Falling in Silence

Table of Contents

Falling in Silence

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

About the Author

Falling in Silence

Criss Copp

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 by C.E. Copp

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes without the express written consent of the author; with the exception of the use of short excerpts quoted in reviews of this ebook.

Dedication

For the best friends I could ever hope for, they have stuck with me through it all; and continue to be there for me always:

Beccy, Mark and Joanne.

I love you guys.

If you have but one friend, you can face the world and know someone has your back.

Chapter 1

Imogen.

I do believe that I hate my mother; I have long ago accepted this fact; that I HATE my mother. She terrorizes me, and she goes on and on about being a good Christian and talks incessantly about how the good will go to heaven and the evil will go to hell; and well, maybe her belief that I’m evil is true and I will end up in a place of heat and sulfur; but I happen to know for a fact, that if her God is as real and as caring and loving as her preacher would have you believe; then he doesn’t want hypocritical, bad tempered, child sacrificing, soul destroying harbingers of ill will in his house either. I’m thinking that she too has a first class ticket to Satan’s province; and when considering that in comparison to every other person on the planet and what is deemed normal, I’m tame; so I won’t be seeing her at all down there; she far outweighs me in the evil stakes, with her extremist Christian views and her self-righteous attitudes. Her commanding text to me this morning explaining that she’ll be in town this week and staying with her sister; and she’s expecting to see me, has me feeling the ‘hate’ right now.

And, since I am considering this subject; I want the cosmos to know that I despise my father too, he can quite literally Go To Hell. He is a constant source of irritation and emotional pain; and if assholes could walk the earth, he’d be a giant, cavernous asshole with legs; farting out his crap at innocent passersby. Not a nice analogy I know; but incredibly fitting. I’d like to add a generous amount of hair and liver spots to the skin of the butt that would contain, said asshole.

The sun is streaming through the tops of the trees, and a shaft of light directly hits me fair and square in the eye, so I immediately shift my face away from the bright shaft of light. I’m no Gremlin, but bright light and me, we don’t exactly like each other; we just have a mutual understanding of how a working relationship must exist between us in the land of the living. If ‘Sun’ sees me out in his rays too long, he burns my skin like a mofo If I could control the clouds, ‘Sun’ would be banished for 80% of the day, and ‘Rain’ would be pouring down right now. This is no indication of my mood; I’m not really a depressed person. I am however, living in my very own special brand of nightmare, and I am hoping to bring on the curtain call to it soonish.

I am contemplating this woe as I move further into the trees to escape my arch nemesis, the Sun, when out of the corner of my eye, I spot a fluttering movement.

An Aphrodite Fritillary is floating on the air before me; and since I am currently amongst the Pine and Spruce trees closer to my house; and since they don’t tend to come to this part of the woods, I am perplexed as to why it has journeyed here. I tilt my head to the side and watch as it struggles amongst the heavy forest, its golden wings beating gently to lift it away from the needle sharp pins. It appears to have become tired, since it has now fluttered low to rest on my bench seat; placed here by Adrian, five years ago, when I came to live with him and Sean (the asshole).

I am shaking my head in disbelief; this is obviously a lower gene pool specimen of this variety of butterfly, since it has wandered where it shouldn’t be. Perhaps its GPS is faulty, maybe it had a fight with the flock, perhaps it is suicidal, or maybe, it’s into extreme sports like Adrian. I make the not too difficult decision to reach forward to where the delicate wings are slowly moving, and its feet are tapping along the bleached wood; and then I grab a hold of the insubstantial insect. If I can’t return it to the edge of the fields, not only will it die from lack of food (the theory behind suicide), it will be unable to find a mate and make more butterflies for the following season (maybe not such a bad idea given the gene pool theory).

I cradle my prisoner in the cage of my hands, neither applying pressure to any part of the beautiful specimen, nor allowing for an escape; and I begin to wander the path that will take me by the fields, where the Oaks grow openly, and the Elder flowers and Violets clamor across their feet.

Tomorrow is the first day of July. She would’ve been five in August, if she had’ve lived. I think about her now; I will visit her then, but not today, not every day, not anymore.

I am wearing my spring green silk, underneath soft and see-through gauze halter neck gown. It is long; to my feet, and it ties up behind my neck, with the ribbon trailing lightly down my back. It is an extremely pretty dress. The top of my back is exposed from midway up, and as such, it displays the tattoo’s I had inked on my back and over my right shoulder last year.

Butterflies, several large and another several small; are the main focus, mixed amongst smaller stars of varying sizes.

Adrian loves my tattoos; he helps me get them. I have several; however, the back piece is by far the largest.

Sean hates my tattoos, and it’s created extensive arguments between the two men for some time now, given that Adrian assisted in helping me get my ink and at times paid for it. Irene hasn’t had the opportunity to see them; I cover up extensively when she is around, but she knows and of course, she doesn’t approve.

