Screaming In the Silence
Last night in bed, after the third day of quarantine in a pile of illness (I have a cold), I randomly decided to browse through old stories I used to read on Booksie.Â
Booksie is a website where any writer with access to the internet can submit stories for the world to read, a platform I discovered when I was around 11/12 years old. I created my account. Typed up a few stories. Posted them. Enjoyed the interaction I received from the few people who found them. Showed my appreciation to all of them.Â
In my early Booksie days, I saw an ad at the bottom of the page displaying a story called “Screaming in the Silence.” The ad explained that the story was initially published to Booksie in chapter by chapter updates, and was now published as a real book. I read the blurb and the first chapter. Found it pretty interesting. The rest of the book had to be taken down from Booksie, though, for obvious reasons. Â
11 year old me didn’t have the accessibility to purchase the book myself, so that was that for a while. Throughout my teen years, especially when I discovered the wonders of YA Fiction and Goodreads, I would randomly decide to go back to Booksie and browse through the stories I had once spent hours of my day reading and writing. I would go back to “Screaming in the Silence.” I looked it up on Goodreads and read what other people had to say about it, read the preview over and over, thought about reading it someday, and repeat. I did that over and over, and even when I did finally have the resources to access it myself, it never peaked my interest enough to actually read it.Â
Until last night. While revisiting the story once again on Booksie, I read a small piece of the Epilogue that I hadn’t seen before. I skipped to the end. Didn’t understand a word of it. Visited Goodreads. Read some reviews. Wondered if I would agree or disagree with any of them if I read the book myself. Wandered over to Apple Books. Read the preview, once again, and realized this preview extended to the second chapter. Found a steamy scene. Was captivated. Saw that it was only $4.99 as an eBook. Checked my bank account to see if I could afford it. Decided I could. Switched back to Books. Bought it.Â
And then I stayed up the entire night to finish it, which is something I haven’t done for a book in a very very long time.Â
Edit: I forgot to add how funny it was that I forgot daylight savings was ending yesterday at 2am. In the middle of reading, I peeked at the time and saw that it was 2:54 or something. I was scared of hitting haunting hour, so I rushed to the bathroom to pee before I had to worry about it. I got back, continued reading, checked the time again, and saw that it was 2:04. Time is such a magical thing. Saved me from haunting hour for another hour. And also gave me back that extra hour to finish the book overnight.Â
So, the book:Â
“Screaming in the Silence” was published in 2010, which means it was probably written between 2008/2009/2010. So, the book is about a decade old. As I was reading the book, I couldn’t help but think of how terribly the world would receive the story considering today’s social climate.Â
The story is told in the point of view of 26-year-old Raleigh Winters, a recent graduate with a PhD in Political Science and Economics. She’s white. She’s blond. She has grey eyes. She’s the daughter of the Senator of Delaware. She went to George Washington University. She has daddy issues. She’s pretty and educated. And she’s been deaf since she was 6 years old (English mother didn’t believe in vaccinations, and she lost her hearing from the measles, a tragedy which tore her parents’ marriage apart). Since she was 6 years old, Raleigh has mastered the ability to read lips and speak.    Â
The story begins with Raleigh waking up and realizing she’s been dumped in the back of a trunk with the dead body of her hitchhiking companion, Julie. The two girls had been hit by an out of control car driven by three friends, Ray, Marshal, and Kaden. When the men discover that Raleigh is still alive, Ray wants to kill her and be done with it. But Kaden offers that they, instead, keep her in their basement and ransom her.Â
The story is dark and twisted and focuses very heavily on the relationship between Kaden and Raleigh. I say the social climate of today’s world would be unforgiving of this story because, well, it’s the story about a man who abducts a girl and enforces dominance over her to make her fall in love with him, until he later realizes he’s being very fucked up, and eventually does the noble thing to set her free, but only after a string of horrible decisions (including raping her), and he still gets her in the end.Â
With the Kavanaugh election and Twitter becoming increasingly conscious of rape culture -- no I really don't think the world would let this one slide if they got their hands on this one. For this reason, I’m glad it stays relatively unknown, with only a faithful, low-key audience.Â
