I always thought I lacked something, a fundamental muscle or chord. While other children shrieked in delight, in terror, in exhaustion, I remained mute and unblinking.
At five years old, I was questioned, gently, by concerned adults.
I stared at them—they stared at me, a Grand Canyon of misunderstanding between us.
I refused to answer stupid questions. I heard the lie from their lips, saw the masks on their faces, and I was terribly sad for these exhausted, fragile adults.
I said nothing.
The suggestion was made, that I would be better suited to the special education classroom.
This was not meant to be an insult. This was about the best environment for Samantha’s social needs.
My parents disagreed. Vehemently. Spitefully.
They would remind me, with thousand-yard stares, how I’d narrowly avoided asphyxiation as my birthright, only to spend the next six months howling like a demon spat directly from hell thanks to my oppressively tiny ear canals.
I screamed every waking hour of my existence until all at once, I didn’t.
When they told me this, I thought, very sagely, I must have used up my screams early.
According to that childhood fairytale logic; If we’re only granted three wishes, or one happily ever after, perhaps we’re born with only so many screams.
I was wrong, of course.
My first scream came late.
I sat in my car, on a beautiful day. I was in the parking lot of the grocery store. These sorts of moments always happen in the best weather and the safest of places. I held the steering wheel, but the car was off and going nowhere.
At this point in my life, I’d accumulated more armor than I could reasonably carry. My therapist was using Monica vs. Phoebe metaphors to convey how my white-knuckle grip was not actually a sustainable lifestyle, and explaining that a silent panic attack was still a panic attack, and assuring me no one was handing out medals for being the least problematic person in the room.
But when the cashier, a pimple-faced boy who’d probably been a victim of covid-prom, told me my card was declined—the only one that would still fucking work, the one I really needed to get food on the table with, the one I was dead fucking sure had $600 in the account still unless that fucking car payment had gone through early—that was apparently the last humiliation I could endure.
I gripped the steering wheel, and felt cold shame run through me like years of pent-up glacial ice-melt. It shifted into the sweet agony of a lifetime of gritted teeth, the endless balance of skipping from rock to rock, of spinning every plate I was ever given with a goddamn smile and the horrifying competence of a deranged wedding planner. It was the screaming of a powerdrill just behind my ear, the steam kettle losing its fucking shit, It was the rage of my own body’s betrayal, diagnoses of chronic things I didn’t deserve, the loss of my Self, my goals, my dreams, my fucking endless potential.
I was being ripped off, denied my fucking sunset, my happily ever after, forced into choices I’d never been qualified to make, but forced to endure.
That day, I realized exactly what a scream is made of.
It didn’t come from some complex mechanism of tendon and tissue. It wasn’t the size of my lungs or the strength of my diaphragm. A good scream only requires one thing. Exquisite Pain.
An old woman stopped in front of my car, her eyes squinting into mine. I couldn’t hear anything anymore. Someone had turned off the high frequency drill. There was a hole in my chest, vacant as an aftershock.
I breathed deep, snot running from my nose. She kept walking.
Samantha Hund writes uncomfortable fiction and poetry with teeth. Her work is published in ExPat Press, BULL, Burial Magazine, Blood+Honey, and more. All rumors of vampirism are unsubstantiated. samanthahund.com and @sm_hund on twitter and instagram.