Tales of Silence

Back Alley Bob sat on a tin garbage can in an old piss alley between a church and a corn husk distellery. He drank booze out of a paper bag. He drank until he slid into a stupor and fell on his side, his lips muttering sounds but saying nothing. Back Alley Bob hadn't spoken in fifteen years, even though he was no mute. Nobody, not even his mother, could talk him out of his silence. So he was what he was and ended up the way he did: dead in a piss alley, his secret skull cracked sideways on old concrete.