The girl who never stopped screaming.

The girl who never stopped screaming.

She used to laugh.

She used to make everyone laugh.

She did love to laugh.

She also loved to cry,

But mostly when she laughed so much it hurt.

Then, one day, she didn’t want to laugh anymore.

All of her friends looked at her funny.

They said “wait, why are you not laughing? You always laugh”.

“If I am not laughing now, how can I be always laughing? Is now not a time? Does this mean I’m not really laughing always after all?"

They gave her the strangest looks.

“Nobody is ALWAYS laughing”, said the girl who always laughed.

Her friends made new friends. None of them were always laughing, but at least they were consistent.

The new friends of her old friends sometimes laughed. They sometimes cried, too. The trick was, they never always did something, and then one day stopped.

Nobody always did anything, because everyone knows that one day they would stop.

The girl who always laughed (but wasn’t laughing) knew just what to do next.

She screamed.

Some people laughed when the girl who always laughed was screaming,

Maybe this was just a new way to laugh that they had never thought of before.

They stopped when they realized the new way to laugh wasn’t very fun.

If came from the depths of their stomach where the laughter used to come from.

Their eyes shined the same intensity, but this time the color behind the lively glow was a fiery red instead of a whimsical yellow.

The girl who always laughed before, now wouldn’t stop screaming.

This is the way it was.

Some watched, some questioned, some laughed, some left.

They reacted the way we all do to any change.

The change wasn’t welcome, but that didn’t very much matter.

Whoever raised Change as a child skipped the chapter on “manners” in the parenting book.

There she stood, the girl who wouldn’t stop screaming.

And though they weren’t sure how long it would last, they knew one thing was for sure:

For now, she was screaming. And that is the way it was.

When they noticed that her screaming came in different pitches and volumes, they left her a guitar in hopes that maybe she would do something a little more melodic with all of the noise trapped in her soul,

And though many musicians started off screaming and learned to channel the noise into notes, this girl wasn’t done screaming just yet.

The children were having trouble sleeping at night because the screaming had no curfew.

Expression generally doesn’t follow rules of a society; it must have had the same busy parents as Change had.

The girl screamed at 3 pm, 4 am, noon, and midnight alike, and all of the time in between.

I may have mentioned, she really wouldn’t stop screaming.

The town had an idea.

They build her a box.

The girl had no problem screaming into a soundproof box.

It was big, it was cozy, and it was build with the hands of the town.

It was a labor of love, and she was honored to fill it with her screams.

The town became quiet, though the screaming went on inside the box.

The children slept better, but they missed the screams.

So did the rest of the people there.

They asked the screaming girl to open the door between noon and 3pm.

She had grown fond of screaming in the dark, though.

She declined to share the screams with them during the day,

And screaming with the door open at night just made no sense to a town of dreamers who needed their sleep.

The young girl in the town who liked to play with wires thought up a fancy idea.

The people in the town followed her lead, and they covered the box with wires and light bulbs.

Though they couldn’t hear the screams, the screams fueled lights, and the lights were connected to the screams.

The louder she screamed, the brighter the light.

Each emotion was associated with a color, but none knew the screamer well enough to understand what those were.

A five year old boy one day noticed an unpleasant color when watching the box from the playground.

The boy and his teacher lead the class to the water station, and they brought to the box a big, tall glass of water.

The colors stopped, the door opened, slowly. It opened all the way to three inches open, and the hand of the screamer grabbed the full glass of water. It was a very clean hand for a woman who just stood around screaming all day. She pulled it into the box with her, and the door closed, faster than it opened.

The classroom waited, and watched the box that was no longer lit.

They waited.

They waited.

After 60 long seconds, the colors shone brighter than ever.

The little boy just used his imagination to know exactly what color thirsty would be,

And oh boy, was he right.

They brought her water every day from then on.

The town gathered at the screamers light box on Sunday afternoons.

There were painters, age 3-93.

There were psychologists with notepads, most of which with nothing on them.

There were aging friends who remembered the screamer when she was more of a laugher,

And they did admit. They missed her laughter.

The town loved her through the scream box, and every Sunday afternoon, they gathered.

As they gathered, the love grew.

For the scream box,

For the screamer,

And for the town in which the screams lived.

Until, one day, the colors were not there.

The children brought the water, but the color “thirsty” hadn’t appeared. No color had appeared.

The village held their breath, and the scream box stayed dark.

The village knew better than to waste an afternoon, so they ate in silence.

The painters new better than to leave a canvass blank, though the colors were not as diverse as they usually were.

Contrary to the lack of inspiration in the other departments, the psychologists finally filled their notebook paper.

The sun began to go down and the scream box stayed dim.

If felt as if the whole town were holding their breath.

It was decided that if there were no colors by the morning, the sheriff would open the box to make sure she was okay.

They would have done it sooner, but that’s the thing with people who just DO things: you can’t just enter the space to make sure their okay. Sometimes, they’re on the edge of being “okay” and being “inspired”. You can never really tell which it is.

I don’t think the people who just DO things really knows if they’re okay or not either.

That is, until after the inspiration strikes. It usually does, unless some impatient townspeople barge in and let the inspiration escape.

There was a low murmur of voices as the town packed up the party.

There was fear.

There was hope.

Maybe she would even come out laughing again.

And just before the sun had gone completely down,

The door opened.

The town fell silent.

The looked up.

They held their breath.

And then the girl who didn’t scream anymore played a beautiful new song on the guitar that she would, hopefully, never ever put down.



***Inspired by the Scream Box by Mikele of Community Supported Everything. Visit CommunitySupportedEverything.Org for more info.