Please tag me or give credit if you use this prompt.
Because of what they went through at the hand of Whumper, Whumpee hasn’t spoken since being rescued. Now, Caretaker is hearing them speak for the first time. “I trust you.”
Warnings: lady whumpee with male whumper, selective mutism, stalking, creepy/intimate whumper, choking, broken ribs, burns
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It’s been a week since Devin’s birthday party. Six days since she received the texted photo from Oliver. She hasn’t gotten anything else from him, but she’s barely been able to touch her phone all week for fear that she would.
It took her a couple of days before she could speak at all, and even now the ability comes and goes seemingly at random. Today, the very first day that she’s ventured out of the house since the party, she managed to force out enough words to order her favorite mocha at the coffee shop where she does a large portion of her illustrating. Now she stands close to the pick-up counter, carefully angled where she can see the door without looking like she’s staring at everyone who walks in.
“Caddy!” The baristas here are about fifty/fifty on getting the pronunciation of her name right, but she doesn’t ever correct them. She waits until they’ve walked away from the counter before sliding in and picking up her drink, then weaves through the tables to one of her usual spots in the back corner.
It takes her a while to be able to focus on the sketches on her tablet. She keeps glancing up every few seconds, watching the door, checking all the tables to make sure she hasn’t missed anyone new coming in and that everyone is involved in their own work and conversations rather than paying attention to her.
Eventually, though, an idea sparks, and she lets the soothing rhythm of drawing pull her in. Her stylus strokes out black lines, and for a moment, she doesn’t have to think. She can just be.
“Cadence!”
Her hand jerks across the screen, leaving a bold streak behind it, as her whole body seizes up. It’s not you it’s not you it’s not you it’s not you. Her old name is unusual, yes, but she’s not the only one in the world who has it. It takes every bit of will she can muster to not turn around and see who is picking up the drink, forcing herself instead to tap the ‘undo’ button and erase her mistake.
“Oliver!”
All of the sounds of the café become muted around her. She can’t breathe. It’s like he’s already here, his hand clamped around her throat.
There’s no way those two names, that close together, are a coincidence.
She knows it, but that doesn’t mean she quite believes her eyes when he slides onto the bench across from her, a pleasant smile on his face as if meeting an old friend, and sets one cup in front of her while taking a sip from the other.
“Toasted White Chocolate Mocha. I thought yours might be running low by now.”
He can’t be here. He can’t be here. This is her spot, her safe place.
But he is.
“Personally I prefer a little less sweet, but it doesn’t surprise me that you’re the type who doesn’t like to taste the coffee in their coffee.” He takes another drink, grey-blue eyes always boring into her.
She’s not sure whether her stylus is still in her hand or not. Everything feels both far away and too close at the same time.
Are people staring at them? She feels like everyone in the room should be noticing that something is extremely, terribly wrong at the little booth in the corner, but logically she knows that they just look like two ordinary people, catching up over coffee. There’s no way of telling that one is a sadistic maniac and the other, his victim.
“You’ve been hiding this week. I almost thought I was going to have to find a way to coax you out of the house.” He leans forward a little, eyes finally dropping from her face to glance at her tablet. “Been busy with the McIntyre project, I see.”
The fact that he knows not only the name of her client, but also recognizes the work she’s doing for them, doesn’t even surprise her at this point. She accepted long ago, the first time he had her, that he knew every detail about her life, and the past weekend made it pretty clear that he still does.
What do you want? she longs to scream, but even in a public space he’ll find some way to punish her for speaking. All she can do is sit, frozen, eyes drying out from not blinking enough, waiting for what he’s going to do to torment her next.
“I’ve missed you.”
His voice makes her want to shake apart into a million pieces.
“You know, it’s a little warm in here. Don’t you want to take off that scarf?” His smile grows wider, as if he’s made a hilarious joke.
It feels like it’s choking her all of a sudden. The bruises underneath have faded significantly, but there are still yellow and green streaks standing out from her skin. She assumes he’s being sarcastic, pointing out that he knows the reason she’s wearing it, but then he shifts positions and something touches her knee, making her jolt. It’s his shoe, and he’s applying pressure, crushing her knee back into the bench.
It takes her a second to figure out what he wants. Once she does, she quickly reaches up with numb fingers and loosens the scarf, tugging at the knot until it opens up and exposes her throat. He leans in with a little hum, studying it.
“Beautiful.” His shoe finally relents from her knee, the bones protesting as they relax back into place. That will likely be sore tomorrow. Another reminder of him she can wear on her body.
Leaning back again, he twists his cup on the table. “You’re not drinking your mocha.”
