Experimental Short Story Series #38
Title: The Girl Who Wrote Silences
by Faraz Parvez (pen name of Prof. Dr. Arshad Afzal, former faculty member, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA)
“Sometimes, the loudest stories are told by those who say nothing at all.”
Welcome back, dear readers, to our 38th journey into the kaleidoscopic cosmos of experimental storytelling. If you’ve walked beside us through the folds of time, whispers of rain, and fractured mirrors, you’ll know: we aren’t here to follow the rules—we’re here to write new ones.
And today, we arrive at silence.
The Story:
In a forgotten village nestled high in the folds of a mist-clad mountain, no one has spoken a word in over seventy years.
It isn’t due to a curse, nor a tradition. It’s because the last words ever spoken in the village caused a war. Or so the legend goes.
In this eerie hush lives a mute girl named Liyah, born to a community that communicates only through glances, breath, and gestures. But Liyah does something no one else in the village dares: she writes.
Not words. Not drawings. Not even symbols.
She writes silences.
On paper, they appear blank, empty, untouched. But to those who receive them, these letters unleash a cascade of emotions—grief, joy, longing, remembrance—like waves breaking against the shore of their buried pasts.
A grieving widow reads one and begins to laugh for the first time in two years.
A hardened soldier clutches a blank page and finally weeps.
A dying child folds one under their pillow and whispers, “She forgave me.”
The world takes notice. First poets. Then scholars. Then governments.
And when agents come knocking—armed with scanners, suspicion, and silence-breakers—they demand to know how Liyah does it. How a blank letter can crack open a soul.
But no answer comes.
Because Liyah does not speak. She simply smiles… and slides across the table a blank sheet—folded just once, down the middle.
They take it, read nothing, and walk away changed.
The Experiment:
This is no ordinary story. It lives in the realm of the unsaid, where the narrative is sculpted not by dialogue, but by its absence. “The Girl Who Wrote Silences” plays with form, sensation, and meaning. It’s a story of white space and emotional ink—where every fold, pause, and blink can be more powerful than entire volumes of speech.
Here, we’re not just exploring silence—we’re wielding it.
The result? A haunting tale where what’s not written becomes the most unforgettable part of the story.
Why It Matters:
In a world bombarded by noise, silence is rebellion.
Through this story, we challenge what it means to write. Is writing only the placement of words on a page? Or can the blank canvas, like a mirror, reflect our deepest truths?
Dear readers, as we continue our 60-part Experimental Short Story Series, we urge you to sit with this story a moment longer. To feel what can’t be described. To read what isn’t there.
We write not just to be read,
We write to be felt.
Keep walking with us. Tomorrow, we unfold tale #39.
Faraz Parvez
for farazparvez1.blogspot.com
Pen name of Prof. Dr. Arshad Afzal
Former Faculty Member, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah
