The Silence After Thunder

No one in town spoke of the night the thunder vanished. They just stopped mentioning it—like it never mattered. But I remember. I was there. I heard the last one.

It happened during the summer storm of ‘24. I was sitting on the porch with my little brother Eli, counting the seconds between lightning and thunder like we always did. It was our game—see how far the storm was. Flash. One, two, three—boom. A deep rumble that rolled through the sky and into your chest like a heartbeat from the heavens. Until suddenly, it didn’t.

The lightning came as usual, white and sharp, cracking across the clouds like torn paper. We counted. One, two, three… four… five. Nothing. Just silence. No boom. No echo. Just the wind breathing like it was holding back a secret. Eli asked if maybe we missed it, but I knew we didn’t. You don’t miss thunder. It grabs your bones.

The next night, it rained again. Same lightning. No thunder.

And then the world started to change.

At first, it was small. Dogs stopped barking during storms. Birds flew low, confused. People slept lighter, complaining they felt “off,” like they were waiting for something that never came. The news said nothing. The weather channels showed storms, but never mentioned the missing sound. Thunder just… disappeared. And slowly, people stopped noticing.

But I couldn’t let it go. Something felt wrong. As if the world had skipped a beat. As if part of the sky had gone missing.

I started recording every storm on my old tape recorder. I wrote notes. Times. Flash intervals. I even stayed out in the rain just to feel closer to it. Eli thought I was being weird. My parents stopped asking questions. But I wasn’t chasing ghosts—I was chasing silence.

One night, I walked to the hill behind our house. It was where Grandpa used to take me during storms. Said it was the best place to listen to the sky "think." The clouds were heavy that night, bloated with lightning. The kind of clouds that used to roar like dragons. I sat on the wet grass and waited.

A bolt split the sky above me, so bright it lit the trees like bones. I counted again. One, two, three... Nothing. Not even wind. It was the kind of quiet that feels alive. And then—faintly—I heard something. Not thunder. A whisper. Like a breath moving through the clouds.

“Still listening?”

I froze.

The voice wasn’t loud. It wasn’t sharp. It was... heavy. Old. Like it had been waiting centuries to speak. The clouds shifted. Not with wind—but with will. Like something was inside them, watching.

“You’re the first to notice. The first who stayed.”

I didn’t answer. My throat was dry. My hands were shaking.

“You want to know where thunder went?”

I nodded.

“It didn’t leave,” the voice said. “It was taken. Swallowed by the silence humans created.”

“What silence?” I whispered.

“The one inside your machines. Your noise. Your distractions. The thunder waited to be heard, but no one listened. So it stopped speaking. I am what’s left of it.”

The clouds above swirled, and I felt the air pull tighter around me.

“You still hear me because you remember. You respect the sky. You feel the spaces between the sound. That’s rare.”

I stood up slowly, soaked, scared, but curious. “Can it come back?”

The voice paused.

“Yes. But only if people listen again. Only if they remember that not all silence is empty. Some silence is full of things waiting to be heard.”

Then it was gone.

No lightning. No wind. Just night.

I ran home with my shoes full of mud and my heart louder than any thunder I’d ever known. I told Eli. I showed him the tape. Static. Nothing. But when I played the one from the hill—it wasn’t silence. It was breath. Words. A hum beneath the static. Not loud, but real.

Eli believes me now.

We still go to the hill during storms. We don’t bring phones. We don’t talk. We just sit and listen. And sometimes—when the clouds feel thick and the night is heavy—I swear I hear a low rumble again. Faint, shy, like a child learning to speak after years of silence.

It’s not gone. Thunder is waiting.

And I’ll be listening.