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When Silence Speaks

I‘m part of a writer’s group on Slack and someone had a great idea to share “writing challenges.” Each challenge has a theme with a specific word count and the genre of writing can be whatever you want. This challenge was the theme “when silence speaks” and the word count was 300. Here was my entry.


“You’re just not gonna say anything?”

Why should he? The silent treatment he was giving her was nothing compared to the silence he sat in each night while she was gone. She can bear with this.

But she couldn’t. She left. She said it was because he refused to try and make things right, but she was the one who ignored him. In any case, he’d rather she just shut up and leave anyway.

A quiet month encouraged him to get back into “the game” and meet up with a cute blonde for drinks.

Things were awkward.

She was quite shy, so to break the silence he began to tell her about the ’65 mustang he was restoring. Ten minutes of him being the only one talking made him realize it wasn’t going to work. So he shut up and she just left. He drove home that night with the music blaring trying to take his mind off her deafening silence. How embarrassing.

At work the next day, right at the end of his shift, the supervisor announced that operations were to cease immediately. The hum of the machinery stopped and the once bustling factory came to a silent halt. Just like that.

Three weeks of blaring music. After the second visit the cops made him turn it off. So on came the television.

“Church, sometimes it feels like God is silent.”

A preacher!? Aint that right. At least he knows what he’s talking about.

“But sometimes that silence can be a blessing.”

Okay, nevermind. This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Silence means nothing but pain.

“We’re going to see today that there was a moment when God’s silence resulted in our greatest blessing. Let’s stand and read together…

…’My God, my God. Why have You forsaken Me?”

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