My Short Story

The following is a short story I wrote for school entitled "The Shadow of Silence." It isn't very good and its 8 pages long because it had to be, but I thought I'd share it just in case somebody out there is really bored or something!

Wherever I look, Toronto always provides me with more than enough gray to satisfy even the largest of appetites for that dull colour. It is everywhere. It towers above me, smiling down from shining sky scraping walls. I walk on gray cement, securing its permanence with the hammering of my feet. It does not help that even the sky has been gray lately. It has rained a lot, but the city refuses to be washed Back home, the rains make the trees shine a bright, clean, green, but here it just seems to heighten my awareness of the litter on these dirty streets.

It doesn’t help that winter is coming. The wet leaves scattered throughout the streets are now more brown than red. I remember how the snow was streaked through with gray grit last winter when I came up to visit the campus. It wasn’t nearly as bright as it is back at home. I didn’t notice it at the time, for my eyes were fixed on freedom. It is only looking back that I can see the reality in my first memories of this place.

I see the clearest when my eyes are closed. It is in the moments before sleep, or during daylight’s longer blinks, that I see the farm house. It is then that the faces start floating by inside my mind. Those visions force me to wrench open my eyes and see the gray land that I have chosen as mine. I have to silently chant the truth of my freedom. I have to work so hard to remember that this land is my paradise.

 It really doesn’t feel like paradise to me, and I miss home no matter how much I try not to. However, the home I miss is the loud and happy one of my childhood. Growing up, there was always an abundance of people in the farmhouse. I never really knew who was just visiting for the day and who was going to be staying with us till they got “back on their feet.” These visitors filled the farmhouse with loud and joyful music or conversation, but it isn’t like that anymore.

Silence invaded the farmhouse with the death of my mom. I cannot figure out where everyone went or why, they just stopped coming around. Maybe father’s silent grief made them nervous, or perhaps they just didn’t want to stop by uninvited. My mom was the one who welcomed the lost into our loud, chaotic and happy family. Father has always just sat there, in that dark green easy chair of his, watching life happen around him.

 It never bothered me before mom died. When I was growing up, father’s silent lap was a safe place from which to watch the fireworks of my mom’s life, but when my mom died his silence became a disease. I could feel it affecting me. That is when I knew I needed to get out of there. I was only in grade eleven at the time, but I started to plan my escape.

 I had been planning to go to the University of Western Ontario because it is the closest university to the farmhouse. When mom died, I knew that was no longer an option, for the short drive to London was no match for the plague of silence. I had to go farther away and I needed a city even bigger than London. I needed a place so full of people and noise that a silent disease could not survive there.

I decided to go to a university in Toronto, believing that this disease of silence would lose its power in the country’s largest city.  Oh how wrong I was. . There is a lot of noise here, but it is the noise of machines: the rumble of subways and the honking of cars. The only noise from the other humans is the sound of their footsteps on the cement or the swish of shopping bags against their legs.

 There are people everywhere here, but nobody looks at one another. People rush from work or school and home again without ever once saying hello. I never imaged that I could feel lonely in a place so full of human life. I thought I would be safe here, but the silence has followed me even to this noisy city. It is changing me, and now, when I walk down the street, I look at my feet.

One day I was wandering the lonely streets outside of campus, and went into a coffee shop to warm up. I felt awkward at first because I was by myself, but then I noticed that I was not the only one who had come in alone. We were like a collection of islands all floating in an ocean too vast to cross.

Some people were reading papers, typing on computers, or talking on their phones. One guy sat off in a corner just staring out the window. I sat across the room from him and watched his face thinking about how he had a story that I would never know. They all did.

I felt suddenly claustrophobic. I was trapped in that ocean of silence. I needed to get out of there, but I hadn’t finished my tea, so I went to the bathroom just for somewhere to go. I sat down on the cover of a toilet seat, closed the stall door and rested my head on the wall.  I paid attention to my breathing, thinking about an uncle of mine who strongly believes in the power of meditation.  I wondered if I could find a way out of the ocean in the patterns of my breath.

