A Year of Silence
09 Jul 2021Today’s prompt: “Imagine that you were unable to speak for a year. What would you do to communicate, and what impact would it have on your relationships? What would you be saving up to say at the end of the year?”
Your immediate family and your best friend take the time to learn ASL after the freak curse plunges you into a year of silence. You’re grateful for that. It takes a while to get reasonably fluent, and a while after that to be truly expressive with your gestures, but after a few months you’re able to crack jokes in ASL that have your best friend laughing uproariously. The people at other tables in the restaurant stare daggers at you as he howls at your silent jokes.
Most of your friends don’t bother to learn, though, or only pick up on a few words here and there. And besides that, there’s all those conversations you need to have with strangers – giving your order to the guy behind the meat counter, or asking the woman in the parking lot if she can help jump start your car. You always keep a pad of paper and a pen around for that.
In some ways, it’s nice that it happened this year. Half your work conversations would have been happening over Teams anyway.
You don’t save up anything to say. Why should you? If it’s important, you sign it. You write it. You text it. Whatever. If it’s not important, it’s usually forgotten in few days anyway. Besides, one of the easiest ASL signs to make is “I love you.” And something about being cursed reminds you that you’re lucky to have every day. So you say that a lot.
You are nearing the end of the year, though. You haven’t saved up anything to say, but you’ve been thinking about what you might do anyway. Maybe sing a song? You’re thinking Roar by Katy Perry.
Unfortunately, you never make it to the end of the year. It turns out that, much like the ASL for Cthulhu is much more difficult than simply waggling your fingers under your chin like little tentacles, the sign for Shub-Niggurath involves way, way more than the simple signs for black, goat, woods, 1000, and young. It is, in fact, so wildly convoluted that you sprained your foot and caught your sleeve in a nearby tree.