Muted Mullings

It started with the 'Rona, that God darn viral mutation maker. Who ever envisioned we would end up here, muted, unable to speak to one another, unable to sing and laugh and make autonomous auditory sound. Lost in translation now, with our perfunctory ears, finding nuanced ways to make those muted memories of sound our collective hope.

Looking out my window I could see rabbit guy hanging out his skin on the line to dry again. Intrigued by the frequency with which he resorted to washing his wig and ways of whimsy, I wondered what the hell this guy was about, why the 'guise? I mean, we're all in the same boat here, all except the rare few verbal bretherers that remained.

The bretherers weren't revered, as I first thought they might be when people started showing signs of the mutation. The bretherers were like hunted harpies, fodder for experimentation, like some nightmare dystopian Atwood novel, where the republic was out to enslave and abuse them.

They were brave too, these bretherers, taking their tongues to speak out in public places and drawing a crowd of the peoples. Risking liberty and life and the survival of everything pre-mutation that remained. They knew only to opt for the moments when the republic were occupied with their ritualistic memorialism. Wisened to their ceremonial ways, the bretherers seized every chance they got, perhaps fearing that one day the provocation of their existence would see the republic give way to a plan that would detain and destroy them.

The gatherings of the republic were the epitome of sanctimonious hypocrisy. Offensive and elitist at best and at the looming end of the spectrum, a threat to humanity. These unintelligible acts of resurgent supremacy bore no relevance to our predicament, nor the preservation of the life we once knew. Rituals of intent just meaningless tropes. The republics prized themselves on being the intellectual beau monde of humanity nontheless. In their arrogance, they had no notion of how fragile their position was rapidly becoming, that the protests from the bretherers were awakening a much needed call to action, an uprising of the peoples.

The republics wore the illusion of power for the people, but instead they are a threat to every progressive path towards inclusion that we have collectively taken hold of, by our labour and our verbal appeals. In the wake of years of unprecendented progress and the fiercely fought reclamation of fair and equal human rights, how could they not observe their departure from this quasi-eutopian existence and bear witness to their own inevitable downfall? What drives a collective to return to old bricked up ways in an effort to rebuild what was deemed inhumane? Increasingly despised, barely tolerated, the signs all pointed to an uprising, with the republic being a target of the peoples, subject to their will and mercy.

I pitied them, really, in their narrow-minded state, willing an awakening from amongst them. Knowing that if they didn't have ears to hear and eyes to see that they had departed some significant distance from the path they started on, then their demise was imminent. Sprinting full pelt down a road of such prolific limitation that the only apposite outcome was accelerating the loss of life and increasing the probability of human extinction. Too proud and arogant to tarry the cost of life lost so far they blundered on, pinning their responsibility for the atrocities and losses of human life that they alone had caused on the bretherers.

Of course, rabbit guy had been one of the republics in the early days. I heard he was amongst the corona-legislators and that he had renounced his own evidence of the mutation origins in order to become part of the alliance between the confederate and the republic. I mean, I get it, in those days, the republic seemed like a movement for positive reform. It presented itself as a bridge between the extremist confederate of 'rona deniers and conspirasists and the geneticists who had discovered the specific genetic marker deemed responsible for our mute mutation. The geneticists had speculated about a further mutation, that one by one would attack and change all of our sensory functioning. Debates between the opposing sides became turf wars and the republic were paid to take the heat out of the conflict for the sake of the people.

To my knowledge rabbit guy had bedded down with the geneticists for months prior to joining the republic, and in the window of opportunity presented to him, he willingly turned his back on all of that in favour of a career in reunification.

At that time, I too had contemplated applying for reconcilliation director in response to the republics early recruitment drives. The leadership, however, was a male dominated hierarchy. I have long since arrived at a point in my life where I am no longer prepared to negotiate any part of my personage. This was particularly important for my freelance career to avoid clients and positions that afforded me influence by partnering with a negligent employer, regardless of how progressive their strategy may seem. So that was me out, rabbit guy should have done the same, but I presume the marketing strategy had gotten the better of him.

When it first emerged that the virus mutation was causing paresis of the vocal cords, nobody believed it would progress to all sound functions of the body and the silence was terrifying. It wasn't like losing your voice, it was like losing a vital organ with no hope of a donor. The impact on mental health was catastrophic. Those attune to historic mental health difficulties and complex life experiences became overnight expert clinicins as mentaly resilient role models to the masses. It was the first time in history that mental health lost its stigma and suicidal ideation was attended to with empathic urgency.