Immediately she picks it up and takes a sip. Despite being fresher and hotter than the last, it tastes like ash in her mouth.
What do you want? She knows the answer already. He wants to torment her, to make sure she knows that he still owns her, even in her daily routine. As if she could ever forget.
“Pack up your tablet and go to the restroom.”
It takes the words a moment to compute, but she obeys quickly, sliding the tablet into its case with trembling hands, tucking it back into her shoulder bag, then standing on weak legs. She leaves both coffee cups sitting there, only intent on getting to the restroom as ordered.
There are no stalls, only a single room, so she slips inside and tentatively locks the door behind her. She isn’t sure if she’s supposed to or not. She has no idea what his plan is, but she knows he has one. Every single inch of her body is alert, waiting, moments from panicking, her breaths coming far too quickly and her heart pounding. Is she supposed to be actually using the bathroom? She can’t make herself do it. Instead she just stands, stuck, in the middle of the small room, unable to figure out what to do next.
The minutes that she waits feel like hours. Eventually, there’s a knock on the door, sharp and demanding. She knows it’s him. She prays it’s not.
She unlocks the door and he immediately pushes it open, making her stumble backwards, and walks in carrying a single coffee cup, which he sets on the counter. Then he turns to face her, looking her up and down. Burning her with just his gaze. A hand comes out toward her, and she flinches. He slaps her across the face for it with the other hand, the first removing her bag from her shoulder and dropping it carelessly to the floor.
“These need refreshing.” It’s the only warning she gets before his hand is around her throat, for real this time. He backs her into the wall before beginning to slowly, steadily cut off more of her air.
It starts hurting quicker this time. Her already abused windpipe groans underneath the pressure of his hand, and tears automatically prick her eyes. He smiles when he sees them.
Just as she starts to get too dizzy to see anything, he releases just enough that she can suck in a painful gulp of air. He watches her struggle and choke for a moment, thumb stroking across her throat.
“Lift your shirt.”
It takes her a second longer than it should to comprehend the order, her mind still swirling from the lack of oxygen. She fumbles for the hem of her shirt and quickly pulls it up past his brand, knowing that’s what he wants to see.
Without letting go of her throat, he rips off the gauze that she’d taped over it, dropping them to the floor and running his fingers across the marks. “Mm. It’s healing well.” His hand slides over a bit, icy trails following it. “This still looks painful, though.”
The hand on her throat begins to tighten again as the one on her broken rib presses in. Pain shoots through her chest, but she can’t gasp or even whine with her air stolen away.
It goes on, for a few minutes or an eternity, she’ll never know. The ability to breathe comes and goes, she coughs and whimpers when she can, and tries not to pass out when she can’t. All the while, he pokes and prods at her broken rib. She can feel the bone moving. When coherent thoughts are even possible, she’s panicking about the possibility of a punctured lung, wondering if he actually knows how to not kill her.
At last he lets go, with one last stroke of his fingers down her throat, and steps back. She somehow manages to not fall down.
“I’ve got one more gift for you before I go.” He steps backwards, toward the sink. “Come here.”
It takes her a couple of tries to push herself up off the wall. The bathroom spins around her as she walks, making her stumble and have to pause a few times to keep from face planting.
As soon as she’s close enough, he grabs onto her right wrist and yanks her forward. Her hip bone slams into the countertop. He doesn’t have to hold her as tightly as he does, she wouldn’t try to get away, but she knows he enjoys trying to create as many bruises as possible.
“Got a fresh cup just for you.” He’s reaching for the coffee he left here earlier. She knows what’s coming, tears are already starting to stream down her cheeks, but there’s absolutely nothing she can do to stop it. Even if she could get out of his grasp and make it to the door before he caught her, which would never happen, she knows him. He’s rich, influential. No one would ever believe her over him, she’d be dragged through an ordeal where he’d do everything possible to humiliate her, then they’d go right back to where they are now, but with her friends involved because of her failure to remain silent and obedient.
“Now. If you scream, people are going to ask questions. We don’t want that, do we?” The way her wrist bones creak and grind together make it clear she’s supposed to shake her head in reply.
He pops the lid off, sets it neatly to the side. She can see the steam rising from the black liquid inside. There’s not enough time to fully prepare herself, probably never would be, her hand is already positioned over the sink, and -
It’s quick, at least. He doesn’t drag it out, just dumps the entire contents over the back of her hand. Somehow she doesn’t scream. She does bite a bleeding hole through her lip trying not to, though.
Her whole hand feels like it’s on fire. She chokes out a sob, then another, trembling hard and wishing he’d just let her go, let her turn on some cold water to run over it, the faucet is right there.