I sat up straighter, staring at the door in front of me. My eyes locked on a spot where someone had scratched into the metal the words “What are you waiting for?” “What am I waiting for?” I asked myself out loud without meaning to. Something about those words struck my heart and stayed in my mind. I came alive to the moment. I stood up and walked right out of that silent coffee shop.

 I stood on the corner with the cars rushing loudly past watching the crowds of people who were trying to keep the silence alive. I smiled at a man who was standing at a stoplight wearing a stern gray suit and holding a big black briefcase. “Good afternoon!” I said, “How are you?” He looked slightly startled and stared silently at my face in that second before the light turned green and his feet started moving him away from me. I heard him muttering “good, good, you?” but he was already half way across the street. I turned away, and walked home with a slight bounce in my step.

The next day in class I paid much closer attention to my professor’s words then I normally did. I watched as the hands of eager students went up all around the room. There were a lot of students who were eager to share their thoughts. It hadn’t occurred to me that there were people who were not stifled by the silence. I had thought it was an unstoppable epidemic.

I listened as students began to argue with one another, sharing contrasting ideas until their disagreements sharpened their thoughts and created a new idea that they could both agree on.  This new idea was a combination of both of their original arguments, and it represented the communion of their minds.

 As I was watching, a short and bubbly girl, who was sitting near the front of the room, put her hand up in order to add to the discussion. The professor nodded at her and as she began to speak. I listened to her words with a new sense of focus. They were profound and flowery and she made observations I had never thought of. I was blown away.

The tall and handsome guy beside her was nodding slowly as she spoke, but when she finished his hand went up and the teacher called his name. His eyes focused on her face as he slowly formed his argument. His thoughts completely contrasted hers, but his argument was politely formed. He made his case in a slow and direct way. He spoke without her sense of the poetic, but he made just as much sense as she had.

 Somehow he had found a loophole in her argument that I had not seen, although it seemed so obvious once he had said it. I was sad for the girl with the smiling eyes that shone like my mom’s.  I would have been humiliated to have my comments criticized like that, even though he did it kindly. Her smile never faded, and the light in her eyes continued to dance as she cheerfully admitted defeat.

The professor spoke again, and I suddenly remembered that we were in class. She summarized their argument, rephrasing the comments of both the girl and the boy and asked if anyone else had any final thoughts. I listened carefully and silently rephrased all that had been said in a way that made sense to me. I fumbled with their thoughts carefully tracing them in my mind, begging them to make the same amount of sense as they had when my classmates were wowing me with their speeches.

As I sat their thinking, I realized that the girl’s ideas made more sense than the boy’s. When he was speaking the loophole he had mentioned seemed to be so damaging to the girl’s argument, but the whole thing was brought to sudden clarity in my mind and I realized that the girl had been right all along. The loophole the boy had brought up was in fact not a loophole at all.

I was shocked to see my hand slowly rising into the air. I wondered dully if I should just put it down again before the professor noticed that I had raised it, but she called my name and I knew it was too late. “Leslie?” She said, and I realized I had never before heard my name on her lips. I was shocked to hear my voice responding to hers. I was shocked to find that it wasn’t that hard to speak my thoughts out loud. I was nervous at first, but I felt more confident as my argument took its shape.

I was pleased to discover that my ideas still made sense when I spoke them out loud, and I was excited by this fight against the silence that had choked me for so long. The greatest shock was their faces. The girl shot the boy a look of victory and he smiled at me in what seemed to be amazement. The teacher noted that time was up and she thanked me for my comment saying she thought it wrapped the debate up quite nicely and then she bid us all a goodbye.

I was shocked to see the boy and the girl kiss on their way out the door. The girl smiled at the boy declaring that she had beaten him that time as she slipped her hand into his. He smiled at her before looking over his shoulder at me. “Yeah,” he admitted, “but you had help,” and she also looked back at me. They were by the door so I would have to pass them on my way out.

