Silence

You hear it, sometimes.

Quiet Slumber - Creepy Music Box-2

A piece of music that sticks in your head, not because it’s complex, or something you really love. It may even sound wrong, somehow. And yet, you can’t stop listening to it.

Why?

Something in this one piece of music, which you like, but don’t really love, keeps drawing you back. Even despite its wrong-ness, you can’t stop listening.

There could be many reasons for this, but sometimes it’s because you’ve always heard the song. It was whispered to you in the womb, from the moment you were born it has played in your ears, always with you. Softly, so softly that you never heard. Or when you did, you didn’t recognize what it was.

Silence. The silence that plays when nothing else is going on, when the world is still.

When there is nothing.

So, why does it stick so hard in your mind?

Because, you know it’s important. And after you listen to it enough in a form you can hear, you begin to notice it in other parts of your life. A snatch here or there, gone before you can be sure. But, the sound of silence always reaches you before something happens. Even if for only a moment, it reaches you.

Some people are able to recognize their own silence from birth. It alerts them to something bad happening. Most never find their sound. They are forever unknowing of what their silence sounds like. A handful find their song, and recognize it for what it is to them. They listen constantly, until it’s always with them. From then on, silence plays for them before misfortune or evil enters their life.

But, as with all things, there is a price.

Other songs are playing in the world. And by listening to your own so much, you start to hear others.

Family first. Silence plays about them, very quick snatches in the beginning. But as you listen, they begin to build, stronger each time you hear.

Friends are next, then outward, more songs, more noise, until you hear the silence of the world. Some of the other songs may even be the same as yours. And you can’t do anything to help, to warn of the song of silence playing about them.

Of the silence that might descend on them soon.