Short Story Compilation Lyrics

1...A History of my Silence by Genevieve Crane
Posted by Ryan on March 23rd, 2007
I was twelve when I first wanted to speak. It was not a desire crackling underneath my skin and badly framed by the shell of my body - not yet. It was a whim. I acknowledged that I had ten more years before I could legally utter my first words, but initially I was not discontented with being an observer.
Nyame was the one who taught me letters, and so I blame him for the germination of my interest. How can one write words without an accompanied urge to let them out? It's a collapse, a vibration, a literal expulsion of the things that crawl around inside of your skull. I felt like an adulterer, but I had nobody to apologize to and so I kept writing.
Nyame would encourage Chatham's Act, and then he would sit beside me at his desk in our residence and teach me how to write. He did not see the hypocrisy, and I did not see it either. He never taught me the word.
I should not have learned to write until I was twenty. Breaking the law was shameful, but our instincts weren't capable of compromise. Nyame was a teacher, and I was insatiable. Were there millions just like me? I did not know. Within my residence, I had not met anyone to encounter the Firstspeak law. I was the youngest by thirty-two years.
At night, I would wait for the others to fall asleep. Only then would I allow myself to take paper out of the writing desk. It began with copying lessons, then I wrote slogans that I had heard Chatham utter, and then, finally, I began to write emotions and memories. Those were truly the most terrifying. Nyame suspected, but I just shrugged my shoulders. Regimes may come and go, but liars will eternally have the same mannerisms when denying a crime.
On the morning of Firstspeak day, I still had never committed verbal treason. I wondered how my silent generation had coped. I would have given anything to know what was traditionally spoken first, what would seem profound yet loyal.
The residence was waiting in the hall. Papers were signed, hands had been shaken, and I lurked in the corner, the off-kilter centerpiece. Nyame called my name and motioned to me. I felt relief as I approached him. I knew what I would say.
The hall was silent. I took a deep breath and spoke my first words.
No sound comes out.
My mouth opens and closes as a fish would underwater. Air in my lungs climbs perilously through my throat, finding nothing to crawl through, a dead larynx.
The curtain falls on confusion as I realize once again that I am the only one in this community to undergo Firstspeak. Until now, we have not realized that the people that have faithfully undergone this law have lost any vocal muscle potential in return. In the wake of President Chatham's Silence Act, I discover that I am mute.

2...In the Voice of the Earth by Darvin L. Martin
Posted by Ryan on March 23rd, 2007
The gods must be laughing.
The Cyclopes attacked us while we were crossing Mount Parnitha, our tired march leading ever onward and downward to Athens, safety, and the payment of silver promised for escorting Hecuba to her temple. The giant was young, clumsy; he heaved a few trees at us before I hurled my spear through his immense eye and into his brain.
"Your reward will be great," Hecuba promised.
I led her down into the sprawling majestic decadence of Athens, silent and weary. When we reached her temple, Hecuba was flitted away by white-robed virgins; I was given a perfumed bath, an urn of Grecian wine, and enough silver to buy an army. I didn't expect to see Hecuba again but I was beckoned into a private scriptorium where the dark priestess and a scribe waited. Spear-wielding women bolted the door behind me.
"I still need you," Hecuba said, drawing a dagger of bone and silver from her belt.
"You'll murder me to avoid paying the silver?"
Hecuba hissed. "This is not a weapon," she whispered. "The silver is yours, Adrasteia."
"Then what-?"
She swept forward and plunged the dagger into my chest, the blade easily sliding through skin, muscle, and bone. I screamed with surprise, not pain; there was no pain, only a tickling fire that spread until it engulfed my body, seeping into my head where it swelled in my throat then exploded from my mouth in a torrent of strange words. The words became sentences that the scribe eagerly recorded, scribbling frantically to keep up with my unnatural exposition. My head reeled but somehow I understood that the dagger held sound and that, through the medium of my flesh and blood, was combining that energy into coherent speech.
"These are sacred words," Hecuba explained, her hand still on the dagger. "Gaea recorded her wisdom inside this dagger but t__ans seek her power and know how to read so she devised a way to carry her wisdom through the ages and into our hearts. In you-through you-the dagger speaks the words of our goddess! You speak with the voice of the earth!"
Still reciting holy mysteries, I was unable to comment; the scribe wrote feverishly. Soon my voice was nothing but a croaking whine. Hecuba pulled the dagger free: no injury, no blood, not even a tickle of pain as the steel blade exited my body. The priestess smiled and caressed the bare skin over my heart. "You are truly blessed, Adrasteia," she said.
I nodded and then punched her in the nose.
Instead of silver I was rewarded with a pardon; I left Athens with my head and a swollen left knuckle. A year later I suddenly woke in the dead of night, bellowing words of power in the voice of the earth, scaring both my lover and her scabby cat into a fit of angry hissing.
The gods must be laughing.