**The Voice Beneath My Skin**
When Benjamin returned to his small Yorkshire town after sixteen years away, he told no one. Not his mother, not his sister, not his old friend with whom he’d once shared cigarettes, hiding them behind the radiator in the stairwell. No call, no message, no hint of his arrival. He simply bought a ticket, stepped off the train at the wind-battered station, breathed in the cold air—smelling of damp pavement, coal dust, and distant childhood—and knew: the time had come. Something tightened in his chest, as if a whisper echoed inside him: *You’re here.*
He wasn’t heading home. His path led to the derelict school on the outskirts, where broken windows gaped like empty eyes, and cracked walls held echoes of the past. The building was half-collapsed, but the right wing still stood—peeling plaster, shattered glass, familiar crevices where boys once hid their secrets. These walls remembered bells, pounding footsteps, first confessions, and the fear that stole speech. In the old assembly hall, something lingered—unseen but heavy, like a shadow seeping into bone.
Sixteen years ago, on a bleak October day, Benjamin fell silent. At first, his replies grew shorter, his voice quieter. Then the *hellos* and *goodbyes* vanished. Finally came the afternoon he returned home and made no sound at all. His mother called him for tea, his father grumbled about grades, and he stared at the floor, mute. His parents blamed teenage angst, stress. Doctors insisted it was psychosomatic. Therapists urged patience. But time stretched on, and words never returned. Only a tattoo—his first, sharp as a slap—spoke for him.
He was twenty when he left. He took whatever work he could find: delivering parcels, scrubbing boilers, sleeping in damp basements and cheap bedsits. Cities passed like pages in an unfinished book—strange streets, bitter winds, worn-out shoes, voices he let slip past. Then, in a dim tattoo parlour, he caught his own reflection—haggard but alive—and rasped to the artist, *Here, under my ribs. Write: ‘I remember.’* Those were his first words in five years—jagged, half-dead, but his.
He got eight more tattoos. Each one marked 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 rarely spoke. He’d say the important things were under his skin, then smile faintly, as if he knew words could never carry the weight.
Now he walked back to where it began. The old changing rooms reeked of damp and rust. Lockers creaked complaints of neglect. Glass shards littered the floor, the air thick with wet concrete and old resentments. He moved down the corridor and stopped at a door. Year Eleven. The final year. Here, on that day, his English teacher had peered over her glasses and sighed, *Benjamin, why are you always silent? Nothing to say?* And someone at the back of the class muttered, *Boys like him*—*nothing worth hearing.*
The speaker’s face had faded like a washed-out photograph. But the voice—high, mocking—lodged in his mind like a nail. It rang for years, tightening his throat, forbidding speech. Why speak when every word became a target? When anything said could be turned against him? That voice whispered, taunted, choked him. So Benjamin stayed silent.
Now the classroom was empty. Silence hummed like a taut wire. Dust, crumbling plaster, a chalkboard with broken bits of chalk. He picked up a piece, dragged it across the board—one firm, clean line. No words. Just to hear the scrape, to prove he was alive. Then he wrote in the dust with his finger: *I’m here.* It was more than words—a mark, a confession finally breaking free.
When he stepped outside, the silence had shifted. It no longer pressed down. The building itself seemed to listen, breathing through its cracks. The air was cold but not unkind, as if accepting his return. Benjamin pulled an old photo from his pocket. Him, his sister, his parents. He was seven. All of them smiling. He held a paper aeroplane they’d flown in the field behind the house. Back then, everything had been simple—innocent, before words became a trap.
He hadn’t returned for revenge. Not for answers. Not for a truth too buried to find. Only to quiet that voice. To hear his own. Now it rang louder—not shouting, but there. And that was enough.
That evening, he pushed open his mother’s door. She gasped—older, bent, her face lined with years, but her eyes still bright. He stepped forward. Embraced her. Felt her shoulders—frail as twigs—and her hands, warm and unchanged.
*Mum,* he said softly.
She froze. Her fingers trembled against his back. He heard her exhale—long and shaking, as if releasing air she’d held for sixteen years.
It was one word. The first. But behind it waited thousands more, ready to rise. They no longer hid under skin or dissolved in ink. They could come out now, as they were meant to—in a voice.
Now he could speak. Because in the silence, at last, there was room for his own sound.
