The silence between seconds

 

Experimental Short Story Series #32
Title: “The Silence Between Seconds”
By Faraz Parvez (Pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, former faculty member, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA)

Introduction:

Welcome back, dear readers, to our signature series on Experimental Short Stories. With each entry, we push the boundaries of storytelling—narrative, perception, and even time itself. Today’s story flirts with the metaphysical and explores the haunting possibility that what we call “silence” is simply a threshold we have yet to cross.

What if time isn’t a straight line, but a layered whisper? What if the gaps we never notice are the very places the universe hides its secrets?

The Silence Between Seconds

Adnan Rafiq didn’t believe in ghosts.
Not until he built a machine that could hear them.

By day, he was a senior sound engineer at a renowned studio in Karachi—polishing pop songs, fine-tuning voiceovers, mastering ambient textures. By night, he was a seeker. Not of truth, not of God, not even of meaning—but of what he called “The Quiet Signal.”

Years ago, during a bout of insomnia, Adnan had stumbled across a strange anomaly while editing a track. A pattern in the silence between two recorded beats—not digital static, not electrical hum. It was deeper. Structured. Almost...intentional.

It became an obsession. He started tweaking hardware—hyper-sensitive microphones, layered input filters, ultra-high sample rates. And finally, it happened.

He heard it.

Not music. Not white noise.
A voice.

A whisper so thin it danced between existence and erasure:

"Don’t forget the watch... it’s already in the drawer."

Adnan froze.
His grandfather’s old watch—the one that had vanished a year ago—was exactly where the voice claimed.

From that night onward, the machine was his cathedral, the silence his scripture.

Each night, he recorded for 59 minutes and 59 seconds. Then he isolated the “between”—the infinitesimal gap between that final second and the start of the next. That's where the echoes lived.

Some were mundane: a child giggling, rainfall, footsteps.

Others were... not.

"The boy you saved was meant to die. Fate has been rewound."
"In the year 2032, the sky will blink."
"Your mother lied. She was never alone that night."

The voices didn’t sound human. Yet they knew him intimately.

As weeks passed, Adnan stopped leaving the studio. He barely ate, barely spoke. He began replying aloud during sessions, conversing with the silences.

Then came the scream.

One night, the voice did not whisper. It shrieked.

"STOP RECORDING. HE’S AWAKE."

The machine smoked. Lights flickered. His studio door slammed shut on its own.

Adnan collapsed.

When he awoke hours later, a strange calm filled the room. The machine, now silent, displayed one line of data:

“You were never meant to hear us.”

He unplugged it.
Burned his notebooks.
Deleted his files.
And for the first time in weeks, he slept.

But every night, just as he drifts off, there’s a voice—not from a speaker, not from the world—

But from between the seconds.

"We are not done speaking to you yet."

Closing Reflections:

“The Silence Between Seconds” exemplifies what experimental fiction does best—it warps the mundane into the profound. Time, perception, sound—all familiar things—are bent into a haunting mirror of what might lie beneath.

Our goal with this series isn’t just to entertain, but to unsettle, to awaken, and to stir the imagination.

A Note to Our Esteemed Readers:

This marks the 32nd entry in our 60 Experimental Short Stories series—an ambitious literary voyage unlike any other in the digital world. We are proud to present each tale under the creative banner of Faraz Parvez, the pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, a name synonymous with literary innovation and academic brilliance.

As this unique anthology unfolds, know that it will one day be immortalized in eBook and hardcover editions—a testament to your companionship on this narrative journey.

Bookmark our blog: farazparvez1.blogspot.com
Share, comment, and continue walking with us—between the lines, between genres, and yes, even between the seconds.


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