Lack of dialogue

cat 2Sitting in class, I hear the teach say do silent work; you can use headphones if you’d like. I pull them on and work silently for a few. But silence is curiosity suppressed and I look up.

Across the room, an honorable boy uncaps his water bottle, bringing it nonchalantly, involuntarily to his lips. No one looks up.

A gurgle, and he chokes, water dribbling prematurely down the sides of his throat. He sputters a little, but no one looks at him with alarm because we’ve all been there, we don’t give a rat’s ass about his momentary suffering.

She watches him out of the corner of her eye. A twisted half-smile creeps onto her face. Inside, she is laughing at his suffering.

But no one snickers aloud; people like him are known to be able to upright themselves.

On the other side of the room, she is reaching into her backpack. She pulls out 10 band-aids and lays them out on her desk, neatly in a row. I hear the crinkle in my mind; people glance over. They are curious, but not enough to ask. This doesn’t satisfy her.

She picks one up, holds it up to the light, and dramatically peels the packaging back with a gesture. She wraps a fingernail bed.

I can just imagine the sharp crunch as her fist closes upon it. She opens her hand, palm facing down; the packaging falls to the table. Still, no one asks; the curiosity is only simmering in their throats.

This meticulous process carries on. Finally, as all ten fingers are properly bandaged, she gathers the white wrappers swiftly in her hand, sweeping them off the table, closing her hand over them – crunch, crunch.

But she has lost. No one speaks, still silently reading with a curious glance now and then.

And she herself pretends it was a small ritual instead of a grand process and resumes reading silently.

– WWC

67 comments

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  6. The Sartorial Coquette

    I love the drawings, are they yours? If so, you are very talented! The story is great too, and I have definitely been there. Your writing captures the emotions of such a moment perfectly.

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  10. bloggersayak

    excellent…reading this really makes one thing of so many stupid things we have done and sill do at times just to garner some attention and that too mostly with unsatisfactory results…this write-up is not only though provoking but also makes me smile as i reflect back on things i have done or do with similar intentions

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  16. Katherine Rebekah

    Like everyone else I enjoyed the descriptive writing. Each word sucked me deeper into the story. But I must say I was a little bit confused. I don’t understand the purpose of the post. Is it simply to describe a moment in time were a lady fails to get the attention she wanted? Or is it conveying something I’m not getting?

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    • catdiggedydog

      It’s all relative, I suppose, in terms of how the reader interpets it. This actually happened to me as I was sitting in class a couple of days ago, and what I wanted to convey was one example of one of the many ways that people (purposefully/unpurposefully) draw attention to themselves, without necessarily having to say anything. Honestly, it was also the first time I strayed away from my conventional opinion piece, and I suppose it turned out pretty well, considering that it made it to FP! :)

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      • Katherine Rebekah

        Well it was a great post. Congrats on being freshly pressed! It definitely makes more sense now that I know this actually happened to you. Thats sort of an obscure scenario. Funny that someone would actually do that with band-aids. =)

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  19. Joseph E Rathjen

    Congratulations on Freshly Pressed! What a great post. You certainly have a talent for describing the intricate dimensions of ordinary sounds. I always find it humorous when I go to a meeting that the slightest noise coming from a person becomes so pronounced – sounds that we would normally ignore or never notice.

    Well done!

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  20. shroomhead101

    ~Pharaohs did it.
    Aldokkan is my religion, the book of the dead is how to get my static aka my soul to the afterlife and Thoth my teacher and Nikola Tesla my prophet and Ra my god/host to life just like how I’m a host to life and make static as well. Static connects everything. Cats are my gods…

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  24. Nowhen Girl

    Such a gorgeous piece of writing! No wonder you were freshly pressed. This would be a great start to a novel, you know. I don’t know if you’re from London, but your voice in this piece definitely gives me a Hackney vibe.

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