In the story, Raleigh never lets Kaden off the hook for anything he’s done. At the trials, Raleigh doesn’t hide it in her testimony that Kaden raped her.Â
But even when she’s free of him, she’s battling with herself over how she feels about him. She loves him even though she knows she’s not supposed to. And she hates herself for loving him. She knows it’s not right. She thinks about it in the context of her friends and family; she knows all of them would say it’s a very wrong thing to love the man who held her captive, starved her, raped her, and brought her to near-death countless times. And yet the feelings remain, powerful and unrelenting.Â
Because really, only Raleigh and Kaden know what was shared between them. Raleigh was lost in life even before she was kidnapped. She had so many directions to go, and she didn’t know which one felt the most right. That’s why she ran away from home to go hitchhiking for a while. This led to her captivity. Suddenly, she had no direction to go. Her future was unknown, and she had little control over her life. Kaden grew up in Paris, spoke French, was a translator, had a mentally unstable best friend that he felt the responsibility to look after. Honestly, I’m not really sure what finding Raleigh did for him other than make him commit horrendous crimes and then soften? (Tbh, he doesn’t have much of an arch. Even as we unravel things about him, he remains much of a mystery.) Really, I felt like Kaden’s purpose was to be a male love interest, and that’s just it. Kaden was protective over Raleigh when it came to the true dark figure in the house -- Ray. Kaden was soft and playful and teasing when he allowed himself to be. Kaden had a temper that led him to physically hurt Raleigh on a couple instances. Kaden was snarky and had the “Booksie/Wattpad love interest smirk.” Honestly, the spark in their relationship didn’t really come from actions, but from the actual chemistry between their personalities. Their spirits were just too aligned. Â
Reading Raleigh’s internal battles with herself made me think of my own emotions about the story. I got so invested in their romance that I sacrificed all sleep to finish the book I waited almost a decade to read. Even though there were moments during the story where I had to shake my head and think to myself, “God, this cannot be right,” I was happy that Raleigh and Kaden got their happy ending. There were so many things that were wrong about their romance. It’s hard to call it Stockholm syndrome, though even Raleigh admits that’s probably what it is, because it feels more complicated than that, even though it isn’t. All this, Raleigh thinks about. Even she can’t believe she loves the guy. And she’s a smart, rational woman.Â
Sometimes, feelings just are. And there’s no real way of explaining them. (Maybe it’s a linguistics thing. We’re locked away from certain possibilities because there’s simply no way for words to describe certain things.)Â
It’s kind of like that scene in Grey’s Anatomy where Meredith is talking to the girl who ran away from her abductor after years in his captivity. The girl tells Meredith that, even though she isn’t supposed to, she somewhat misses her captor, but it’s a feeling she can’t comprehend through words.Â
[Side note: I can’t wait to hold a degree in Psychology.]Â
Yeah, yeah. These are dramatic situations that happened in fiction. But, hey. Big real-life world. All these people.Â
Another side note, I’m used to reading YA Fiction at this point. This was my first real time reading a romance about people who are well into their 20′s (as in late twenties, early thirties). It was interesting, to me, reading in a voice that wasn’t a teenage girl. By 26, a girl’s residual hormones from puberty are supposed to have calmed down. Or something. No a scientist. But, yeah. Anyway, considering I’m no longer a teenager and I’m now in my early 20′s, it feels right.Â
Anyway, anyway, I can go on forever, but let’s just leave this at:
I’m happy I finally read the book. And I think it was right timing. 20-year-old me absorbed the book with the sophistication 11-year-old me or even 17-year-old me wouldn’t have had. Every once in a while, in between my breaks of avid reading, I run into a romance that grabs all my heartstrings and twists and turns them with every word of a good story. “Screaming in the Silence” was not perfect, and it’s definitely dated, but it made me feel something that I haven’t felt in a long time, which was excitement for life and excitement for romance.Â
And in addition to that, excitement for reading. It was nice getting away from my own headspace for a while to experience someone else’s emotions. And I really like the format of reading on my phone, so I’m going to make it a thing to try and read at least one book every week.Â
