The man who memorized silences
Experimental Short Story Series #19
Title: The Man Who Memorized Silences
Theme: A meditative experimental piece exploring memory, trauma, and the unspeakable—told entirely through the spaces between what is said.
The Man Who Memorized Silences
An Experimental Short Story by Faraz Parvez
FarazParvez1.blogspot.com
They asked him once, at a faculty gathering, “How do you remember so much?”
He didn’t reply.
Not because he didn’t want to.
But because he knew memory didn’t reside in facts, phrases, or the fluttering curtains of past events.
It lived in pauses.
He remembered his mother not by her lullabies, but by the gaps between her words.
He remembered his father by the thickness of silence between the knock and the door opening.
His childhood was a series of ellipses.
The doctor said, “The trauma likely caused selective amnesia.”
But he laughed. Not out loud. Just internally.
Because how do you explain that you remember everything—
just not in words.
He once tried to write a memoir.
The pages were blank.
A reviewer, seeing his submission, called it “a daring act of modern absurdism.”
They printed it. Sold a hundred copies.
Nobody noticed that each blank page was deliberately arranged.
Page 3 had the silence between his sister’s last laugh and the phone call that followed.
Page 17 held the silence that fell across the dinner table the day the war broke out.
Page 49 was heavy. Unreadable. It made readers cry without knowing why.
In relationships, he spoke gently.
A woman once fell in love with him simply because he knew when not to speak.
At their breakup, she whispered, “You loved me in all the right silences.”
He didn’t argue. He just nodded, and that nod roared louder than any explanation.
People thought he was wise. Or odd. Or both.
Students quoted him often—though he rarely spoke.
“Professor, what did you mean by that pause after the lecture on Beckett?”
He would smile. “Exactly that. A pause.”
One day, he entered the lecture hall and stood still.
The class waited.
Waited.
Waited longer.
He left.
The university archived the moment as “Performance Lecture #24: The Absence of Narrative.”
At night, he’d sit by the window, watching the city breathe.
Each horn, distant cry, muffled song from a nearby room—he collected them not for the sounds they made, but for the quiet that came after.
He was writing again.
But this time, not on paper.
He wrote on moments. On spaces. On the breath before regret.
On the stillness that followed a lover’s gaze.
On the hush after the word forgive.
He never finished his story.
Because the most powerful ending is always—
( )
Author's Note:
Welcome back, dear readers, to our groundbreaking 60 Experimental Short Stories Series, where we defy convention, bend structure, and write not just on paper—but on perception. “The Man Who Memorized Silences” is an ode to all that we leave unsaid—yet carry forever.
We believe literature must venture beyond the ordinary—and our blog, FarazParvez1.blogspot.com, is your trusted gateway to such creative exploration.
Stay with us as we continue this literary journey. A new experimental short story, every time, unlike anything you’ve read before. Soon, this collection will become a limited-edition eBook and possibly even a hardcover volume—your coffee table won’t be complete without it!
Bookmark us. Share us. And remember: sometimes, silence tells the loudest story.
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