When mutism emerged as a global majority, the speed at which the human population was declining became out of control, exceeding the number of coronovirus fatalities within a couple of months. It was then that the first cases of the breatherers started to suggest the possibility that genetic mutation might not have the permanence that had been prescribed. Not because they had recovered their voices but because they utilised their voices for good.

Hope soared like wildfire and the republic sought opportunity to appoint several of the breatherers into the health sector to drive a new agenda, one which was founded on a lie that the republic failed to declare. The breatherers were recruited as spokespeople to remind the global population of the gift of speach and to act as translators to the new wave of mental health experts. With these two parties of people partnered, the decline of human populations started to slow down, but at this point the lie was still under wraps.

The author of the lie however was not a member of the republic, as one might presume, but rather an innocent homeless child. A breatherer traumatised by the loss of his parents to the coronavirus, betrayed by the social care system and living alone for survival of a different kind. The republic preyed on the boys vulnerability and bought out the boys story in exchange for housing him with one of the republic leaders. A real rags to riches story on the surface that won the hearts and affections of the people. In reality, it was the catalyst by which all breatherers became oppressed and abuse of power and information started to drive the republic agenda.

The republic started peddling the boys story as the first case evidencing a cure from mutism, in doing so they were disguising the boy's selective mutism that had begun with the loss of his parents and had resulted from his trauma, grief and loss. This was concealed from public knowledge and the breatherers that were working for the republic in those days. Nobody knew that the boy was a breatherer because he was hailed to be the cured.

It was unclear how the truth emerged but the republic system collapsed as expeditiously as it had risen to power. The breatherers horrified that one of their own, a child no less, had been used as a political pawn, they were outraged and breatherer uprisings ensued. An innocent already plagued with intolerable trauma abused by the system. The breatherers that had been employed stole the child and took him to a breatherers settlement and thus began the republic war of oppression over the breatherers.

Rabbit guy interrupted my thoughts by taking his skin off the washing line again. He shook it out before putting it on and was off into the community again with some urgency. Surely his suit wouldn't be dry just yet, so what was he up to?

I couldn't really grasp why rabbit guy felt the need to bound around in a rabbit costume. It wasn't much of disguise as everybody knew who he was and had euologized his decision to defect from the republic long before its derailment. For whatever reason he needed to be the rabbit, it clearly meant something to him and I respected that.

Respect though didn't abate my curiosity so I hopped on my bike to follow him. He'd gone down to the local diner and I could see his rabbit ears poking up behind the fence of the outdoor seating area. It was weird to see him seated there because he didn't make any motion to remove his mask to drink or eat, so I approached his table and gestured for me to sit with him. He nodded, the rabbit mask fixed with a goofy smile.

I greeted him with curioristy and he honed in on the heart shaped locket around my neck, gesturing at it as if it were some kind of hidden microphone. The furore of his behaviour caught me off-guard. I tried to reassure him and articulate with my hands that I had no malintent.

He gestured for me to follow him, alluding that he had been aware of my interest in him and that he was fully aware that I had been watching him from my window ever since he had moved there.

We walked to the back ally of the diner and he spoke to me. My first auditory encounter outside of the bretherer rallies. His voice was unexpected, a sensory overwhelm, having not been party to verbal interaction for months now. My own mutism commencing just 9 months ago, I had not yet come to terms with the finality of this and the exchange made me sob. Enraged by the lies of the republic and still adjusting to the silence of my distress, no audible crying to accompany my tears, just a sad ugly cry face, like a living emoticon.

Rabbit guy abandoned his plaque and embraced me, his fur still damp from the washing line earlier but dwarfed by the costumed cuddle I eased into the hug, comforted by the smell of the detergent. For a brief moment I felt like I was a child again, embraced by a parent.

This guy was a stranger, I didn't know his name, I'd never exchanged more than a cursory glance but I knew his movements and his physiological intonations and I felt safe, familiar almost. I relaxed into the hug and he spoke again. I was sure, when I'd been observing him that he was muted like me and I had been feeling too awkward about my own mutism to figure out how to communicate without speech again, so I had made peace with my silent relationship. With nobody to share stories with I would replay how our mutism began in my own mind, whilst watching rabbit guy.

"Hi, I'm Micah. I know what it is not to be able to speak. It's so good to meet you, I've been wearing this costume hoping somehow I could encourage you to come and communicate with me."

If you have been affected by selective mutism as a result of trauma or you are living with someone affected by mutism, you can learn more about it by clicking this message.