Don't Stop Screaming

Silence will be the only thing that scares you.

There was once a time when the monsters did not exist.

Whether they were born of this world or of another, we will never know, in fact we know very little about them. They are insidious beings, lurking and skulking in the darkness, and more importantly the silence. The things that scour the earth now are averted to even the slightest of sounds, and if you happen to fall into the still air, they will come for you. It has been said that they delve out of the earth itself, grim spectres of the dead air. However, nobody has ever seen one and lived to pass on the details of their encounter, because once you see one it is already far too late.

We as the people of earth have taken precautions to make sure that we that are left are protected. Everyone that lives here is required to carry a noise maker, to keep the beasts that lurk in the quiet at bay, but some of us are not as lucky as others. Everything that makes sound needs to run on energy, and that power has every possibility of running out. If that ever happens, we only have one recommendation.

Whatever you do, do not stop screaming.

There is no peace in the quiet, not anymore.

 

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The wind whistled loudly through the trees, making the branches shake and clack together loudly. A lone raven glided through the night, a single white eye looking out over the darkness before it alighted on a branch, claws scratching bark. It opened its beak and croaked, it hoarse voice ricocheting through the trees. The sound waves travelled far, and into the ear of a boy, who cocked his head and smiled nervously.

There was plenty of sound tonight.

Still, as the wind whipped around him tearing at his ears, he gripped his noise maker a little tighter in his hands. It wasn’t likely that he would need it, but it was always good to be prepared. The small device was pocket sized, but produced a loud concussive sound if the button on its top was pressed. His thumb hovered over it, as his eyes darted between the trees as the light played tricks on his eyes. Spectres darted between the shadows, and he shook his head, chiding himself for being so childish.

His footsteps crunched in the leaves under his feet, and the key chains on his backpack jingled with every step he took. He had been over at a friend’s to study for a test that the pair had the next day, but it had been growing late to he had decided to walk home rather than impose and spend the night. He had ended up in the forest because it was a much faster walk than taking the road, but the forest path that wound through the trees lacked the electric thrums that kept the silence at bay. The only noise makers to be had were small bells, that tinkled darkly as the wind batted them about.  The breeze tickled his ears again, sending chills up and down his spine as he picked up the pace of his walking, accelerating the crunch of his footsteps.

His heart started to thump loudly in his chest, and each of his breaths wheezed in his lungs. His eyes flicked back and forth as the shadows continued to dance around him, taunting him from the safety of the trees. Stopping suddenly in his tracks, he decided that maybe taking the long way home was worth his while. He knew he was being childish, but there was something in the trees that was obviously spooking him, and it was not worth the risk that it posed.

The boy was clever.

However, his tardiness in decision making was going to be his downfall.

As the boy stood stock still in the middle of the forest, he slowly started to realize the gravity of the error that he had made. The wind had become nothing more than a breath of air. The crunch of his footsteps no longer permeated the night, and even the crow had fallen silent in the darkness. The only thing that the boy could hear was his heart, hammering like a terrified jackrabbit in his chest, but that was nothing more than blood throbbing in his ears.

His jaw dropped slack on his face, as ever so slowly his eyes veered to the right, searching for the bells that were to be his salvation. What greeted him was nothing more than a greasy piece of ribbon, swaying back and forth omitting not a sound. The poor boy was frozen in place, a shivering pillar of terror as ever so slowly, they started to appear.

The twigs on the trees started to twitch, as if they were spiders dancing over hot coals before they started to sprout up and out of the bark. The fibers of the tree started to twist and stretch and the twigs spread into fingers, clutching at the dead air. The bark shifted and the fingers shot away from the trees, pulling with them long thin arms that stretched down to the ground. The arms jerked and twitched, pulling the bodies attached to them out of the trees as more fingers started to emerge from the ground. The things were grasping at the air, grabbing onto some unseen force as they wrenched themselves into existence. They dropped to the ground on short stubby legs, as lithe and noiseless as the most effective of killers. The others pulled themselves up out of the ground, their shoulders wrenching as they moved themselves up into the air. The earth parted around them, letting them sprout from the ground like demented daisies.  

