Chapter 11 The Echo in the Silence
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
The droning of Mr. Harrison's voice was white noise, a distant murmur that failed to penetrate Michael's bubble. He was sitting at his desk in the back row, his hoodie pulled up, his body present in history class, but his mind was miles away.
His mind was in the digital universe of SoundCloud.
He had poured his soul into that song. Every note, every word, every break in his voice was a piece of his truth. And now, he couldn't stop thinking about it.
One part of him, a logical part, told him to be patient. But another, the part that had bled into the microphone, was desperate for a sign. Proof that he wasn't alone, that someone, somewhere, had heard his cry.
'It's good. I know it. It's real. People have to feel it.'
Discreetly, he slid his phone under the desk. He unlocked the screen, his fingers moving with nervous speed. He opened the SoundCloud app. He went to his profile. And he refreshed the page.
The screen flickered. And the numbers appeared, small and cruel.
Plays: 7. Likes: 1. Comments: 0.
'Seven... That's probably just me, refreshing the page,' he thought with a pang of bitterness. The only like was the one he had given himself the night before.
"Mr. Gray, are you with us?" Mr. Harrison's voice cut through the air.
Michael snapped his head up. "Yes?"
"The Battle of Gettysburg. Could you tell us the year?"
Michael went blank. He looked at the teacher, then at the blackboard. "I'm sorry. I don't know."
The teacher sighed and continued with the class. Michael returned to hiding under his hood, the heat of shame creeping up his neck.
But the shame quickly faded, replaced by the same obsession. He refreshed again. Plays: 8. A tiny jump. His heart skipped a beat. 'Someone is listening to it right now.' But there was no new like. There was no comment.
The cycle continued throughout the day. In the hallway between classes, while the others were shouting and shoving, he was leaning against his locker, staring at his phone screen. Refresh. Nothing.
At lunch, he didn't eat. He simply sat at his solitary table, refreshing the page over and over, like a compulsive gambler pulling the lever of a slot machine that never paid out.
He got home after his shift at the Burger Barn, smelling of grease and defeat. He threw down his backpack, ignored the pile of mail, and went straight to his makeshift studio. He turned on the laptop, his last hope being that the phone's stats were wrong.
He opened SoundCloud. The numbers were the same. Plays: 12. Likes: 2. Comments: 0.
He stared at the screen. All that work. All that soul. All that pain. And the world had responded with indifferent silence.
He rested his head on the desk, the weariness of the week and the disappointment of the day falling on him like a concrete slab.
'No one heard it,' he thought. 'Or no one cared.'
Tuesday, May 19 – Monday, May 25, 2015
The rest of the week was a gray blur, a repetition of the same day over and over. School was background noise. The job at the Burger Barn was an inferno of grease and exhaustion.
But now, a new ritual had been added to his monotonous existence. A nervous tic. An act of digital masochism.
Every free hour, every ten minute break in the alley behind the restaurant, every moment of silence at home, Michael pulled out his phone and refreshed the SoundCloud page.
The numbers went up, but at a glacial, almost insulting, pace.
Plays: 23. Likes: 3.
'Okay. Someone listened to it.' But there were no comments. There was no reaction. Just silence.
The next day, the numbers were a little higher. Plays: 41. Likes: 3.
The song was out there, floating in the vast ocean of the internet, and no one was reeling it in.
The harsh lesson began to settle in his mind.
Reality is always cruel and indifferent, and the same goes for songs.
It didn't matter how much effort, how much pain, or how much soul he had put into it.
The world was not obligated to listen.
Just because they are good doesn't mean they have to be heard.
By the weekend, his obsession had turned into a bitter resignation.
He refreshed the page no longer with hope, but with a morbid curiosity, like touching a wound to see if it still hurt.
Monday night arrived, a full week after he had uploaded the song. He got ready for bed, the weight of another week of work and school on his shoulders.
As a final act, he opened SoundCloud on his phone one last time. The page loaded.
Plays: 58. Likes: 4. Comments: 0.
Fifty eight plays in a week. Probably half were his own.
He stared at the zero next to the word "Comments." That was the one that hurt the most.
The silence.
The total indifference.
A cold, heavy doubt, one he hadn't felt before, settled in his stomach.
'What if I'm not good?' he thought, the question a whisper in the darkness of his room.
'What if all this, the pain, the emotion... what if only I can hear what's inside?'
He turned off the phone screen and left it on the nightstand. He got under the covers and stared at the ceiling, feeling, for the first time, that maybe he was screaming into a void that would never answer him.
