"Can't you hear the screaming? It's always there. I wondered, for a while, where it was coming from. Who could be in enough pain to scream like that? Who could be hurt enough, broken enough, mad enough, to scream like that? I wondered and wondered, and searched and searched, until eventually I saw the answer carved on the inside of my eyelids. It was me. I've been screaming, screaming, screaming, for so long that even I couldn't hear it anymore. Because that's what people do, isn't it? We ignore what we don't understand, or don't want to understand. We refuse to accept anything that doesn't fit into our perfect little made up world. You do it too, all of you. Hell, you're even doing it right now. Look at the baker, trying to creep away without me noticing. Or his wife, the braver of the two, shielding her children's eyes, like that will protect them from these lies I'm spewing. These lies that are not lies at all, but the truth in disguise. And the blacksmith, who called the police ten minutes ago. You all think I'm mad, I can tell, but can't you see?! I'm the sanest one here."
With the police sirens getting ever louder and the people watching her in stunned silence, her outburst seems to have run its course. But madness, and sanity, are stubborn beasts, and do not like to be questioned.
For if the girl isn't crazy, who is?
YOU ARE READING
Moments in Monologue
Short StoryA collection of monologues and moments, taken from the lives of different people and characters.