But of course he doesn’t. He pulls her hand up higher between them so that they can both admire the bright red skin, the way patches of it are already starting to puff up and pucker.
Then he finally drops it, but she still can’t do anything because he’s holding her face in his hands, brushing her disheveled hair back from her forehead and drawing patterns on her cheeks with her tears that won’t stop flowing. “There you go, my sweet. A little parting gift, to make sure you’ll be thinking about me all week.”
He steps back, picks up the coffee cup and crushes it before throwing it away. Then he smiles at her, eyes sparkling. “I’ll certainly be thinking about you. And I’ll be seeing you again very soon, don’t worry.”
Cadence clutches her injured hand and refuses to watch as he turns his back and leaves the room.
As soon as he’s gone she stumbles to the door and locks it, as if she wouldn’t immediately let him in again if he returned. Then she goes back to the sink, turning the cold water on full blast and shoving her hand underneath. It feels good despite being a few minutes too late. She still can’t stop crying. Her mind is whirling with replays of everything that just happened, with the knowledge that he’ll do this again and she won’t know when it’s coming, with wondering if she has aloe at home and what Janaysia and Devin are going to say about this, with the realization that there’s no possible way she’s going to be able to finish the McIntyre project on time now. She’ll have to call them. No, she won’t be able to call them. Any progress she’d made towards being able to carry on a conversation will be gone again now.
She wants to collapse on the bathroom floor and cry until she can’t cry anymore, but she can’t. She has to get out of here, she has to go home. So she shuts off the water, dries her cheeks, crouches down to clean up the bandages he’d dropped, tries to ignore the renewed pain in her ribs every time she breathes, picks up her bag, and deliberately does not look at herself in the mirror. Whatever anyone sees when she leaves, it doesn’t matter. She won’t be coming back to this coffee shop, anyway.
This documentary on SM aired on BBC News a few days ago. Probably one of the most accurate ones I’ve seen. Warning: Read the comments at your own discretion.
@pixiesky said : “nonverbal is get severely diluted . it before mean can not talk at all , ever. but loud verbal autism people take word away and make mean different things now . is not good for people who can never talk , actually nonverbal people .”
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That’s why I was asking this question, I was expecting nonverbal autistic people’s take on the subject.
I’m not sure it’s just verbal autistic people who “diluted”, as you said, the meaning of nonverbal, though. More than often, it’s NTs who tend to be those who decide stuff about autism, regardless of what autistic people think about it (like the high-functioning/low-functioning classification and such). But I could be wrong.
It’s hard to find an accurate word or expression to portray this particular experience, because selective mutism is, according to the NHS, related to social situations, when it’s not always the case for me when I can’t use my words (more than often, it’s because I’m being overstimulated, it’s not related to anxiety or social situations).
Semiverbal could be accurate, but it’s describing the fact that I have episodes where I can’t talk, and it’s not naming those episodes in particular.
Loss of verbal speech seems to be the easiest and most accurate way to describe it without using the word “nonverbal”.
I admit that I tend to differentiate between “being nonverbal” and “going nonverbal”, as one would be a permanent state, and the other an occasional episode, but if “going nonverbal” is seen as inappropriate by the nonverbal autistic community, I think it’s fair to stop using it.
I want to believe that we’re all in this together, and that we need to listen to each other, regardless of the way we’re expressing ourselves. The autistic community needs to be united, not divided.
Thank you for your valuable input, pixiesky. I hope other nonverbal autistic people will give their opinion on the matter c:.
So, I know there’s been some controversy around the use of the word “nonverbal” and I want to use it appropriately.
This afternoon, I went to a restaurant for a friend’s birthday. Unfortunately, there was another birthday and it was extremely noisy. I started to shutdown and, finally, I was unable to say a word out loud.
I’m only starting to get some of my words back, it’s like having to push through a concrete wall to get them out.
Would you say I went nonverbal or I’m experiencing selective mutism?
Cyril recovers in anonymity for a week, relearning how to accept Esme’s presence even as their body relearns how to handle comfort. They spend long, lazy mornings in bed, twining first fingers with their fiancé, and then sometimes words, soft and slow and never quite winding around to where Cyril has been, what they have done, or what happened that day five years ago. Instead, they lean into Esme’s loose and ready words, pressing gently - gently is all it takes, with him - to hear what he has been up to since they’ve been gone.
