The Silent Realm

• Amy Capstick, Grade 12, Albany Creek State High School -
• Short Story
• 2018

Excellence Award in the 'Horizon of Dreams 2018' competition

Tranquility. A peaceful realm of tranquility. Silence. Deafening silence shrouding all possible sounds. Emphatic industrial clatter, the squeals of burning rubber, her parent’s persistent arguments, they were all silent to her. Yet nothing, not even the serene laconism of the depths surrounding her could sedate the overpowering screams in her dark mind.
Calmly she lay, engulfed by the warm, silky water facing the ever-deepening pastel sky above her. Flowing, shimmering streaks of golden, rosy-orange light painted the magnificent sky, vibrant, yet soft in illumination. The final rays of afternoon sunlight sliced through the surface of the crystal-clear water, glittering and sparkling on her already glowing body. Her long, chocolate hair flowed around her as rainbow refractions of light rippled and quavered along all of the surrounding walls. Down here is a magical world that everyone sees, though no one ever acknowledges. A silent realm many enter, though no one ever appreciates.
Nevertheless, this is her happy place, the place she always came back to whenever the greedy monsters in her mind were drowning her. Some sort of escape from reality into a true fantasy.
Here, she cannot breathe, yet she does not feel suffocated.
She cannot move, yet she does not feel trapped.
She cannot speak, yet she does not need to…this is the only soothing place she feels safe.
The ominous burden of solicitude has sunken the girl to her breaking point. What began as a cold, insignificant thought has over time augmented into mental, minacious clouds of hollowness and fear, gripping her with cold fingers. Atramentous agony allied with the sustained screaming, slaughtering her sombre mind over many months. The mental torture was very apparent, evidently have already taken its toll on her. The many late nights she lay crying herself to sleep, the nights turning her agitation into lines on her arms, still resonate ever so clearly in her ruined mind and broken body.
She lay unmoving, allowing the water to flow through her fractured veins.
For a long time, she has searched for a bright light, for a ladder to help her out of this hole she has fallen into…but now she has found it, right here in the aquamarine depths of her backyard.
Slowly, she opened her mouth. One by one, the girl released tiny, glittering balls of air in a stream from her mouth. As if they were in slow motion, she watched them dance up to the surface, watched her melancholy thoughts float away from the dungeon of her mind.
As each thought floated away, the more the girl felt lightened, like the burden she has lived with for so long was being lifted off. Eventually, all of her air ran out and the final dark thought floated away from her towards the fading sky. She was free. The girl closed her eyes and smiled, a wave of relief rushing over her.
“I’m finally free,” she whispered into bubbles, as the final ray of sparkling, golden sunlight fell below the horizon.