A Song of Silence

Chapter 4

Callisto

There's some mandatory viewing tonight. I hate them. I hate them more than anything. They're never good. Always some propaganda, some lies meant to fool us like the first ones did...

A man with crazed wild eyes and messy blond hair appears on screen, the name "Xavier Caddel" written above the headshot. My breath catches in my throat as I read the words below.

There's another reason that they do the broadcasts. To expose the "traitors" and punish them. This is not one of the ordinary broadcasts about how we should all follow the Imperium and how they're perfect and all those falsities. This is one of their executions.

This man is about to die.

"Accused of disloyalty to our great leaders, the Imperium, by resisting their gracious control on multiple occasions. How do you plead?"

A flash to the accused's face. It looks as if he is trying to hold something animal in, to keep it from breaking loose. For he is perfectly aware of the consequences. We all are.

They don't care. It doesn't matter to them. Whatever he says, even if he can find the guts to defy them once more before he ultimately is killed, it doesn't mean anything. Another example. It's why they make us all watch the executions. To instill fear of defiance. But the rest, the innocent, brainwashed people, they can't see that this is wrong. The Imperium has made it so that it would be impossible to realize what the truth is. They've corrupted their minds, and they can't do anything about it. Still, it's hard not to blame those who mirror them. Like Astrid, for example.

Finally, after much of a struggle, he chokes the words out, his jaw firm and teeth clenched, spitting them as if they are something vile.

"Guilty."

This was not his choice. This was none of our choices. Either way, we have to live with the results.

I would not watch this if I had the option. The soldier that checks routinely on the residents of my building makes it so that anyone who chooses not to watch would also be brought for execution.

So I keep my eyes trained on the screen helplessly as the man – Xavier, because he deserves to be remembered as courageous by someone – walks toward the pit that has now opened in the floor, clearly against his will, and plunges into the bubbling liquid with a hiss.

And as he flails around for a few moments, gasping and crying out in agony, only to sink into the acid, never to rise again.

***

—DON'T STAND OUT DON'T SPEAK UP STAY QUIET BE WHO THEY WANT YOU TO BE—

One wrong move, one false step, one mistake, and you're dead. Irreversibly dead. Just like he was. It doesn't take much to get on the Imperium's bad side. It's why I've worked so hard to stay in the shadows for all my life. You don't want to be noticed.

I look cautiously over my shoulder out of habit, then resume the monotonous rhythm that I have carried since the beginning, when I first found out about who I really was to them. A traitor.

I shut the door to my room tightly behind me, as if sealing in myself from the outside world, creating a wall between them, and collapse onto my bed. Once the tears come, they don't stop. They fall onto the gray silken pillow case that lies at the head of my bed, making ugly dark splotches on it, trying to make them come silently.

—FAKE YOUR SMILE DON'T LET THEM KNOW YOUR SECRETS—

I live by it. Only show them your smile. Be like they are. Smiling, yet unfeeling. Obedient and even like the rest of them. Stay quiet. Don't make yourself stand out. Ever. The number of times I have repeated things like this to myself is practically uncountable. If I stop, who could guess where I would be? Actually, I have an answer to that.

I'm like that man on TV. Flailing around in acid, desperately trying to keep my head above the thing that is killing me, melting away my exterior bit by bit until there's nothing left but the bare bones, the skeleton of something from before. Maybe I'll become a fossil, preserved in rock, dusty and something from the past. A mere imprint of something that was. Was, not is.

Or maybe I'll be reduced to ashes, scattered to the wind. Anyone in search of my remains would be looking forever, trying to find something that moves with even the slightest breeze. Dust and forgotten memories. Perhaps I will be nothing.

Why am I planning my death? I have done a good enough job of protecting my true self so far. Until today, that is. When I messed it all up. So really, it's no surprise. I should expect to be like that man at any minute. Drowning.

What is the worst way to die? Drowning would be one of them, at least I would imagine. Not painful, yes, which would be one of the wonderful things about it. But to know as you fall, drift through the cool waters, that maybe somehow you could muster the strength to pull yourself toward the surface would be unbearable. So close, but those last few inches would be unreachable. To have nothing left in your lungs, nothing left to give, and to be slowly sinking into the depths of the uncharted. Your mind would tell you that you could still fight, that you could still live, yet you can't. To have that guilt that you could have survived, you could have made it. But to really be empty within. That would be the worst kind of pain.

I have tried day after day, month after month, to convince myself that I am not empty. That I am not a mindless doll only waiting to be controlled. Because I'm not. Or am I? I have spent so long trying to fit in, trying to hide in the crowds of people that threaten to overwhelm me, that at times it can be hard for even me to sort out what is real and what is pretend. How many of those smiles that I give are faked? Most of them, I suppose. When was the last time I laughed, really laughed? I don't remember. What amount of it is another false front, meant to disguise what's behind it? Almost everything. But which of them are the real ones? How often have I let the light shine through to see what lies beyond the covering I work so hard to weave? The tapestry has become so thick with the threads of dishonesties that the tiny strands of truth are now too hard to make out, layer after layer of fake smiles and a plastered face meant to hide what I really am. All these lies, all these deceptions, they have made it too hard to see what the image meant to be depicted is. But I know what it really is. Something alien and unwanted. Like me.

—STAY STRONG STAY HIDDEN MAKE YOURSELF BELIEVABLE—

How much longer must I hide? Even if I try to ignore it, I can't stop the pulsating reality that has been a constant reminder since the very beginning.

Always.

~

Author's note: So there are a few references to earlier chapters in this one, and they're kind of meant to be symbolic. The part —DON'T STAND OUT DON'T SPEAK UP STAY QUIET BE WHO THEY WANT YOU TO BE— was actually the first line I thought of, when I started writing the end scene of this novel for a school project.

I don't find drowning to be one of the worst ways to die -- in fact I think would be one of the better ways to -- but I read this really beautifully written thing about why someone thought drowning would be the worst way to die, for reasons largely similar to Callisto's.

To Google, who kept giving me those "help is available" results when I needed a way to kill someone: I was researching, okay? It was purely for writing purposes.

To the people whom I asked for violent and creative deaths: Remind me never to ask you that again. That was concerning. The sheer amount of time you must have spent coming up with them...*shudders*