Warning: Horror. 

This story came out of nowhere, honestly.  I just started typing and this is what I got. 

The water slipped through the canal, snuck along the rocks, and whispered along the muddy bank. There wasn’t a burble to be heard, not a whisper, not a splash.

In this place, even the water was silent. In this place, there was no sound at all louder than a breath, and even the breaths were held when they could be.

In this place, those that walked did so on muffled feet and every wall was as thick as it could be. In this place, even a whisper could be too loud.

This place had many things. It had brilliant colors. It had sunsets that were more beautiful than anything anyone had ever seen. It had minerals only available in scare quantities elsewhere. It had mountains and lakes and rivers and creatures – that were beautiful to behold, and it grew plants like nowhere else in the galaxy.

But one sound – one – could be enough to end a life.

The colonists hadn’t know this when they landed, but they’d learned fast.  The survivors hadn’t know quite what had happened, but they’d figured it out quickly.  The ones who made it past the first week, they understood what they had to do to survive, and they did it.

This would not be a colony of joyous work.  This would not be a colony of heavy, loud machinery or of carnivals in the streets.

But what it became, very quickly, was an ingenious colony, tucked deep underground and well-muffled, in a bunker they called “the Closet” with cheerful dark humor.

Thren took her measurements at the creek with efficient silence.  On the horizon, she could see three of the Things.  They did not hear her, did not smell her. She turned her face up to the sky and soaked in a moment of the sun.

The Things could not find them, when they were careful.  But before long, they would find the Things.

She wondered if they made a noise when they were truly frightened.