Lost Voice
She slithered down the filthy hill, scattering crushed cans and discarded ribs. She had lost her patience at last, the adrenaline of youth propelling her downwards.
She had just woken up and stretched her ebony limbs. She sat cross-legged on top of the pile of rubbish that grew at the end of the street, the end of the town. Beyond was the desert, where night would bring glorious, eerie sounds, and distant winds that were silenced during the day.
“Because they all make so much noise!” She would shout, knowing that nobody would hear her, or if they did, could not distinguish it from the rage that hurled itself amongst the townsfolk.
She walked down Main street, kicking at the dust, watching it unfurl around her, an invisible cloak. In this heat there were no cars so her perambulation in the middle of the road was not so troublesome. To her left a family shambled along the sidewalk, muttering and grumbling to themselves, pushing past others, who scattered and threatened; to her right a noisy group of adolescents played their music snap, snap snapping at the air.
“Why do you make so much noise?” She shouted, the hot sun in her face, perspiration playing its distracted tunes with her forehead and eyelids.
Nobody heard.
She strode down further, her path crossed momentarily by a starving dog, its tongue loose in the heat, a single open eye, round and black and fearful. It almost registered her presence but hurried on. She felt the heat on her shoulders. It made her itch. She scratched her left shoulder, and that seemed to trigger an itch on her right leg. She scratched that, and then an itch appeared on her stomach. A relay race of ticks and scratches ensued before she stopped for a moment to calm herself. She knew she had a tendency to over-react, or so she had been told at school, and by her mother, and her brothers, perhaps her father too, but she didn’t remember him.
She clenched her lips, fiercely breathed in through her nose, and started to walk again.
Ahead was a policeman. He was wide, his utility belt extended out, bustling with the means of law and order. She knew him, as a person, rather than as a policeman, and she tried to avoid him. He was shouting at someone across the street, someone opening the door of their battered Toyota, someone who seemed oblivious. The policeman turned and headed towards them furiously.
“What is wrong with these people?” She talked to herself.
“What are you looking at missy?!” At the corner of his eye the policeman seemed to have noticed her, and his contempt was clear. He swung his arm as if to turn back in her direction. But the man from the Toyota slipped on the road. Drunk? In the middle of the day? Perhaps he had observed her too.
“Perhaps he’s just ill?” She said to herself, and looked down, grateful for the distraction as the policeman continued on his path to the man and reached out to grab him.
She passed quickly by, and saw some old friends from school, an old school, in different times, when kids were just kids, playing together, not thinking about anything other than the moment, ignoring what their parents felt, what was on the TV or the internet.
“But now you don’t see me?” She shouted, a full roar, a satisfying bellow, a sound she rarely heard aloud herself, but a familiar feeling that welled through her body, and made her feet tingle, her stomach knot and her tight curls bristle.
In response the sounds of the town grew a little louder, gathering the energy of the people and throwing it into the hot, dead air, battering it around the wooden paneled houses, the storefronts, the low-pitched roofs and porches.
“They won’t answer any more.” Another voice in her head. A recent one, but not unfamiliar. It had grown from a whisper she remembered as a small child. Back then she had thought it to be a quiet companion, just in the shadows, beyond reach, always with her, a friend, a confidante. The voice had become more bold as she had grown, and recently had pre-occupied her thoughts, filling the gaps left by her childhood friends who now seemed to shy away, and whisper amongst themselves.
“Why not?” She shouted, not caring who could hear. “Why don’t they talk to me any more? The people along the sidewalk, sank their half-forms into the shade, hiding under the wide hats, their parasols, and shrinking from the sun as though they were vampires.
She laughed at herself, out loud again.
“There, you don’t need them for entertainment.” Was that her old grandma’s voice? Or a quiet companion? It didn’t matter. Sometimes her mama too would talk to her, even though she hadn’t seen her for a little while, not since the incident at the grocery store.
“She’s always been a good girl, kept out of trouble.”
“She must keep out of trouble. People like us…” Her grandmama would never finish that sentence, and the words were set into the trunk of their existence.
“I don’t want to be good!” She shouted. Tears pricked at her eyes. She was much hotter now, her flesh tight and sweaty. She kept walking in the road, the dust gathering at her ankles. A black bird lifted from the canopy of a gelato store, and for a moment she contemplated going across to look at the ices, not troubled by her inability to buy one. Just to look.
“Go on. You deserve a look.”
“Do I?” She winced. “What about my brothers?”
“They’re not here are they? And you’ll only look.”
“No. I can’t”
“Of course you can. No harm to be done there.”
She slowed her pace, and hesitated. She was slightly aware of a dragging noise behind her, but it merged with the other sounds of the town, and she allowed her eye to focus on the dazzle of pinks and whites, creams and yellows, and yes, chocolate, chocolate, that’s really what she’d like to see, the flakes of chocolate on the gelato.
“Just a look, it won’t kill you.” The voice goaded her a little more, and she felt herself turn, guided as if by another force, steering towards the ice-cream.
“Go away. Go away!” Another voice floated up at her. She lifted her head and saw a fat man shouting. She wasn’t sure what he said, but he flung his arms around and made his face bright red, like one of his ices.
“Don’t worry about him. You do what you want girl.” That other voice, always helping her through, the only voice she really listened to.
The town fell silent for a moment. Another loud voice barked behind her, and a crack echoed in street. A pain burst into the back of her head, a sensation that rattled down her chest, towards her legs. She stumbled, tipping forwards. Her toes had lost their purpose. She crumpled to the dusty road and lay there like a discarded paper bag, her eyes closed in a final fold.
Every year, at this time, she made this walk. Every time her voice was stilled, and the town would resume its noise, to forget the death of the girl, and the shame of their part in it.
[end]Part of a new series of micro-fiction stories, released as These Fantastic Worlds SF & Fantasy Fiction Podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher and more. Also on this blog, These Fantastic Worlds.
Text, image, audio © 2020 Jake Jackson, thesefantasticworlds.com. Thanks to Frances Bodiam and Elise Wells, Logic ProX, Sound Studio, the Twisted Wave Recorder App, Apogee Condenser microphone, and Alfons Schmidt’s fantastic Notebook app.
More Tales
There are many other great stories in this series, including:
And a carousel of 10 audio stories from the podcast with information about submissions.
Here’s a related post, 5 Steps to the SF and Fantasy Podcasts.