[IF] December: A - Silence
You think that you can hear silence if you sit in a room with the television off, no radio, not even the A/C running. But buildings settle...outside, air moves and birds sing. Cars pass, and people walk by out on the street. In this world, there’s really no such thing as true and lasting silence.
Real silence can only be found in death...or inside a prison.
I’ve been in that place, where no sounds of life could be heard...the place where hearts stop and breath catches, and nothing can be heard but the deafening, relentless sucking roar of nothing. The difference between total silence and mere quiet, filled with the tiny, infinitesimal sounds of the living world is that quiet is soothing. Silence has no measure of quiet...it fills your ears and bleeds into your psyche. It creates a void so vast and so ravenous that nothing can stay out of it.
I knew that kind of silence when I was forced to watch my brother being secured to the electric chair. Nobody in that room made a sound. It was surreal, knowing life went on and not hearing any of it.
Men and women sat around me. Tears ran down Veronica’s face. She wept, men lived...but there was no movement, no breaths...not even my own heartbeat rang in my ears. The impending reality of what we were all about to see was so all-encompassing that it swallowed all the comforting noise around us, like a black hole swallowing light. The world seemed to stop then...and I knew with all certainty that once that switch had been thrown, the world would come to an end.
Maybe it was psychological...or maybe everyone else in the room felt the same as I did. Collectively holding our breath, dreading the spectacle to come...unready and unwilling to witness a man’s death, and an innocent man to top everything all off.
And they knew...every person in that room knew that my brother was innocent.
That kind of silence...it doesn’t live in the outside world, and for that I’m grateful.
[locked from all law enforcement agencies]
I’ve learned to appreciate a new sort of silence since then...it’s a living silence I know I may never see broken, but oddly? I’m okay with that.
Rachel Gibson...we’ve never spoken. All our communications pass without a sound, but the silence is a full one. It’s functional, it’s useful...and in its own way? It’s comforting.
With her working for us, and now keeping in touch with me via the internet, the silence has become a lifeline.
We’re not alone in this fight anymore...and for the first time, there’s hope on the horizon that we can finally end this thing for good.
[/locked]
Muse: Michael Scofield
Fandom: Prison Break
Words: 467
Real silence can only be found in death...or inside a prison.
I’ve been in that place, where no sounds of life could be heard...the place where hearts stop and breath catches, and nothing can be heard but the deafening, relentless sucking roar of nothing. The difference between total silence and mere quiet, filled with the tiny, infinitesimal sounds of the living world is that quiet is soothing. Silence has no measure of quiet...it fills your ears and bleeds into your psyche. It creates a void so vast and so ravenous that nothing can stay out of it.
I knew that kind of silence when I was forced to watch my brother being secured to the electric chair. Nobody in that room made a sound. It was surreal, knowing life went on and not hearing any of it.
Men and women sat around me. Tears ran down Veronica’s face. She wept, men lived...but there was no movement, no breaths...not even my own heartbeat rang in my ears. The impending reality of what we were all about to see was so all-encompassing that it swallowed all the comforting noise around us, like a black hole swallowing light. The world seemed to stop then...and I knew with all certainty that once that switch had been thrown, the world would come to an end.
Maybe it was psychological...or maybe everyone else in the room felt the same as I did. Collectively holding our breath, dreading the spectacle to come...unready and unwilling to witness a man’s death, and an innocent man to top everything all off.
And they knew...every person in that room knew that my brother was innocent.
That kind of silence...it doesn’t live in the outside world, and for that I’m grateful.
[locked from all law enforcement agencies]
I’ve learned to appreciate a new sort of silence since then...it’s a living silence I know I may never see broken, but oddly? I’m okay with that.
Rachel Gibson...we’ve never spoken. All our communications pass without a sound, but the silence is a full one. It’s functional, it’s useful...and in its own way? It’s comforting.
With her working for us, and now keeping in touch with me via the internet, the silence has become a lifeline.
We’re not alone in this fight anymore...and for the first time, there’s hope on the horizon that we can finally end this thing for good.
[/locked]
Muse: Michael Scofield
Fandom: Prison Break
Words: 467