But of course I love nothing better than to flaunt them every chance I get. If I am going to enter the kingdom of hell after this sorry excuse for an existence, I’m gonna make the payment for passageway beneficial on my behalf. There is simply nothing better than watching Sean shrivel up and shudder at the site of me. My simple deviant pleasures aren’t exactly criminal, and the bonus is that I get to enjoy the life I have hammered out for myself immensely, despite the cost. I just wish Irene would simply leave me alone. As a child, she managed to terrorize me so effectively that I wilt at the sight of her, even now.

***

The walk to the edge of the grove of Oaks sees me wind my way through Cedars, Hickory, Birch and a smattering of Elms before I reach my destination. I’m now amongst the Oaks, and beyond me lay the open pastures of Mr. Campbell’s property.

Oh, Mr. Campbell, the marvelous and magnificent oxymoron of my neighborhood. He is the good Christian of my grandparents’ era that denies the need to attend church. While my grandparents were fanatical in their attendance while they were alive, and were fixed in their beliefs; Mr. Campbell never was… and still he was my grandfather’s best friend. It had something to do with The Korean War, but I have never been offered that information, so I am unable to offer up any explanation regarding the nature of their friendship. I like Mr. Campbell though, and he’s patient with me. He has oodles of notepads awaiting me at his place; since he likes to describe himself as ‘conversation ready.’ We have an interesting relationship, a friendship of sorts. He likes my cooking, and I like his camaraderie and nonsensical easygoing banter. I visit him regularly; since I like to bake, and since he hasn’t had anyone else to look after him in years, I feel better knowing he has some ‘baked love’, as he refers to the homemade goodies I supply. So I tend to drop off cookies, cakes and slices on a weekly basis, so he can have them throughout his working week as homemade treats.

At the edge of his property, I can feel the breeze that pushes back towards where I have journeyed from, and I can now understand better how my captive, whom I am about to release, may have ended up deeper into my forest. He is weak; he quite possibly won’t get laid anyway, since his survival of the fittest moment has already been proved worthless. Sorry buddy, your pecker isn’t getting lucky today.

My Chestnut hair is thick, long and smooth and has only the slightest wave; and when down it covers my back and the tattoos that mark me. I have it pulled back in a pony tail today, away from my face, but the breeze has convinced me to pull it out and let the currents play with it. I therefore release my golden captive, who will undoubtedly die a virgin, and pull the tie from my hair, whilst simultaneously turning toward home.

But then, a noise from Stephen’s house has me intrigued. What is that cacophony?

Maybe someone has decided to move into the ageing masterpiece. It has sat there since Stephen left with his parents eight years ago. It is on Mr. Campbell’s property; and although it is an old log cabin, it is huge and yet beautiful in its simplicity.

It has a gabled roof, with an attic bedroom and adjoining bathroom. It also has two bedrooms downstairs with a bathroom to share. The remainder of the downstairs is an open planned area, including a living area, dining area and kitchen. A lean-to shed off the back contains the laundry.

Stephen’s parents had lived in the place for years; when I was a child living with my father and mother and grandparents, we were best friends. We even got to attend school together for the first few years, until my father disgraced my mother after the death of my grandparents, and I was left to navigate the resultant fallout. Stephen’s mother was Mr. Campbell’s daughter; however, they all moved away once Stephen’s father was relocated with work, sometime after I moved away. I am still unsure why it has remained empty all these years.

Mr. Campbell is a busy man. He owns several car detailing and smash repair businesses in and around Charlottesville, and the surrounding towns. Yet despite his success, he’s very nice. At least he doesn’t stare at my breasts when he talks to me; look at me like I’m a halfwit, or insist I talk, because my ‘little tanty’ has gone on long enough. Adrian says it has something to do with humble beginnings and a generous dose of reality. I Soooooooo want to give Sean and Irene a generous dose of reality. I wonder if in the future they will market that at pharmacies as a cure all. I begin to play the silly thought out in my head, while grinning like a fool.

"Yes Miss O’Brien; we have Liquid Reality in suspension, syrup and drops; or if you would prefer, there is Tabulated Reality that comes in capsules, caplet or even a lozenge. Having failed all of these options, you may choose the stronger and longer lasting Dose of Reality, which comes in the form of a depot intramuscular injection; however, you’ll need to get that from your doctor." I swear if that shit enters the market, my parents are going on it in their old dotage. Revenge is sweet, especially when served cold.

Nearing the log cabin, my eye is caught by the color red, darting across the rear yard, just beyond the tree line.

A young girl is blowing bubbles and chasing them.

I peer out from behind a Mulberry, being careful not to be seen. She’s beautiful. Katie would’ve been about this age now. Holy fuck. Why is my heart racing like I just ran a marathon? Can everyone hear my beating heart? I can’t seem to hear anything else.

