his last question. No, not an in to her mind. Nor a cure. She let the man’s voice wash over her, not allowing a single word to stick. She lifted her head, looking at the clock. His forty-five minutes were up. She stood up, causing the doctor to glance at the clock as well.

“I’m away for the rest of the week. We will pick up from this Monday…”

She refused to hear more. She turned around and walked out of the door. The doctor sighed behind her, and she pictured him slumping in the chair. His forty-five minutes was up, she thought. That was a lot to give to a person who concluded her to be mad. On Monday, she would refuse to go altogether. She had decided.

Thank you for reading and have a beautiful day!

© K.A. Ashcomb