 I smiled nervously at them as I passed. “Thanks!” The girl said, smiling at me cheerfully. “Yeah, that was a really neat observation you made,” the boy said “I never thought of that, but I have a question for you!” “Oh no,” the girl said laughing and shaking her head “Germaine can never forget it if he loses a debate. He isn’t going to sleep for days trying to find a loophole in your argument. Hey, do you have class now?” she asked “We were just going to meet a few friends for a cup of coffee, you should come and Germaine can ask all of his silly questions!” I had nothing else to do, but I shifted my feet nervously. “Yeah you should come.” said Germaine “You could meet his sister Emily” the girl grinned “She loves anyone who can hold their own with Germaine.” “Ok” I said, shrugging a little. I’ll come for a bit.”

 “My name is Zoe by the way, yours is Leslie right?” “Yeah,” I said thinking that it made sense that her name meant life. She reminded me of my mom the way her eyes lit up when she listened and the way her hands danced when she talked. I found it was easier than I thought it would be to talk to them.

We went back to that same coffee shop where I had seen the graffiti in the bathroom. It was warmer than I had remembered it being in there, and there seemed to be more people who had come in groups. I noticed a lot of laughter and discussion. There were other people who spoke with dancing hands and shining eyes, just like Zoe.

In the course of the conversation I mentioned that I had grown up on a farm house. I told them that I missed the fields, the forests, and especially the lake. “But we are right by a lake!” Zoe exclaimed “Yeah I know,” I shrugged, “but it’s not the same with all these buildings around it,” I said. “Oh you have to come to our special place.” She leaned across the table when she said this and her voice was heavy with enthusiasm. “We found this amazing spot on the beach. Leslie, you would love it. It is really isolated and totally overgrown with nature. It is so relaxing. We go there a lot for picnics. In fact we were going to go this weekend if the weather’s nice! You should come.” All of their friends agreed and, without really thinking about it, I promised to meet them that Saturday.

I waited for them at a street car stop like we’d planned. Germaine’s sister had come again, as well as the two boys I had met at the coffee shop a few days before and also a girl I had never seen before. They introduced me to this girl and then the street car came and we all got on.

I had no idea where we were going so I just followed them as we hopped from one type of transit to another and walked down streets I didn’t recognize. We ended up on at the shore of Lake Ontario, but it wasn’t a spot that the city would advertise. It was all grown over with wild grasses and the sand between those was sprinkled with pebbles.

 It reminded me of the quieter parts of Lake Eerie that lie away from the bustling beach towns. The farmhouse is only a short bike ride from a place like that, so there was a part of me that felt like it was coming home.

We stretched out on blankets and huddled in our coats. It was cold and windy but the sun had come out for once, and we built a fire. We didn’t really know the rules for fire there, but it warmed our bones so we didn’t care. We ate then, and drank tea out of a communal thermos. Everyone had brought something for the picnic.

 Once their bellies were full and warm, the hinges of their mouths hung a little looser. I just sat and listened as they danced in and out of those big topics of conversation like God, pain, death, war, hope, and epistemology. There was no anger and no one seemed too sure. This wasn’t a cut throat debate. It seemed to me like they were pondering their questions the way I was savoring the tea. They weren’t in any rush to understand the universe. In fact, they seemed to enjoy their confusion because it meant that there was something bigger than just them in this life. Imagine if we could understand everything. How small and boring would the world have to be to be understood?

I nibbled on a sandwich while I listened to them talk. It was a pleasant sound. It reminded me of the way the farmhouse had sounded when I was a little kid. I started to think about my father’s silence. I had been thinking about not going home for Christmas, but in that moment I knew I would go back often to visit. I figured I shouldn’t leave my sister and brother alone with his silence, but also that it might not be a disease. My father’s face sat clear inside my mind and I knew that his silence was just another part of this world that something inside of me felt love for even though it made the thinking part of me a little nervous.