silence

Milly Brush once might almost have fallen in love with these silences.

Silence is an arguement hard to refute

Out of sheer perversity, I followed beauty where it lead, into the silence.

It will cost me a lot to send you with Scott wearing that dress but, just so you know: if you come with that dress even slightly wrinkled, I will trace Scott, and when I find him, it's not gonna be pretty.

There is an art to writing, and it is not always disclosure. The act itself can be beautiful, revelatory, and private.

But my silence is real. If I hid it from you, you would find it again a little farther on.

There's something to be said about silence; it can be a moment of truth, or a moment of connection to other like minded people.

There is unmistakable proof that abusers do get together in order to share children, abuse more children, and even learn from each other. As more cases have come into the public eye in recent years, this has become increasingly obvious. More and more of this type of abuse is coming to light.I definitely think it is the word ritual which causes people to question, to feel uncomfortable, or even just disbelieve. It seems almost incredible that such things would happen, but too many of us know exactly how bad the lives of many children are. A great deal of child pornography shows children being abused in a ritualised setting, and many have now come forward to share their experiences, but there is a still tendency to say it just couldn't happen.Why not?Why, given what we now know about paedophiles and about what they do to children? Would they have limits? It was all done to me and I have enough experiences to write many more books than this one, but this will have to do for now. I've tried to make sense of it and I've tried to tell you my story in a way that will, hopefully, let you understand how it was done, and how they managed to get away with it, but I haven't told you a big part of it yet. I haven't told you what happened that finally ended it all for me.There was something else.When I was eight, someone else came into my life and made a huge difference to what was happening and how things would turn out. I didn't know it then, but I see the whole picture now.Something I have often wondered is whether Andrew was there while I was being abused. Lots of people hide their faces, and there were often masks worn, so he certainly could have been. I have no evidence one way or another though, so I will leave it to the reader to decide whether it would seem in a paedophile's character to watch abuse continue when it has been masterminded by him. But I do know that it wasn't just me who he abused - I know that because I saw it.Andrew was away a lot with the Army until I was at high school, then he left that position. He was instrumental both in my abuse and in setting the scene, but when I was eight, something happened which would distract him and which would, at times, take his attention from me. My mother very kindly provided him with a new victim - my little sister.

And the wind falls silent, and the birds fall silent, and the wild cherry trees no longer shiver and creek.

I miss the snow. I miss looking at it, walking in it, tasting it. I used to love those days when it was so cold everyone else would be tucked away inside trying to stay warm. I would be the only one out walking, so I could look across the fields and see miles of snow without a single footprint in it. It would be completely silent -- no cars, no birds singing, no doors slamming. Just silence and snow. God, I miss snow. The stars, the moon, the wind, and blankets of pure, pristine snow.

The house was silent, but somewhere in the garden was a swimming pool filled with unsettled water.

Maybe they hurt so much that the only way they can say it, is to say nothing

Would my head were a head of lettuce. I drove the last car over the Sagamore Bridge before the state police closed it off. The Cape Cod Canal all atempest beneath. No cars coming, no cars going. The bridge cables flapping like rubber bands. You think in certain circumstances a few thousand feet of bridge isn__ a thousand miles? The hurricane wiped out Dennis. Horace thanked God for insurance. I saved our little girl. You want me to say, Hurrah! Hurrah! but I can__, I won__, because to save her once isn__ to save her, and still she thumps as if the world was something thumpable. As if it wasn__ silence on a fundamental level. Yap on, wife, yap on. Thump, daughter, thump. Louder, Orangutan, louder. I can__ hear you.

The dead are silent because they live, just as we chatter so loudly to try to make ourselves forget that we are dying. Their silence is really their call to me, the assurance of their immortal love for me.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together ... Speech is too often ... the act of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal ... Speech is of Time, silence is of Eternity ... It is idle to think that, by means of words, any real communication can ever pass from one man to another ...

In this landI have made myself sick with silenceIn this landI have wandered, lostIn this landI hunkered down to seeWhat will become of me.In this landI held myself tightSo as not to scream.-But I did scream, so loudThat this land howled back at meAs hideouslyAs it builds its houses.In this landI have been sownOnly my head sticksDefiant, out of the earthBut one day it too will be mownMaking me, finallyOf this land.-Charlie's poem

By this time he had discovered that his neighbour was not very conversible; But whether her silence proceeded from pride, discretion, timidity, or idiotism, he was still unable to decide.

Rhage exhaled slowly, air easing out of his nose. As he sank into his skin, he reveled in the perfection of peace. The heavenly silence. The great roaring absence.