Experimental Short Story Series #30
Title: The Silence Broker
By Faraz Parvez (Pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, Former Faculty Member, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA)
In the year 2147, sound had become property.
Laughter, footsteps, weeping, whispers—they were all measured, quantified, taxed. The State claimed ownership of every decibel, and silence? That was a commodity—scarce, coveted, and ruthlessly monetized.
Only the rich could afford private silence: a quiet dinner, a still morning, an undisturbed night. The poor drowned in perpetual noise—hissing vents, propaganda drones, the hum of overpopulated cities. And in that cacophony, emerged a man known only as The Silence Broker.
His real name was never uttered. He operated from an abandoned soundproof chamber once used for experimental therapy. Now, it was a black-market haven where people came to buy not substances or weapons—but hush.
He didn’t deal in recordings or suppression tech. His silences were pure, tangible gaps in sound, harvested from deep Arctic caverns, lunar vaults, and—rumor had it—the chambers of monks who hadn’t spoken in decades.
His clients came with varied requests. A poet who wanted a two-minute silence to hear the rhythm of her soul. A soldier who needed to mute his memories. A lover who yearned for a pause between the last kiss and the first goodbye.
But the day she came in, everything changed.
She wore no mask. That was rare. Her eyes were the color of exhausted grief. Her voice was barely legal—subdued, fractured.
“I want the silence,” she said, “of forgetting my daughter’s last cry.”
The Broker blinked. “That silence costs more than money.”
“I’ve sold everything. Organs. Memories. I have nothing left but this grief—and I want it gone.”
He hesitated. There was silence he could sell—temporal silences, acoustic voids, emotional hush. But this? This was metaphysical. Dangerous.
“I cannot guarantee the silence you seek won’t erase more than a sound.”
“I understand,” she whispered.
The transaction was made. He took her payment—not in credits, but in memories, flickering away like candle smoke. And then he unsealed the capsule.
It was terrifying: a darkness not of sight, but of sound. It blanketed the room like fog. Time hiccupped. Air tightened. Her lips moved—but nothing emerged.
Moments passed. Or hours.
When the capsule resealed, she stood up. Hollow-eyed. Calm.
“You’ve forgotten her,” the Broker said softly.
“Who?” she asked, without pain.
The Broker nodded. A man who dealt in quiet knew that some silences, once unleashed, could not be returned to their boxes.
She left.
He remained seated for a long while, holding the empty capsule—haunted now, not by sound, but by what silence had stolen.
Reflections from the Quiet
In this evocative tale, The Silence Broker unravels the emotional texture of grief, memory, and the cost of forgetting. It’s a story where silence becomes the loudest character—and speaks volumes about our human desire to escape pain.
Follow the Journey
This is Story #30 in our landmark 60 Experimental Short Story Series—a celebration of creative risk-taking, genre-bending narratives, and bold storytelling by Faraz Parvez, the pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, former faculty member of Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA.
We’re building toward something monumental—an eBook collection, and soon after, a hardcover release. If you’re a lover of literature that challenges form, thought, and emotion, stay with us.
Visit us at: farazparvez1.blogspot.com
Your support, reads, and shares are the quiet revolutions that keep this journey alive.
