House of Broken Silence

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The eyes of the audience members stared deep into Stanley’s soul, and he knew they saw fear.  A steady stream of sweat, originating from his temple, flowed down the right side of his face.  He noticed that the judges weren’t frowning, but they weren’t smiling either.  His partner, Andrea, finished her guitar solo.  Stanley exhaled, but his flute produced no sound.  For a few seconds (although it felt like hours for him) there was complete silence; the type of silence that doesn’t seem possible.

            And then, all at once, the crowd started booing.  There was pure malice in the spectators’ taunts; malice so strong that Stanley felt pain from head to toe.  He closed his eyes because he didn’t want this to be real.  He wanted the crowd and the judges to disappear.  He opened his eyes to observe the judges’ reactions to his (lack of a) performance, and it only confirmed that the judges, too, were booing.  The audience threw curses and threats at Stanley.  He looked out at upon them once more and saw the onlookers’ eyes hanging out of their sockets. 

            Despite this, every eye in the theatre was staring him down.  He commanded his feet to move, to take him anywhere but here, but he was frozen.  He tried to close his eyes, but it was as if someone had ripped off his eyelids in order to force him to look at the audience forever.  Many members of the crowd began throwing objects at him.  A red high-heel flew past the left side of his head, followed by an iPhone with a purple case on his right.  His eyes were trained on a knife that was flying straight toward him.  Before he could comprehend that his life was about to end, the knife struck him between the eyes.  Darkness had consumed him, and when he finally opened his eyes the sunlight from his bedroom window forced him to squint.