I AM SILENT AND THE WORLD LIES STILL
I lie naked in purgatory waiting to be put to death. They loathe me. They fear me. They despise me for speaking. My voice is a reckoning summon. When I say it was not my will, they place their hands over their ears so as to not succumb to my words. If they listened they would believe me. But they choose not to.
I was born blue and dazed. No cry escaped my mouth when I was held for the first time. When I learned how to talk I couldn’t stop. I would speak, exclaim, remark, retort, declare. I would ask questions: What is this? What is that? What causes a fire? Why is the world so cruel?
I learned that people don't always listen, if you speak up you will be ignored, some people believe they are bigger than others, some people actually are, and some people will never be happy. We must all learn these things, how unfair life can be.
No cry escapes my mouth as I hold myself for the last time. They come to me and grab me, and thrust me up high like a flesh-covered coffin. I am paraded around in circles, I let my hands droop, I let them laugh.
They will cut my tongue first. It is graceful that they let me keep it for so long. I think they were afraid.
Later in my early life I became spiteful. I weaved foul words into tapestries of malice, and I would bite and chew and spit on anything I could. It was pleasure at its finest. Everyone else behaved the same way - name-calling, hair-pulling, sparking rage, backstabbing. We had such a rich voracity for all kinds of cruelty to each other.
They take me to a chair that is fitted for someone much larger than me. My head rolls from exhaustion, I do not know how long they kept me waiting in the box.
I yearn for it to be over soon. I do not fear death so much as I fear a mortal life of monotony. A grey life of simplistic things is no life at all.
When I became a woman I had a dream. A dark oscillating billow of dust ruminated in my mind. From within, a great eye was revealed, it transformed between indescribable colours and sometimes vanished then reappeared. It was both everything and nothing, and I felt exhilarating fear.
It told me that I had been blessed with a new voice that I must speak with, so I asked a question, the most rudimentary thing I knew how to do.
Why?
There was no response.
There was nothing.
A sea of eyes watches me now. It ogles in ripples and waves so I close my eyes and imagine I am by the ocean. A voice announces that today is a day that will be remembered forever. We will witness righteous judgement over evil. The roar of hands clapping is but a single wave crashing.
I told people I was sad, and they consoled me. I told people I loved them, and they loved me back. I asked for my desires and I received them. The mortal struggle had been lifted from me and I saw everything with a clarity that I never had.
But it was every word that had power, even the ones I didn't mean to say. I began to speak with only vindication and intent. I tried to be truthful and just, to only ask for something when I really needed it. So I told people I hated them, and they vanished.
They remove my tongue and it is a miracle that I feel no pain. As they pull it off it turns into black dust and crumbles. The audience shrieks and yells. More dust and ash pile out of my mouth, and the people around me splutter and cough.
There is havoc and pandemonium in the crowd, they are calling for execution immediately, they shout retorts of death. There is so much fear.
When I was bored of self-indulgence I became versed in the craft of weaving lies.
Each folie that I imbued into the lives of others would feast my desire for chaos and disorder. There is satisfaction in material gains, but there is ecstasy in watching people’s lives unravel.
I pulled and tugged at the threads I wove: a wife delusional with infidelity accusations, a woman overcome with a hunger for human flesh, a man who believed his wife was possessed by a demon.
I was a voyeur of madness, an epicure of discord, an artisan of pain. My fervour for suffering grew as I sank my hands deeper into the rotten flesh of the world.
I loved it, I loved it, I loved it.
Black smoke rises and swells from under my feet into thick swirls that pirouette into the heavens above. My lungs weigh heavy from the cloying vapours which have burned my nostrils and seared my eyes. I see flashes of green, red, blue, white, orange, indigo, violet.
And I scream and I scream. For I am still alive.
They knew it was me. I was hunted by daylight. When they came to my home they found me huddled in a corner, swaddled in swathes of torn fabrics, shielding myself from the light. I was laughing.
They asked no questions as they seized me with rough hands and bound my wrists and legs. I didn’t resist, this was my fate.
The world is cruel, and I made it crueller. Had I not been gifted with my voice I would have withered away into nothing, never to lick the fruits of my desires. I extend my gratitude to the one from my dream, for in my ephemeral life I was able to touch the euphoria of heaven and be liberated from the bounds of reality.
There is a sweetness I can smell, it is delicate and mellow. This must be my unbecoming. I see a great emptiness expand around me that condenses into a million twinkling lights. They burst into an endless multitude and then shrink, pulling my person with them. I am evaporating and collapsing simultaneously. I am both weightless and dense.
I dissolve into dust.
Sophie, 24, London - UK
“Sophie exists somewhere between here and there. She spends most of her time doing not much of anything, so she is trying to do less of that and more of this (writing). It is going ok so far.”