Quite a Quiet Moment

 A quiet moment means exactly that, noise either side of it. Clementine knew it wouldn’t last. What does ever last, in fact? Not the men in her life, anyway! Moments tend to be like that, e.g. momentary. Except this particular silent moment surprised her by unexpectedly enduring into further moments, smoothly disguising the silences between each moment with artful segues. Even as we speak, this moment of silence continues to endure, if the word ‘continue’ is not tautological when linked with ‘endure’. The verb to ‘last’, our initial choice of word to express what we wanted to express, also seems to deter the use of ‘continue’, but ‘last’ has an added weight of ultimate finalisation that the words ‘continue’ and ‘endure’ lack. Such a linking of ‘ultimate’ with ‘finalisation’ brings us to a different brand of superfluous tautology altogether. Clementine momentarily sighed. She’d been named with this name in good faith, a name often spoken with a middle glottal stop to personalise this story with assumed inferences as to her character and personality and thus help us to suspend disbelief. A taut story with a suspenseful cliffhanger ending. You need to read it at least twice to see why.