It was late April when he decided he would finally speak to you.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUyhPGVmYW1
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He turned to face you, and after taking a heavy mouthful of coffee, he pursed his lips for a moment and asked you what your name was.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3v4Zu82OTa
652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAP5eWlpurA
It was a simple question, one that you were tempted to answer with your tongue. But you faltered, thinking that he surely must have remembered the varying inflections of your voice from that December afternoon, and how he must have silently laughed at you for it. Ducking your gaze from his, you slipped your hand into the bag you always brought with you, digging for the notepad your social interactions were dependent on.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡND6YrAfFpg
Tearing a page out, you quickly scribbled your name with the ball-point pen you safely kept tucked away in your pocket. Quietly, you slid the torn page across the table, choosing to direct your gaze towards your fidgeting hands as you waited for his response.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6VaPnS2HqO
652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGATezRGLLv
Most looked at you a bit strangely whenever you handed them notes rather than speaking. And you could often feel your larynx constrict whenever you heard the voices of others. Those melodious voices that were unobstructed by the ever-shifting tones yours seemed to be riddled with.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYA2lXGBhvL
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It ignited a small fire within your breast, but of course, you could never speak of it. You could not hiss and spit at the people who liked to taunt you with their own unhampered tongues, you could only sit and seeth in anger. Perhaps you could muster a fiery glare in their direction, but you found most would pretend not to notice.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJCclujldOI
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And why should they? What worth were you if you refused to speak as everybody else did?652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU3JT5e0prR
Lost in the flurry of thoughts that tended to swirl about in your head whenever you thought about the problem of your voice, you failed to notice him bring out his own pen and sign his name below yours.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXI5WAWSEyn
652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHZ6ug2YRlr
You looked up from your hands only when you heard the familiar crinkle the paper made as he slid it back to you just as you had to him. You searched his face as you took the note with a free hand, trying to find some misguided intention or other. But as always with anytime you tried to peek beneath the surface, he would shut you out.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZbIu5lPVtZ
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It was not something you were used to, and you could not even begin to express how much the fact frustrated you.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnu6ERtyCIy
652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGLLsevH3ed
Nonetheless, you felt the corners of your mouth twitch into a genuine smile. He did not return the expression, but you swore the color in his eyes became just a little bit lighter when he glanced towards you again.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhOR51FLHXR
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-------------------------------652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡywnQcPZcPN
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You learned his name was Frederick Chilton and that he was the chief of staff of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFYMgTcdzjS
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You felt as if you had heard the name somewhere before, but you could not for the life of you remember where or when, or or if you ever had at all.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlGFJSUO6CR
652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6PN7KKhSqL
It would not be the first time you seemed to have a recollection of things that had never happened, nor would it be the last.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSIPJwS7HSU
652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3AJnGT4qDz
And as you held the yellow slip of paper between a thumb and a finger, having read the text inscribed on it just short of one hundred times since that April afternoon, you wondered if perhaps your subconscious had dreamed up the whole thing just to appease your ever-growing sense of loneliness.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYxJhWPlElB
Your choice to become a selective mute had not come without a heavy price. Humans were a hopelessly socially-dependent species, and if you chose to betray that social nature, well, then you may as well have never existed in the first place.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdr9xc8UnRP
You were like a ghost in that way, you supposed. Doomed to wander forever while you were incapable of attaching yourself to anyone or anything.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNujmLbkMgp
You had told yourself long ago that you lived the way you did because God had always intended for you to live this way when He twisted the fibers of your larynx into a tight knot. Although that became a lie that had become increasingly harder and harder to believe as time wore on.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFZMc7tfpMV
652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU5kw4dr9Aw
You could train your mind to accept your socially unorthodox lifestyle, but your heart would refute it every step of the way.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhErw0WbA1r
652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9tLCoCWxJH
Once, you had thought the feeling would pass, that you would adapt to your existence. But you had found out early on in your adult life that it would not be so easy. Quite poignantly, the universe told you that such a feeling of contentedness in your life would demand far more effort on your part than you had initially imagined. Effort that you weren’t ready to exert at the time, just as you weren’t now, even as you sat by yourself in the large estate your parents left you, with only the sounds of the house to remind you that there was indeed a world outside of your self.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGJAqowOIcn
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A world you had once been more than content to observe at one time. But now you wanted to touch it, to mold it like so many of your peers in your university days had dreamed of doing. You wanted to unwind the iron chain you had wrapped around your throat and let your voice, and all of its varying tones, be known to the heavens. But then you would remember how the world would frown at such a display, how it would chide and slap the hands of the beasts they had worked so hard to ensure would never rise up to lay their grubby hands on the world. Taint it with their miserable and misshapen fingers, their eyes that always insisted in looking in two directions at once, or their vile tongues that could not tell an ‘a’ from an ‘e’. It was then that you began to recede again, within the shell of your loneliness, so the world did not brand you with the disapproving gaze you knew it would turn to you the very moment you allowed even the smallest and most insignificant of words to slip up from your throat.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡitfsvAfvwY
652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVejCbqViNv
You were not born to sing as others were. You were born in an empty silence that would come to define you. You looked listlessly towards the finer examples of humanity, and then the less than exemplary bits too. Reaching, coveting, something that would fill the emptiness inside you.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEloflon7Qv
652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJqTUjwpYwE
But silence was silence, and no matter how many people you could find to blame for your predicament that familiar sense of hollowness would always be there.652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8Z8h3r6MqO