I stare at this blond haired, brown eyed, pale skinned beauty. Her face is all lit up, she is all smiles. But she hasn’t any giggles; she’s silent like me. Wow, not flawless perhaps, more likely flawed, like me. This actually makes her faultless; you see, I can’t stand perfection, it makes me ill.

You know how on television, there are those reality plastic surgery shows on? Sean loves those shows. Now I kind of like the shows that help out people who have been through trauma and need assistance to get their lives back; that’s the side of plastic surgery that I applaud. But I’m talking about those perfect people who want to look like mannequins. You know what I’m talking about… the media is full of people who strive for the ultimate perfection and end up looking like they’re permanently stuck in a twilight zone of wind tunnels, or they can’t close their eyes anymore because their face is pulled so tight. Well somewhere between when they were normal and freaky, they have perfection. Let’s face it, by the time they are freaky, they are no longer perfect, so I like them again. I mean, it’s entertaining to see people pay to look like freaks, when all they wanted to do was wallow in their vanity. It’s the in-between moment of plastic perfection that makes them look like Barbie dolls on the red carpet or out shopping on the Boulevard, whichever boulevard they may be shopping on, and they look TOTALLY FAKE. Like everything they are or do isn’t real, and I can’t stand that fakeness.

Anyway, back to the possibly flawed and hence ideal little girl; I wonder if she can hear me. I bend down and grab up a stick, and then I whack the Mulberry tree hard, three times.

The beautiful little girl runs around oblivious to the noise; her bubbles are as silent as is she. She is truly ideal, faultless and not perfect. I like her already, a lot.

But, I shouldn’t be here, but I want to say hello. I am gazing at her, tilting my head from side to side, reviewing her and wondering how to get her attention without alarming her. Suddenly an idea just pops right into my head, it is often the way with me, ideas just pop in there and if I act on them, ninety percent of the time, they turn out to be brilliant; the ten percent that don’t; turn out to be epic failures. I’m counting on my strike rate as being well within my favor.

I return to the Oaks. I find another butterfly; I capture it, and I return to the little girl.

My breathing is labored; I am frightened of scaring her. I am excited that I may be able to make her smile, for me.

I breathe deeply, and let it out, and then I step out from the Mulberry and wait for her to see me. It takes her about two seconds. She freezes. Her eyes are on me; she is frightened, of course; I’m a stranger.

I drop to my knees, since she looks like she might bolt. I figure that if I am on my knees, she’ll work out quickly that I am less of a threat. Although, that argument doesn’t always hold true. Toby Fotheringham in Kindergarten was always on his knees and his threat was potent. He used his powers of innocent facial features (he looked like an angel) to look up our teacher’s skirt. When she would walk past, he’d drop to his knees and lean forward as though he was picking something up off the floor, only to turn his head and cop a view of her panties. I am not like Toby, the pervert. So I open up my hands and release Aphrodite, staying deadly still, and I watch her face as she looks at it float away across her yard. She smiles, I stay where I am, unmoving.

She returns her gaze to me; she is still smiling, I am smiling now too; yep, the ideal little girl.

‘Butterfly,’ I sign.

‘Butterfly,’ she signs in return, walking toward me.

‘I am Imogen.’ I sign, smiling.

‘Bailey.’ She offers back.

I nod at her, and again I smile.

Then out of the blue, a blustering and thundering male runs from the house flinging his arms and demanding to know who I thought I was, approaching his daughter. I ignore the blundering baboon, just as Bailey does. I realize Bailey is most likely profoundly deaf, but I am not letting him think other than that for me; he is rude, he is assuming the worst about me without even knowing me. He is in my peripheral vision, and he’s probably old, ugly and smells like a fart. I can only guess given his growling that he’s a temperamental tool as well, who’ll be checking out my cleavage and treating me like a half-wit.

As he gets closer, I find it impossible not to see him, yet Bailey still hasn’t seen him.

Fuck, actually he’s, um, kind of hot. My mind has travelled south and my cobwebby loins have stirred. The dusty vacancy sign has just been given a lick of paint (sad choice of words, it makes me swallow) and reset in place across my vagina. I shake my thoughts away. Ideal daughter plus ideal ‘looking’ man, doesn’t necessarily make for ideal situation.

‘Your Father is angry.’ I sign.

She looks around sharply.

He has seen my signing.

Of course I’m angry. You’re a stranger, talking to my daughter. he shouts.

I give him a querulous stare; I mean come on, I am hardly doing anything criminal here; so I released a butterfly onto his property, and I used my hands to communicate to his daughter; that hardly makes me the next candidate for the number one position on the FBIs most wanted list. I don’t really care how hot he is; rudeness is rudeness, and this guy is an ideal looking jerk.

