The morning David realized everyone could hear his thoughts, he was thinking about how much he hated his job.
His wife set down her coffee cup with unusual force. "You don't mean that," she said, her voice tight.
He hadn't said anything.
On the train, passengers shifted away from him, eyes averted. A woman clutched her purse tighter. An elderly man shook his head in disappointment. David's internal monologue—the usual stream of judgments, petty observations, and half-formed anxieties—suddenly felt like shouting in a library.
He tried to think nothing. The harder he tried, the louder his thoughts became. Don't think about the woman's strange hat. Don't think it looks like a dead bird. Oh god, now I'm thinking it louder.
By noon, his office was a minefield. Every colleague he passed flinched at his unspoken criticisms. His boss called him into her office, her face a mixture of hurt and anger over thoughts David had nursed for months but never dared voice.
"I didn't mean—" he started.
"Yes, you did," she interrupted. "That's the problem. You always did."
That night, David sat alone in his apartment. His wife had left. His friends stopped answering calls. The silence he'd always craved was finally his—outside his head, at least.
Inside, the thoughts roared on, an audience of one forced to hear every ugly truth he'd ever hidden, even from himself.
He wondered if this was punishment or revelation. Perhaps there was no difference.
The weight of silence, he learned, was nothing compared to the weight of being heard.