One-Oh-One Unsaid Words

By: Ramsha Ekhlaque 

The darkness of the night was deceptive, still, almost unforgiving. It was thick and heavy, interlaced with the stench of death and broken by the screaming silence of sorrow. But she did not complain, she did not say a word.

There was absolute stillness. No air stirred the grass or leaves. No clouds drifted in the sea of blue above. No water dripped or flowed. No sound could be heard, either close at hand or in the far-off-distance. It was an eerie sort of tranquillity, so instead of being soothed, her senses became heightened. She felt like a prey, even though no predator could be detected. It was as if the world was encased in a cocoon, a bubble and there was no way out.

Silence gnawed at her insides. Silence hung in the air like the suspended moment before the falling glass shatters on the ground. It was like a gaping void, needed to be filled with sounds, words, anything. It was eerily unnatural, like a dawn devoid of birdsong. Silence clung to her, seeping into her every pore, like a poison slowly paralysing her from either speech or movement.

With every passing moment, the pain from the poison grew, but she did not complain, she did not say a word.

Dustbowl of the soul, melting into soundless oblivion, falling into a bottomless pit, nothing to grab on, tumbling, swirling into blackness. Despair, gloom, hopelessness, welled up from the bellow, engulfed in nothingness. Struggling with every last bit of strength left in her, she was clawing at the wall of the pit, but she was dragged down, swamped with negative emotions, as steady and merciless as sinking sand and suddenly, everything around her faded into an abyss.

But she did not scream, she did not complain, she did not say a word.

Past the rickety iron gates, a legion of stone, stronger than any army marched their way across the soft soil and tendrils of rusty weeds, withstanding centuries of brutal and harsh disasters of mother-nature itself. An oozing fog, dense from the still waters of the swamp, curled around each man who triumphantly drew out of the ground and stood to attention, their identification engraved into each chest. Some with curling dates and others with memories left behind their loved ones, mourning at home in the dark inkling corners. Among them, lied her broken, empty bones, buried six feet below the dead roots, alongside those one-oh-one words she never spoke.