He repeats his outburst via signing. He must’ve taken my stare as an indication that I can’t understand what he is saying. At least his next actions were not negatively aimed at my ‘deficit’.

He speaks while he signs, saying the words laboriously as he signs them. It makes me want to laugh; I mean, come on; I am watching him stretch his brain to get an extensive sentence out using mainly alphabetized signing, I should teach him whole word signs. I struggle not to point this out, because if I do, he’ll probably begin to shout at me again.

I stare at him for a short while, looking at him with my head tilted to the side. This situation could be dangerous; I want to flirt with this guy, I want to cause him havoc, I want to have some fun, perhaps at his expense. I wonder where his ‘woman’ is. I wonder where Bailey’s mom is. If there’s a significant other, there’ll be no fun; I doubt there’ll be any Bailey either.

I sign that I am ‘sorry’, and swiftly turn away to retreat into the forest; I’ll find out the answers to these questions another day. Bailey grabs my dress and tugs it for attention.

‘I’m sorry you’re in trouble.’ She signs up to me. She hasn’t any problem with whole word signage, and he can obviously read whole words himself, but can’t think quickly enough to sign them out.

‘Me too.’ I sign and smile, having leant forward to engage her at eye level; my hair drapes down on either side of my shoulders and floats around my face, so I briefly stand and gather it up quickly into a ponytail and secure it back into my hair tie. I pull the gathered length over my shoulder and leaning forward again, continue. ‘Enjoy your bubbles Bailey.’ I finish, standing back up and keeping my back to him.

‘Goodbye Bailey.’ I sign off.

‘Goodbye Imogen.’ She returns.

I return to the forest and retreat via the path that connects our houses; away from Bailey’s house that used to be Stephen’s house. I can hear Bailey’s father lamenting in the background, and it makes me smile, a lot. Well, that was unexpected; yep, he’s a tool, and a good looking tool at that, I giggle to myself.

Saxon.

Apart from my job, I haven’t had much of a break in years. This is the first in what I hope will be a string of them. The cabin is spectacular. Bailey and I haven’t ever lived in a ‘home’. It’s always been apartments, dingy at best. This place has everything. Built-in wardrobes, a breakfast bench with stools, a built-in desk downstairs near the back door, a chunky dining table with chairs that look like they were carved from the forest outside and no noisy, drug dealing neighbors. The few decent pieces of furniture that I have will work in well here, they won’t exactly fit the ambience, but they’ll be functionally fine.

And this is all part of the package? I ask Tom, my boss, indicating the chunky table, as Bailey’s bed is brought through the door by some of my co-workers Dev and Sam.

Sure is, electric thrown in too. he chuckles.

It’s all too much. I begin to choke, clearing my throat as though something benign got caught in there, rather than my emotions. I don’t show the weaker emotions… not that my body is incapable, I mean, is there truly a man in the world that can’t cry or feel love or behave in an arrogant and angry assholish way? No. Unless there has been some sort of surgical removal of the emotion centres of the brain, a trauma to the head or a physical defect, then I’m guessing that everyone can physically display emotion. However, not since the second grade when I cried in front of my father because my best friend Jack died of Leukemia, and the dickhead decided to use me for a punching bag because real men didn’t cry; have I chosen to display my more ‘effeminate’ emotions. I mean, I seem to have pushed them inside, where they have flourished and surface in my brain regularly. And for this and everything else; I hate my father, I mean, I fucking hate my father, he’s lucky I have no idea where he is, because if I ran into him today, I’d hope I was in my pickup, because quite frankly, I’d probably back up and make sure and do the ‘double tap’ on his ass. I return my thoughts back to Tom, since he is addressing me.

Things are a bit tight son, so I’m unable to give you the raise expected for a foreman position, but I have this cabin, sitting here doing nothing, since my daughter left for Florida, and you can use it. And I can legitimately use it as a package deal for your employment. You’re doing me a favor lad. He smiles. Besides, that daughter of yours looks as though she loves it. He says, nodding towards the window to where Bailey is darting around the rear yard chasing bubbles silently. Yep, she certainly does love it. This is the first time I think she’s actually touched a real tree. Even her school hasn’t got an actual tree on the inside of their yard. Sure there’s shade cloth and poles, but no actual trees. Bailey has seen them from a distance and through windows. I’m the first to admit that I’m a tad overprotective of my little girl. There’s no real reason she couldn’t have touched trees, they’re frickin everywhere around Charlottesville, Virginia. But, I have experienced pretty much the worst sort of people out there, and I know she is vulnerable; so I keep her away from the general public as much as possible, including parks, unless they’re on open parkland. My trust issues are HUGE, they just are, enough said.

She stops regularly to dip the wand into the bubble mixer and blow more bubbles. The breeze carries them up and around the