Listen...

The narrator describes their life in a silent house by the sea.

Listen… and tell me what you hear.

There is the sound of ocean waves, pushed and pulled against the shoreline, crashing on rocks and sand and sending salty spray into the air. Occasionally, the call of a seagull joins in the ocean’s song as it dips and weaves over the surface of the water. Dancing with the wind. The small house, balanced on stilts above where the tide rises to, completes the choir with creaks and moans as it rocks and sways with sea breezes.

Day after day, I sit in the window of the house and I watch the sand change. New shells are deposited with each wave, then swept away again in an instant. Everything looks different each time the sun rises. And yet… it all stays the same. 

Eyes empty, I stare through glass, so used to the melodies of the house and the ocean that all I hear is silence. Deafening silence. I cannot leave. This silence is all I have ever known. 

People will come and go from time to time. They stay about a week, spending their days on the beach, playing and swimming and getting sunburned, enjoying every moment.

I simply sit in my window and watch on.

I see their mouths move as they sit around the table, leaving my seat empty for me if I ever choose to join them. I never do. What use is it to sit with them when I can never hear what they say? Bright smiles and rosy cheeks, yet no sound from their lips to relieve me of the silence.

Sleep has long since deserted me, and I am left to drift about the house in bare feet, watching the sleeping faces of my guests in their rooms. So peaceful while I remain restless.

Often I feel as though I am one of the shells in the sea. Shattered and worn a little more by each wave that smashes me against the ground over and over again. Yet no matter how broken I become, how far I stray from what I once was, I remain nonetheless. Forced to endure waves of grief as many continue on with their lives, leaving me in crushing nothingness.

Winters are somehow more bearable. No one visits while the chill hangs thick in the air, leaving me alone with just my thoughts and the view from my window. I can forget for a time that there are sounds to remember from when I was free. No more silent lips, no smiles as reminders of happy days long past, no reminders of the warm sun I can no longer feel on my face.

A lone man came to visit one summer. It was often rainy that year, so he spent much time inside. Reading, relaxing. All on his own. He enjoyed the silence. I would sit with him and try to enjoy it, too, but I would grow restless too quickly. I begged him to speak, to say something to me, to let me hear his voice… but he ignored me. He could not hear me, my voice as invisible as my lips.

I grew angry.

When people would visit the following summer, after a long winter of festering, growing anger, I would scream in their faces. I would throw their flip flops and towels across the room, knock things from shelves, make such a fuss… just to try and get them to hear me. To see me. If they could hear me, then maybe they would let me hear them. Maybe they would free me from my soundless prison. But alas, it was not to be.

The people grew frightened of me. Families I had seen visit for years, generations, stopped coming. I was left alone.

Years passed, and not a soul has passed through the door of this house. The boards have begun to rot beneath my feet. Dust gathers on the shelves, spiders spin their webs in the corners, birds nest in the rafters. I wait, I watch, I wonder. 

Then I see her… A young woman approaches the door and pauses on the step. I am watching from behind a curtain, greyed from year after year being bleached by the sun. She knocks and I drift over with silent steps, letting the rusted latch creak open. I see her lips move. She is thanking me. A much more polite visitor than those I had known in years past.

As she enters, she produces a radio and sets it on the table.

I hear a click. My unbeating heart jumps in my chest at the sound as it rings in my ears. I hear static… then a voice. It is the woman! She asks me my name and sits in a chair, looking across at me and waiting for me to sit in mine. 

I smile. “Listen,” I say. “Tell me what you hear.”

Reviews

[Haley]

What a story. I am all too familiar with the feeling of watching people on the outside, often seeming happier and lighter. I can feel the frustrations of not being heard and the destruction that this can cause. I'm glad it ended with the narrator being heard. We all just want to be heard. Great job!