entry - silence *please note, this story is written with no proper 'grammar' on purpose. the world has changed. we slowly evolved into the quiet. silence is golden-wasn’t that a quote? long, long, long ago? it’s come to life now. silence is gold. silence makes gold. for each day spent in silence, a bar of gold is earned. the quiet are rich, the loud are poor. some people call this life great. i disagree. though i’ve grown rich on silence, i’d rather be poor. i’d love to hear laughter again. i’d love to hear people conversing again. i’d love to hear my own voice again. the only voices we could ever hear were songs and the news. the news was boring, so i grabbed my phone and plugged in my earbuds, putting on a random song as i thought about the silence. i thought about speaking, then immediately shut the thought down. they had microphones implanted in every piece of clothing, making sure you stayed silent. if you didn’t… you were never seen again. three loud beeps. that wasn’t good. “attention, attention. this is Mildi Lin speaking, and i’d like to call everyone down to the underground bunkers.” i internally sighed. Mildi Lin’s voice was the only voice(other than singers and news reporters voices) that i’d ever heard. her voice was raspy, and i sure hoped mine sounded nothing like hers. i pulled out my earbuds and tiptoed to by bedroom, and into my tight closet, feeling the floor with my hand to find the trapdoor. i felt the handle and slowly opened it, quickly and quietly heading down the long staircase. the staircase led to the big bunker area, which was where everyone’s bunkers led to. a big bunker room. Mildi Lin climbed down the big brown ladder that came from an opening in the ceiling, looking funny as she did so, holding her clipboard and wearing high-heels. “and here we are.” Mildi Lin said with a sigh. “it has been, a seven hundred seventy three years that our community has reserved to the quiet, and now, we will stab those years in the back.” Mildi Lin was trying to give a motivational speech. she was failing. clearly. “will we be able to speak?” someone near me signed. Mildi Lin smiled. something i hoped i would never see again. it was a frown with a horrible costume. “yes. you will. we will act like a normal community. we will give you your proper names.” confusion reflected on everyone’s faces. “you may be wondering what i mean by ‘proper’ names, correct?” Mildi asked. “i will call each of you up, using your numbers, i’ll give you your name, and then you can speak into the microphone. you will say: hi.” funny. we didn’t know how to speak. the last time ‘speaking’ lessons had ever been given were about a seven hundred seventy three years ago. pretty long time, if i say so myself. we did know how to write. we couldn’t live without writing. that was one of our two ways of communication. the other way of communication was ASL- signing. Mildi called out the first number, number 0921, who was someone i had studied with during school. “your proper name is Leon Mertio.” Leon coughed. he stared at the microphone, and Mildi simply smiled at him. it wasn’t a big deal for her, she’d been speaking all her life. speaking was normal for her, but not for Leon. or me. or anyone else in this room. our memories of speaking resulted in pain - for those who had spoken. “hi.” Leon mumbled weakly into the mic. his voice was actually kind of soft. clapping spread all around. Leon’s voice was the first voice we’d heard in a long time, except for Mildi’s, of course. numbers and numbers and numbers passed until Mildi called mine. the last one I WON (tied) SECOND PLACE FOR THIS :DDDD avs said they would've given me first but four first places felt like to much :) i'm still very happy with second place though! this is reshared btw