His father’s business is flourishing. Esme is taking on more responsibility, being groomed to take over when Armani D'Angelo eventually - not soon, but inevitably - steps back from the forefront of operations. Cyril offers encouragement and interest, and Esme requires little prodding to continue to allow them to steer the conversation back to his life. Five years leave many tales untold, and Esme is - has always been - eager to share every moment with his love.
One pale evening as the dying light flares in a last attempt at silver-gold, Cyril tries for the first time to begin the monumental task of giving him their own five years. They haven’t spoken yet that day, trying to store up enough words to give Esme enough of a piece to feel like a beginning.
Armani returns the next morning. He still hasn’t changed, though he’s discarded his jacket, and under the edge of his rolled-up sleeves, hidden so hospital workers won’t question, Cyril spots flecks of blood. Fresh.
“I brought one of the boys to sit outside your room,” he announces, folding into the chair by Cyril’s bed with a stifled sigh. “He’ll stay until you’re well enough to go home.”
“Do you really think that’s necessary?” Esme cranes his head to peer out of the door. “Oh, hey Dan.”
Dan waves before turning back to watch nurses and doctors hurry by.
“I mean, they’re all dead but one. Right? And this is a hospital.”
Cyril exchanges a glance with Armani, surprised– and not, at the same time– at the way his expression mirrors their own thoughts. Esme was always the sunshine prince of his father’s shadowed kingdom. Even before their impromptu absence, Cyril often found they knew the darker underbelly of humanity better than the crime lord’s son.
Another idea that I wanted to read in a fic is about what would happen if Donald was much more insecure with his voice and the fact that hardly anyone can understand him and how this would influence the upbringing of the triplets.
Soo… Take a Donald saying “I love you” in sign language to his kids ❤️
Haha I have to cut it, since he had written 5 paragraphs with this silly story. Sorry!!
Autism and Selective Mutism: what’s the overlap and what are the differences?
There are a lot of autistic people who have been diagnosed and/or treated for Selective Mutism, even though currently under the DSM-5 the two conditions cannot be diagnosed in the same person. The ICD-10 may have a different classification system, though I’m not entirely sure. Also, while many feel that the name Selective Mutism is inaccurate (and many prefer the term Situational Mutism), since that is the official diagnostic term it is what I will be using here.
Many (if not most) autistic people experience loss of speech in certain situations or for certain periods of time. But what’s the difference between nonverbal episodes, which are common in autistic people, and Selective Mutism?
To know that, we have to know the characteristics of each situation:
Selective Mutism (SM) is an anxiety disorder that results in an inability to speak in certain social situations, or to certain people in specific circumstances, in people who are otherwise capable of producing speech. Common places that people with SM lose the ability to speak are at school, at parks, at parties, etc. Almost all people with SM also have Social Anxiety Disorder. One common fear that results in an inability to speak in peoplr with SM is fear of judgement. People with SM aren’t just “choosing not to speak.” Their ability to speak gets completely shut off by social anxiety, and it’s not something they can control. SM is most frequently diagnosed in children and teenagers, but adults can have it too.
Autistic people, on the other hand, often lose the ability to speak when we are overstimulated by any variety of stimuli, or when we enter shutdowns, meltdowns, and burnout. Anxiety can be one emotion or circumstance that results in us entering a shutdown/meltdown state, or even burnout. This may be why it’s often very difficult to tease apart autism from SM. Whereas anxiety is the core cause of SM, the reasons that autistic people lose speech are often a lot more complicated and varied.
Here’s an incomplete list of reasons or circumstances that might cause an autistic person who is normally capable of speaking to lose speech:
Overstimulation from external sensory stimuli like noises, lights, and motion
Extreme emotions like frustration or sadness
Anxiety (because of social circumstances or for other reasons)
Overstimulation from internal sensory stimuli like pain, hunger, or nausea
Being in an unpredictable and/or chaotic situation, which may provoke sensory overload and anxiety
All of the things I listed above can also cause meltdowns and shutdowns, which are the most common scenarios where autistic people lose speech. However, sometimes autistic people lose the ability to speak for no apparent reason at all. We might feel perfectly fine otherwise, and yet be unable to talk. One possible explanation for this is that sometimes autistic people’s brains shut off the ability to speak in order to conserve energy, because it requires a lot of effort to coordinate all of the motor movements required to vocally articulate words.
Given this, an autistic person losing speech might appear very similar to someone with SM on the surface, but the cause of the mutism itself is quite different. Autistic people might lose speech at school, in public, at amusement parks, at dances, at parties, etc. not always because we’re anxious per se, but because we’re overstimulated by everything in our environment. The overstimulation can cause feelings of anxiety and even panic, but this anxiety is often secondary to the primary experience of overstimulation.
