Hauntingly - A Collection of Short Stories

Silence of the Magpies

Still, she was silent.

The teacher turned away from the blackboard to face her, arms folded.

"I will repeat it again, Ms Williams," he said sternly. "What formula is used to determine the surface area of a cone?"

But she didn't reply, instead looking down at her hands, resting on her notebook's pages, dark hair spilling over the desk. He continued to stare at her for a few moments, before letting out an exasperated sigh and turning to another student. 

It was halfway through the year and no one had heard her speak a single word. Her written work was always the best of the class, but for any oral presentation she refused to even get out of the chair. If the school was in a better position, the teacher thought to himself, she would certainly be centre of attention. Everyone - students and teachers alike - would be wanting to get to the bottom of the mystery that was Taliah Williams.

Emeline High School was not the glossy brochure, emerald lawn, smiling faces type school. It was nestled between three of the poorest suburbs, and like many of its inhabitants, struggled along on what little money the government offered it.  The ragged buildings were the same stained grey that seemed to permeate the air here, poisoning lungs and dragging over skin. But it was all they had.

The clock eventually counted out the last minutes of the class. When the bell finally rang, Taliah slipped into the middle of the group crowding through the door, careful not to get too close to anyone and to stay far enough away from the back that the teacher could not spot her and ask her to stay behind, as happened all to often. Questions were dangerous. They could uncover all manner of things that were better left to the shadows.

As soon as possible she headed for her spot under the arching branches of a grey eucalypt in a corner of the grounds. Dropping her bag to the damp earth she sat, her back leaning into the bark of the tree. It was early June and the sky was blanketed by a thick, colourless cloud. It was her favourite type of day. Sunny, cloudless skies were extremely pretentious in her opinion, covering up the endless depths of space with the natural equivalent of fake smiles and forced laughter. 

These were the thoughts swirling through her mind as she gazed up through the branches still clothed in gum leaves. They reminded her of someone, several someones in fact, and she almost smiled.

But still, she was silent.

As she daydreamed, the familiar ball of dread began to form in her stomach. Right now its weight was easy to ignore, but by the time the final bell rung it was as though a iron boulder sat in her gut, turning her insides to stone. And so it did, leaving her with the feeling that her feet were filled with lead when she trudged home that afternoon. Reality tastes metallic, Taliah decided.

At seventeen, nearly eighteen years of age, she had never felt less free. 

If she had looked up from the path in front of her,  she would have seen the dilapidated houses that were rarely homes, the way even the weeds were struggling, and how the magpies in the trees looked down at it all as if they remembered how beautiful the landscape was before it was infected with human suffering. But she kept her eyes firmly on the pavement, counting the cracks and trying in vain for the thousandth time to dislodge the boulder from within her.