They were small creatures, with small petite torsos and when they moved their hands dragged along the ground behind them. They looked like contorted dolls with the proportions horribly wrong. Their movements were slow and jerky, like they were moving through thick soup. Even though they parted the leaves with their movements, their actions failed to stir the air. Their heads were small spheres on top of their bodies, layered with droopy grey skin. Their mouths were open, tasting the world as they lacked noses, and sharp barbed teeth filled the open maw. Any eyes that regarded the small terrified boy were blank and white, lacking colour but not vision for when the boy twitched with fear they followed his every move. What defined them were their ears, which hung off of their heads like rags composed of a thin membrane. They seemed to delve out of every surface around the boy, standing on the ground or framing the branches of the trees.

For a moment they stood motionless, grinning in the stillness of the night.

Then the boy remembered that his noise maker was clutched in his hand.

At the same moment the monsters lunged forwards his thumb slammed down onto the button, causing the air to vibrate with the noise. The sound tore into the boys ears, impossibly loud, as the monsters fell from the branches like dead leaves. As the noise ripped through the air they writhed on the ground, their mouths open and screeching soundlessly. Their long clawed fingers clamped over their ears, as the sound drummed into their skulls rendering them helpless.

The boy hesitated for only a second, before his feet swept out from underneath him and he started to run. The noise maker screamed in his ears, urging him to move faster. His brain grappled with his skull in pain and confusion as the noise bored into his eardrums. Still he ran. The boy darted this way and that, shrieking at every branch that lurched into his vision, mimicking the bony fingers of the monsters that he had seen.

He ran impossibly fast, and his feet took him off of the path, deeper into the forest, but in his terror everything was a blur. When he finally ran out of breath, he scrambled to a stop wheeling on the spot to see if they had followed him. His breaths were ragged as the air was permeated by a frantic beeping. His eyes drifted downwards to see that the beeping was coming from his hand, where the noise maker was clutched between his sweaty fingers and he could see the red light flickering erratically.

The battery was about to die.

The beeping increased in frequency before they started to drop in their tone. Each beep dropped lower and lower in intensity, before they were each melded into one another as a grotesque glob of sound.  The sound started to waver, slipping lower and lower before grinding to a low clicking halt. The last click hung heavy in the air, before dropping off into the night.

Then, the world paused for a moment.

For a fraction of a second, everything was still.

Nothing moved, nothing breathed, nothing made even the slightest of sounds. The only thing that could be heard, was a single gulp as the boy tried to swallow the realization that everything was over. He opened his mouth, jerking his head back to the sky and let his terror fuel his voice. His lungs filled with air and he howled into the trees, trying to keep the inevitable at bay. His scream was brimming with terror, and it reverberated in his lungs before permeating the air. The boy’s voice repelled the monsters for a little longer, but the moment that he ran out of breath, they would consume him.

He could see them stirring at the edge of his vision, waiting for the moment that he paused to draw in a breath. They hung like bats in the trees, their white eyes watching him as his voice grew hoarse in his throat. His lungs were draining, and his voice bore the strain of his exertion as he forced the scream to last longer. The volume dropped drastically and the monsters darted forwards, dancing on the very edge of the sound as the boy struggled. His voice rasped in his throat, losing intensity with every fraction of a second as the scream slowly died in his chest. With the last of his air, the scream choked off into a garbled sound, before the boy sucked in one last rattling breath.

He would not get to expel it.

For the second his sounds no longer permeated the air, they struck with deadly precision. Their claws grasped at the boys throat, tearing it wordlessly from his neck, drowning any sound the boy could have made in blood. The crimson droplets fell to the ground, but they made no noise as the beasts leapt upon the thrashing boy. The leaves twisted underneath the boy as he flailed bellowing silently to the sky but nothing disturbed the air. The last thing that was seen of the boy was his eyes, widened and glazed with terror before the monsters consumed his body, heaving over top of him.

Then without a sound, they were gone, leaving nothing of the boy that had been there a second before. The only thing that remained was the small black noisemaker, glistening with a smear of blood to match the sheen that spattered the leaves of the forest floor. Then the wind picked up and stirred the leaves, erasing the evidence of the boy’s death, and eradicating the silence that had consumed him.

 

Reviews

[Spotted Hyena]

You have made silence scary. Interesting idea. I'm not into blood and gore, but this is a unique story and well written. It's very purple-prose-y to me, I'm not sure if that's good or bad. I could picture everything vividly and it felt like I was right there.

[Darkimmortal]

Thank you so much for your kind words!!! Although..... I am not really sure as to what purple-prosy means....

[Spotted Hyena]

Purple prose is using a lot of description. Sorry about the confusion!

[Darkimmortal]

Ah, that makes sense. I do tend to use a lot of description.