{"id":153,"date":"2007-04-11T16:16:47","date_gmt":"2007-04-11T23:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.angelvillanueva.com\/blog\/?p=153"},"modified":"2011-02-23T13:22:20","modified_gmt":"2011-02-23T20:22:20","slug":"silence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.angelvillanueva.com\/blog\/2007\/04\/11\/silence\/","title":{"rendered":"Silence"},"content":{"rendered":"

:: :: ::<\/span><\/p>\n

The children had been missing for four years. One day they showed up at their parent’s front door, as if nothing had happened.<\/p>\n

They will not speak at all.<\/p>\n

As we enter the experimental facility I am puzzled by the presence of multiple polyglass walls defining an enclosure that extends beyond my field of vision.<\/p>\n

I am part of a team, three other people walk in with me: a doctor, a psychologist, and a reporter. I am the artist. We will each evaluate the children, then our reporter will compile our findings and submit them to the powers that be.<\/p>\n

We turn a corner and the kids’ enclosure comes into full view: the girl is about twelve years old, the boy eight or nine. Their glass prison is filled with toys and comfortable furniture, just like a normal living room, here awash in clinical light. There are cameras and massive banks of electronic equipment beyond the transparent walls.<\/p>\n

I wonder what the reason is for keeping the children in a bulletproof cage.<\/p>\n

The boy sits on the carpeted floor. His eyes are fixed on me. As I am cleared to enter the glass enclosure I recognize him.<\/p>\n

Years back, before his disappearance, we played with crayons and paper at someone’s house, at some sort of gathering, perhaps a birthday party. We doodled and colored farmhouses, mountains, trees, cattle, flowers, birds\u2026 I remember he was perfectly articulate and extremely bright.<\/p>\n

He stands up and goes to a corner, where he keeps a box and a big sketchpad. He takes them and walks back, sits where he was before, and looks at me again. It’s almost a command. I walk over and sit next to him. He opens the box: it is full of crayons. He then finds a blank page in the sketchpad. He does not invite me to draw with him. Instead, he picks a crayon without even looking to see what color it is, and gives me a look that can only mean: Are you paying attention?<\/em><\/p>\n

I realize with a chill that he is about to tell me, in drawings, what happened to them during those four years.<\/p>\n

::<\/p>\n

That’s it. That’s when I woke up. My subconscious mind often weaves these mysteries and then catapults me back to daylight without an answer. It somehow feels perversely planned… I tried falling back asleep, concentrating as much as I could on the last image in the dream, but of course that would not happen. Nothing left to do but write the vision down before it faded into nothingness.<\/em><\/p>\n

~A<\/em><\/p>\n

:: :: ::<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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