…..
Fifteen hundred miles away, in a quiet Ohio suburb, a girl named Chloe felt exactly like the song she didn't know she was about to discover: like a ghost.
She moved through her house like a shadow. Her parents loved her, but they didn't understand her. At school, she was invisible, just another face in the crowded hallways. She wasn't unpopular; she was, somehow, nonexistent.
Her room was her only refuge. And her only hobby was listening to music. It was her escape, her companion, the only thing that seemed to understand the noise in her head.
That Monday night, she was sitting on her bed, her laptop on her knees and her headphones on. She was browsing SoundCloud, desperately searching for something new, something real.
She loved rap, the rhythm, the energy. But lately, she felt the genre had become stagnant.
It felt the same as it did years ago.
She clicked on the hip hop "Top Charts" list.
The first song had a heavy beat and a rapper shouting about his new watch and his car.
The next, about a fight in a club.
The third, about jewelry and luxury.
'The same thing again,' she thought, skipping to the next one with a sigh.
All the lyrics were the same.
Girls, cars, jewelry, money. It was an endless parade of arrogance. There was no vulnerability.
There was no doubt.
There was no sadness.
'Doesn't anyone else feel... alone?' she wondered, as she closed another tab.
'Isn't anyone else sad? Why does everything have to be about being the toughest?'
She felt completely disconnected. That music didn't talk about her life. It didn't talk about feeling invisible in her own house. It didn't talk about the loneliness she felt at three in the morning.
It was just noise.
Empty noise.
Frustrated, she moved the mouse cursor towards the "X" to close the browser window. She was about to give up, to turn off the music and be alone with her own silent thoughts.
But just as her finger was about to click, her hand stumbled on the trackpad. The cursor slid across the screen and landed on a random link in the "New Uploads" column.
An involuntary click.
A new page loaded. It was the emptiest, most unattractive thing she had ever seen. The avatar was a simple black square.
The username, "Michael Demiurge," told her nothing.
And beneath it, only one song.
Her first instinct was to close the tab. It was clearly a mistake, a dead profile. But then, her eyes fell on the title.
It was written in lowercase, unpretentiously.
ghost boy
The word "ghost" stopped her in her tracks. She stared at it. It was a word that resonated deep within her being. It was how she felt. Invisible. A ghost in her own life.
A pang of curiosity, the first all night, ran through her. 'Ghost Boy. What a name.'
She hesitated for another second. Then, with a shrug, she readjusted her headphones and pressed play.
There was no explosive intro. Just the sound of a guitar.
It was a simple, almost childlike melody, but it sounded... distant. As if it were coming from an old radio in another room, distorted by time and space. A subtle crackle, like a vinyl record, sounded underneath.
Then, the beat came in. It was slow, limping, minimalist. A dull bass drum, a dry clap. It wasn't a beat for a party. It was a beat for walking alone at night.
And then, the voice.
It wasn't a shout. It wasn't a boast. It was a melancholic murmur, almost spoken, that seemed to be singing right into her ear.
'Leave me alone, just leave alone...'
'I'm growin' so tired of this...'
Chloe froze. Those first lines were an echo of her own thoughts from just a few minutes ago. The feeling of being tired of everything.
'How do you fight the feelin'?'
'How do you fight the feelin', bitch?'
The question hit her. It was a real question, not a rap line. It was the question she asked herself every night. The way the word "bitch" was spat out, not with anger, but with an exhausted frustration, felt incredibly honest.
'She callin' my phone, she callin' my phone...'
'I put it on quiet quick...'
'I ain't never gon' answer it...'
'I ain't never gon' pick up my phone, girl...'
She understood that feeling perfectly. It wasn't about a girl. It was about the world. About people calling, demanding, expecting something from you when all you want is to disappear.
'I'm all on my own, I'm all on my own...'
That line. That simple, direct statement of loneliness. It felt more real and more powerful than any boast about having twenty cars she had heard that night.
'I know you ain't high as this...'
'Puttin' my mind to shit...'
'Give me some time, I'll be flyin' bitch...'
A flash of defiance. It wasn't just self pity. There was a promise of something more, a silent determination that intrigued her.
'Breakin' my bones, you breakin' my bones...'
'You want me to line my wrist...'
A shiver ran through her. He was going to those dark places. The places she knew but never talked about.
'I ain't gon' do it for you...'
'I'm gon' do it for me, 'cause it help me forget...'
