Silence

He couldn't remember the last time he had mustered enough energy to utter a word. He had been trapped, bannished?, in the cave for years and had learned a long time ago that screaming was only a waste of energy. In the cave, silence was the only thing that ensured survival. If your prey did not hear you, you received the privilege of food, if your predator did not hear you, you got to live for another hour. Darkness, danger, and silence were his only companions in the cave.

His head jerked to the right as he heard a soft grunt in the darkness. It wasn’t deep enough to be a predator, which meant that a prey had fallen off the walls of the cave and was in his domain. He quickly but silently made his way towards the sound over the memorized route he had walked for years.

When he reached where he believed the sound originated from he could hear it, quick breathing that betrayed his prey’s fear. They could see in the dark, they could see the silent hunter marching towards them. Without a sound, the man’s hands darted forward and grabbed the small hairy beast. It violently trashed in his hands but it was no use, in a few short minutes the prey suffocated and the man swallowed it whole.

He held in a cough and glared futilely in the darkness. He hated the hairy prey, but the hairless ones were protected by the predators and had sharp teeth to defend themselves. He remembered those teeth in his darkest dreams, he remembered a time when he did nothing but make noise and attracted most of the predators in the cave.

He fingered a scar on his arm lightly before following his route back to an edge of the cave hidden away by jagged rocks. He had not walked far before something assaulted his eyes and he couldn’t hold back the shriek of pain that emitted from his throat.

“Whoa! What was that?!” he heard something say, loudly. He held in a growl and softly crept towards the loud creature. The attack that almost destroyed his eyes had left and darkness had once again returned to his realm.

“Shhh! We don’t know what’s in here. No-one has left here alive in a hundred years, there has to be a reason,” a deeper sounding creature whispered. That one sounded like a predator, but not one he had ever heard before. Something in the back of his mind was screaming at him to remember, to understand, but he ignored it. That part of his mind had led him into more dangerous situations than he cared to remember, he hadn’t listened to it in a long, long time.

When he finally reached the sound’s origin, a strange sight awaited him. His underused eyes attempted in vain to focus on the previous attack that was originating in a strange rock inbetween two mostly hairless creatures. Light, the back of his mind reminded him. He didn’t understand the longing that filled him, why would he want something so useless? He was sure that ever predator in the cave was closing in and every prey was running for cover.

They made more noise than he had ever heard just by opening their mouths and the man knew that they were dangerous to him. Only predators made that much noise, and only when they killed their prey. They were vicious creatures with nothing to fear, the beasts in front of him did not fear anything by the looks of things, when they should fear everything. They were prey, and the man was a predator.

He would show them exactly why silence should be a creature’s best friend...