Now, there are probably a decent number of autistic people who also have true SM, which is a social anxiety disorder. But it’s also probably the case for many autistic people diagnosed with SM, that the cause of their mutism isn’t necessarily the same as it is for other people who carry the same diagnosis.
Greta Thunberg has been very open about her diagnosis of SM, and her experiences with losing speech. She has discussed the few years where she stopped eating and stopped talking, which to me seems like it very well could have been a period of autistic burnout. She has also talked about her experiences with overstimulation, and how when she gets too overwhelmed by sensory stimuli she enters a shutdown state and loses the ability to speak.
To me, it seems that Greta’s SM is very intimately connected with her autism, which is likely true of anyone with both diagnoses, and especially true for autistic people who also have Social Anxiety Disorder. Autistic people already have difficulty with socializing, processing information, and coordinating the movements required for speech. Add on anxiety and fear of judgement as a result of bullying and mistreatment, and it’s almost inevitable that we’ll end up having trouble speaking in certain circumstances.
Ultimately, I’m not sure whether or not it’s appropriate for autistic people to be diagnosed with Selective Mutism. The DSM-5 seems to think that it makes more sense to keep the diagnoses separate, because autistic people’s unique struggles with speech shouldn’t be confused with a very specific anxiety disorder that frequently affects non-autistic and non-neurodivergent people.
If that’s the case, I think the autistic community should start brainstorming words and terms to describe our unique experiences with losing speech, that aren’t tied up with Selective Mutism but that respect the lived experiences of nonspeaking autistics. I think “nonverbal episode” is an adequate working term, but I know that many nonspeaking autistic people have expressed that the use of the words “nonspeaking” and “nonverbal” by autistic people who usually can speak, diminishes the lived experiences of autistic people who are fully unable to speak under any circumstances.
What I’ve seen is that generally, the word “nonspeaking” or “nonverbal” is used to refer to autistic people who are completely unable to speak due to significant motor skills differences, but when those words are attached to the word “episode” they refer to a specific period of time or circumstance in which an autistic person who is usually capable of speaking becomes unable to speak. I wish there was a word to describe just that second experience, without using the words “nonspeaking” or “nonverbal.” If anyone has any ideas, let me know in the comments.
I hope this post has provided some clarity on the overlap and differences between autism and Selective Mutism :)
I have a question about neurodivergen…cy? that’s not a word, is it?
Anyways, I’m not 100% sure what the word means. I have a pretty good grasp on it, but I do have one question: is someone who has selective mutism neurodivergent? Google won’t answer my questions >:( /gen
Warnings: lady whumpee with male whumper, selective mutism, stalking, creepy/intimate whumper, choking, broken ribs, burns
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It’s been a week since Devin’s birthday party. Six days since she received the texted photo from Oliver. She hasn’t gotten anything else from him, but she’s barely been able to touch her phone all week for fear that she would.
It took her a couple of days before she could speak at all, and even now the ability comes and goes seemingly at random. Today, the very first day that she’s ventured out of the house since the party, she managed to force out enough words to order her favorite mocha at the coffee shop where she does a large portion of her illustrating. Now she stands close to the pick-up counter, carefully angled where she can see the door without looking like she’s staring at everyone who walks in.
This post contains a graphic description of a sexual assault. If you would like to skip that section and go on to a discussion of consent, skip until you are past the picture of the cat. The rest of this post is less graphic but does discuss consent, sexual violence, and consensual sexual contact. If none of this appeals to you, then skip past the cherry blossoms picture to learn about Woodhull,…
a nice, (imo) underused trope: characters being conditioned not to speak, especially talkative ones. but mostly what happens after they’ve been rescued: the silent crying, the hoarse whispers. their friends not understanding why they barely talk any more when they used to love the sound of their voice. hell, their friends loved it too. the audible pauses when everyone expects the whumpee to cut in, and instead there’s only a guilty, ashamed silence. them cutting themselves off whenever they begin to interrupt with a nervous look in their eyes. just— mm, chef’s kiss.
Yes. Please!
Also, selective mutism as a coping mechanism. I love it. Which somehow reminds me of:
Whumpee avoiding reminders of their old life because then it makes everything that happened to them more real and more terrible. I discovered my like for this in the 90s - early 2000s TV show Angel (Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin off) when Angel rescues a human enslaved in another dimension and brings her back home but she avoids her parents, hometown and everything.. just tries to start over and pretend she was never anything else because if her old self is real then the trauma she experienced was real. She’s one of my favorite characters in the show but its been so long I can’t remember her name. Fred I think? Yeah, short for Winifred. Anyway… Yes. That.