A whispered confession. It wasn't a cry for help. It was a cold explanation of a survival mechanism.
'I ain't gon' do it for you...'
'I'm gon' do it for me, 'cause I'm tryna get rich...'
The sudden mention of ambition surprised her. It didn't fit. And for that very reason, it felt even more real. He wasn't just a sad boy; he was a sad boy with a plan.
'I ain't gon' put on no Tommy...'
'If I don't got Tommy to put on my bitch...'
The crudeness of the language was strange, but the logic was clear. Fashion, success... they were tools. Armor.
'Doin' my thing, now, bitch, I can sing...'
'So don't expect all my flows, I just switch...'
She realized she wasn't listening to a normal rap song. She was listening to a stream of consciousness. The artist was telling her he had no rules.
'Step in this bitch, let these hoes feel my drip...'
'If you ain't smokin' on somethin', I'ma dip (skrt)...'
The song returned to the chorus, repeating the feeling of being tired, of wanting to be left alone. And just when she thought she understood the song, the end came. The voice softened, losing all its arrogance.
'When you are on your own...'
'Just know that I need you...'
The contradiction hit her in the chest. The same boy who said "leave me alone" now confessed that he needed someone.
'I won't pick up the phone...'
'But you can't answer,' she thought.
'Just know that I need you.'
The last line was barely a whisper, the sound of a heart breaking in the distance.
The guitar faded into an echo. And then, silence.
Chloe remained sitting on her bed, in the darkness of her room, with her headphones on. The silence that followed the song was different. It wasn't a void. It was filled with the echo of what she had just heard.
She felt... seen.
It was the first time in years that she hadn't just liked a song. She understood it. And she felt that the song understood her. It wasn't a song made for the radio, for parties, for millions of people.
It sounded like it had been made in a room like hers, for a person like her.
The song ended. Chloe remained sitting in the darkness of her room, the silence in her headphones louder than the music.
She felt... seen.
For the first time in years, she hadn't just liked a song. She had understood it. And she felt that the song understood her. It wasn't a song made for the radio, or for parties. It sounded like it had been created in a room like hers, for a person like her.
She felt an overwhelming need to reply, to send a signal back to the ghost on the other side of the screen. She moved the cursor and hit like. The orange heart lit up. A small, almost insignificant gesture.
Then, she opened the comments section. It was completely empty. She would be the first.
She didn't think much about what to write. There was nothing to analyze. She simply typed the truth, the words the song had made her feel.
Monday, May 25, 2015. 11:58 PM.
Michael was in his bed, about to give up. The day had been long, and the week, even longer. He felt defeated. As a last act of masochism, he grabbed his phone from the nightstand. He opened SoundCloud one last time.
The page loaded. He saw the same pathetic statistics that had been tormenting him all week. Plays: 58. Likes: 4.
He sighed and was about to turn off the screen. But then, something caught his attention.
Next to the small dialogue bubble icon, there was a notification. A small red circle with a number inside.
(1)
His heart stopped. A comment.
With a slightly trembling thumb, he tapped the notification. The comments section, which had been empty for seven long days, now had an entry. A username he didn't recognize. And beneath it, a few words.
Michael read it.
"You're not alone. I feel like a ghost too. Thank you for this."
He read the sentence once. And then again.
It wasn't a "good beat." It wasn't a "keep it up." It was... a recognition. Someone, somewhere in that vast, silent universe, had truly heard him.
He didn't shout. He didn't smile. He just stared at the words on the bright screen. And a feeling he hadn't felt in a long time, a slow, growing warmth, began to spread through his chest, drowning out the doubt and loneliness.
The fifty eight plays no longer mattered. The four likes were irrelevant. That single comment. That single connection.
He felt appreciated. And for the first time in this wrong world, for a brief and perfect instant, he didn't feel so alone.
He stared at the words on the bright screen. And a feeling he hadn't felt in a long time, a slow, growing warmth, began to spread through his chest. He felt appreciated. The comment read:
"You're not alone. I feel like a ghost too. Thank you for this."
Just as he was about to turn off the screen, a familiar light flickered in his vision. The System interface appeared, silent and simple. And in the center, a new notification shone with a cyan light.
[IMPACT ANALYSIS COMPLETE]
Source: Single User Interaction.
Resonance Level: Profound (Identity Connection).
Impact Points generated by 58 plays: 0 IP
Impact Points generated by 1 comment: +100 IP
TOTAL BALANCE: 100 IP
Reminder: Impact on one soul is more valuable than the echo in a thousand empty ears.