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IWasSentWest
09-17-2009, 11:00 AM
i wrote this about a month ago, and it started out as a poem, then a song, and then became a short story. it's not good writing, and it makes hardly in sense, the grammar is horrible, and the sentence structure is terrible. but i kinda liked it, and i figured i would share it with you folks, since this place is kinda like my second family :couple: .

Silence: An Odd Little Story - Batrick Pyrd (pseudonym)

I climbed a mountain the other day, just to see how it felt. To be able to conquer nature maybe? The one thing that is so unpredictable? It brings out that basic pride in every man, the one that tells you to survive, be the hunter and not the hunted I guess you could say. But once I made it to the top, I felt somehow...dissapointed. After all the sweat, the blood, the blisters that came from the hike, what was at the top just didn't amount to what I had hoped. I expected a beautiful landscape, miles of evergreens, the smell of fresh pine needles filling my nostrils, birds chirping and flying in the breeze. Sure, it was beautiful in it's own way, but instead of miles of evergreens, there were roads and houses weaved in and out of them. The smell was there, the birds did chirp, but something just wasn't right. As i sat there, rather put-out, something caught my attention. It wasn't a movement, or a raindrop, or an odor. It was a sound. A Sound. It was behind the chirp-chirp chirping of the birds, behind the constant arguing of me talking to myself in my head. Behind everyting.
It was Silence. No horn blowing, no television blaring, no radio blasting. Just Silence. Not the kind of silence that you get when noone is talking, or when the power goes out. This type came from being alone. Alone on that mountain. Right then I heard the most beautiful sound in the world, and also the most terrifying. The sound of Silence. It lurked behind every tree, behind every bush, in between every grain of every piece of dirt. Had it always been here? It seemed everywhere, like it had been there my whole life, but i was just too stupid, too smart, or too goddamn busy to realize it. It lingered, waiting. "Waiting for what?", i heard myself say aloud. I knew the answer before the words came tumbling out of my mouth. It was waiting for us, all of us. Waiting for us to die, to leave, to get the hell off of it's planet. No matter how many skyscrapers and mini-malls we put up, Silence would be there when we fell. It had unlimited time, nothing else to do. So it sat there, just out of reach, waiting for us to give it back what it rightfully deserved.
I sat there, alone with it, scared half to death. The noise of nothing, of everything, was driving me insane. I could see the face of the Silence in my mind. It was hungry, hungry for the earth that was going to return back to it once we all vanished. It looked almost blood thirsty, like a wolf who had just found three little pigs prancing down the road. And those eyes, the way they looked at the world, starving for more. We had driven it into hiding, because us humans had populated the planet. It's planet. The Silence was taunting me, screaming at me though I was deaf to it's words. It was going to kill me, kill everyone, everything. Just swallow it up. I felt constricted, I couldn't breath. This thing couldn't kill me, I wouldn't let it. But time was running out, soon i would be more than dead, i would be Silent. I didnt want to be, but what other choice was there. It was going to kill me, unless i did something. I could kill myself, i thought. I could save myself from the Silence, save myself from the endless torture of always being there, behind it all, always waiting. I had to do it, i had too. Out came the gun i had, and to my temple it went, rather poetically i might add. All i could think was that there was no God, no Satan. Only it. Only Silence. The barrel was cold to my head, and the trigger even colder to my finger. "I'd rather be dead than Silent" was all i could think to say. I know, there is less cheese in Wisconsin, but who cares. I was dead.
A gunshot scared the living shit out of me, mainly because I thought it was my own. Not untill i thought about how stupid that sounded did i realize that it wasn't my gun. A rifle, by the sound of it, had been shot off in the distance. It was hunting season after all. I looked around, not knowing what to expect. The birds still chirp-chirped, the wind rustled the leaves. But no Silence. Only an idiot on a mountain at twilight. No imaginary faces, no wolfish grins. Nothing. Had i gone crazy? Had i made it all up? That's a question you'll have to figure out for yourself. But if you ask me, Silence is still out there, everywhere. Waiting. It had almost beat me, almost. But some card carrying member of the NRA mountain man had saved my ass, without even the slightest notion about what the hell was going on. I had been about to kill myself. The Silence had driven me quite frankly, insane. But the one thing that it hated, the one thing it loathed , had been the only thing that had stopped it. God i love happy endings.
Crazy thing is, on the way back down the mountain, the oddest thing popped into my head. "If a tree falls in the middle of a forrest, and no one is around to hear it. Does it make a sound?". Not a damn chance

rradicob
09-22-2009, 11:25 AM
*applauds*
i love it.

as for the poem then song then short story transition, i know about that. most people don't seem to care for what comes out the other side. take a gander at: http://www.thedarktower.org/palaver/showthread.php?t=3146&highlight=rradicob it's my version of that transition and what came out.
i called it flash fiction because of it's length, but it definitely isn't fiction under all the laws of fiction, it isn't poetry, and certainly couldn't be a song unless Jack Black put some humor and drama into it.

woodpryan
05-26-2010, 03:10 PM
Good stuff, I think. Some punctuation, spelling, and capitalization errors. But I think it was a good story. It leaves the reader thinking.

BROWNINGS CHILDE
05-26-2010, 03:39 PM
Excellent.:clap:
I have been in the mountains when a perfect silence comes over you suddenly, and often found that to be a very eerie experience. I even started talking to myself to overcome the silence. This is an effective story, because it takes such a common feeling that I think most find to be, at the least, a little unnerving, and makes it horrific. Good Job!

IWasSentWest
05-26-2010, 03:43 PM
thanks. and yeh, my grammar is horrible when i type. i blame facebook lol

woodpryan
05-26-2010, 03:50 PM
indeed. that's what revision is for. I'd like to see your second draft when it's finished (if you are working on a second draft anyway). I'd like to read that.

Girlystevedave
05-28-2010, 10:48 PM
I really like it. :)
Especially the feeling that the second paragraph gives.