The Voice Beneath the Skin
When Thomas returned to his little town in the Yorkshire dales after sixteen years away, he didn’t tell a soul. Not his mum, not his sister, not his old mate he used to share fags with behind the bike sheds at school. No call, no text, no hint he was coming back. He just bought a ticket, stepped off the train at the windswept station, breathed in the cold air—smelling of coal dust, wet tarmac, and distant childhood—and knew: the time had come. Something tightened in his chest, like a whisper from inside: “You’re here.”
He wasn’t heading home. His path led to the abandoned school on the outskirts, where gaping windows and cracked walls held echoes of the past. The place was half-ruined, but the right wing still stood—peeling plaster, shattered glass, familiar crevices in the brickwork where boys had once hidden secrets. Those walls remembered bells, scuffling feet, first confessions, and the fear that choked words away. In the old assembly hall, something lingered—not quite tangible, but heavy, like a shadow soaked into the bones.
Sixteen years ago, on a damp October afternoon, Thomas fell silent. At first, his replies grew shorter, his voice quieter. Then “hello” and “goodbye” vanished. And then came the day he walked in and didn’t make a sound. His mum called him for tea, his dad grumbled about his grades, and he just stared at the floor, mute. His parents thought: teenage phase, stress. Doctors said: psychosomatic. Therapists advised: give it time. But time stretched on, and the words never came back. Only a tattoo—his first, painful as a punch—spoke for him.
He was twenty when he left. He took any job going: delivering parcels, cleaning boilers, sleeping in damp basements and dodgy bedsits. Towns blurred past like pages in a book he’d never read—strange streets, bitter winds, busted boots, and voices he tuned out. Then, in a dim tattoo parlour, he caught his own reflection—haggard but alive—and rasped to the artist, “Here, under the ribs. Write: ‘I remember.’” They were his first words in five years—rough, half-dead, but his.
He got eight more tattoos after that. Each for a silence, a scar, an unspoken truth. For the fear of opening his mouth. For the night he couldn’t dial the number. For the name that never left his lips. People asked why he barely spoke. He’d say the important things were under his skin. Then he’d smile, glancing away, as if he knew words could never carry it all.
Now he walked back to where it began. The old changing room reeked of damp and rust. Lockers creaked like they were complaining about neglect. The floor was littered with broken glass; the air thick with the smell of wet concrete and old grudges. Thomas moved down the corridor and stopped at a door. Year Eleven. The final class. Here, years ago, his English teacher had peered over his glasses and said, “Thomas, why so quiet? Nothing to say?” And someone at the back of the room added, “People like him don’t have anything worth saying.”
The face of the one who’d spoken was long forgotten—like a faded photo. But that voice—high, sneering—had dug into his mind like a nail. It rang in his ears for years, tightening his throat, forbidding speech. Why talk when every word was a target? When anything you said would be turned against you? That voice whispered, taunted, suffocated. And Thomas stayed silent.
Now the classroom was empty. The quiet hummed like a stretched wire. Dust, crumbling plaster, a chalkboard with broken bits of white. He stepped forward, picked up a piece of chalk. Drew a line—clean, firm. No words. Just to hear it scrape the board, proof he was alive. Then, with a finger, he wrote in the dust: “I’m here.” And that was enough—better than words. A mark. A truth, finally let out.
When he left, the silence felt different. It didn’t press down. The building itself seemed to listen, breathing through the cracks in the walls. The air was cold, but not hostile—like it accepted his return. Thomas pulled an old photo from his pocket. Him, his sister, his dad, his mum. He was seven. Everyone smiling. He held a paper aeroplane they’d flown in the field behind the house. Back then, everything was simple. Before words became traps.
He hadn’t come back for revenge. Not for answers, or some truth he’d never find. Just to quiet that voice. To hear his own. And now it was louder. Not shouting—just there. And that was enough.
That evening, he stepped into his mum’s flat. She gasped—older now, stooped, her face lined with wrinkles but her eyes still bright. He moved toward her. Held her. Felt her shoulders—thin as brittle twigs—and her palms, still warm. Still the same.
“Mum,” he said softly.
She froze. Her fingers trembled against his back. Thomas heard her exhale—long and shivering, like she’d been holding that breath for sixteen years.
That was the word. The first. But behind it were thousands more, waiting their turn. They weren’t hiding under his skin anymore. They could come out now—the way they were meant to. As a voice.
Now he could speak. Because in that silence, at last, there was room for his sound.
