The Silent Man Book Novels & Stories

"Grace? Is that you?" I froze. That haggard, drunken man in front of me was Philip. "Grace, you're alive! You finally came back to me." He pulled me into his arms, choking on his words as he cried. "I missed you so much. I was wrong. I'll kick Laila and her pup out right now, okay? Please stop being mad at me. You have no idea what these days have been like for me—please don't leave again." He seemed to have completely forgotten they were holding a Marking Ceremony today.

The solid thud echoed in the silent villa. Then, the soft, definitive click of the lock. Silence. Thick, absolute, and impenetrable. I stood there, dripping onto the expensive rug, shaking violently, the roar of the cove still echoing in my ears, the phantom pressure of his lips on mine, forcing life I hadn't wanted. On the other side of the door, only silence. No knock. No plea. Just the vast, echoing quiet of the gilded cage, and the suffocating knowledge that the man who owned it had saved me from the fall, only to leave me drowning in the wreckage of everything we'd broken. I slid down the locked door to the floor, the cold marble leaching the last warmth from my body, and let the silent

The water was clear enough for me to see every rock that covered the bottom of it, every color could be seen. "Subhanallah" I whispered as I heard birds chirping around me. The first time I talked my throat felt like sandpaper no one said a word when it came to my past, they knew it all from going through the journal that had been my only companion in the darkness I came from, I didn't say anything when Myra returned the journal to me with tears in her eyes and I looked away from the sympathetic gazes of my family.

Not now. His hand tightens on my back, too hard, pain blooming across my ribs. My body flashes through the map of old injuries as I mentally tell myself to breathe, brace, endure. I could feel a panic attack rising in me and I’m shaking and quivering already when I hear footsteps above us. A shadow moves down the stairwell his steps are slow, Controlled but yet Intentional. And then he appears… The silent man from the balcony. The brooding one. The one who watches. For the first time, relief hits me so violently my knees almost buckle.

Cause we even sleep in one small bed back in the village with his shirtless all around but I found no sparks, maybe because I’m just trying to ignore him and convinced myself that It was just a part of me idolizing him as my best friend but the more it gets longer the heavier it gets for me to hold this feelings of mine towards this guy with the same name as mine. He ordered foods then we ate like a freaking mute for not uttering even a single word until we finished. And I tell you, it wasn’t that painful to hold yourself to not speak especially when you’re facing the man that you secretly like cause you tried to watch every words that comes out of your mouth and making sure that it is all g

----------------- “Savvie? Savvie? Hello, hello—are you there? I can see you and you’re just standing there. I am waving at you right now... Savvie, have I mistaken you for a human being or are you a really hot store mannequin?” He heard her laugh. Aha. Keep going, Matt told himself. Recover from the terrible joke. “Or part of some performance thing like that guys like me don’t understand? Because I really don't understand the silence. I'm getting a little bit freaked out" he said. She suddenly folded and bent over laughing. He breathed a sigh of relief. Sweet! He thought. Good thing he hadn't pissed her off with that stupid joke from hell.

I had chosen. And this was what choosing looked like in my life. An empty room. Seven words. And the specific, humiliating silence of a woman who should have known better and felt it anyway. I pressed the note against my chest. And stayed there until the crying exhausted itself into something quieter. Until the quieter thing exhausted itself into stillness. Until I was just a woman lying on her bed in the middle of the afternoon with her shoes on. Empty. Still. Trying to remember why she had thought even for a moment even for one kitchen floor, one garden, one night

Thousands of people. Thousands of Authors. Watching. Waiting. The silver sea, motionless until now, suddenly rippled. From beneath its surface... countless glowing hands reached upward. Not trying to drag anyone down. Trying to hand something back. Pens. Old journals. Unfinished manuscripts. Stories that had never been completed. The First Reader whispered, "The Silence doesn't destroy stories..." "It keeps them." The gray-coated man nodded. "Exactly." He looked directly into Adrian's eyes. "You've been told that I'm your enemy."

Outside, the borderland afternoon was tipping toward evening. Somewhere in a packhouse of stone and cold ambition a man who had looked at silence and called it surrender was about to discover that the quietest people build the loudest cases.