A short story, which has a conversation between three imaginary people in a person’s brain...
Really, a very depressing story. You have been warned.
The Counsel
“She always loved music,” says Ace.
“I really liked dancing when I was a girl. I learned the tap,” Modesty says.
“She fixed that for us proper, didn’t she,” snarls Amber.
The owners of these three voices sit in the same room in identical chairs. The lights are dimmed so as to reveal nothing, hiding the speakers from one another and from their witnesses. This is the chamber where the counsel meets and the voices are the ministers of the body.
To the consciousness that controls the body, someone who might refer to herself as “I” or “me,” the counsel is always discussing something. Usually, they were not loud and the world was not quiet, so “I” am not compelled to listen. But at this moment, as I am their witness, they are very loud. So loud, in fact, that I can’t even see the world around me.
That is because our body is in a room with another body. We’re in a hospital. The other body rests on the platform in front of us, the warm fragile center in a cold womb of electronic life support fed in through gray wires.
To them, I imagine, our body is a thing detached. They are not concerned with its needs or its existence - I take care of those things. They discuss important things and when they reach a conclusion, the body responds. The body does not understand the result of its sequence of complex instructions. I sometimes do, but usually I don’t.
Incidentally, I do not determine what constitutes an important decision. The counsel decides when something is important. While I might actually know that something is beyond the body’s control and beyond consideration, the counsel may require an all-night session to debate and worry about things that cannot change. They scream at each other in the dark restlessness of my bedchamber. They are my worry, my regret, and indeed every emotion that I feel. I am most in control of myself when they are quiet.
For example, I took a test at the end of the last quarter. I knew a great deal about the subject, I had studied very hard, and I knew the answers to almost every question. The grades had not yet been posted when the counsel started debating whether to quit school now because I had done so poorly on the last exam. The counsel is a very harsh critic.
When it comes to something like this, standing over the fragile body of a life I knew, the counsel is the only voice within me. I know why - it is a very important situation. Lives are at stake, the future of us all. What would you say in such a situation? What would you do?
“I wouldn’t say anything,” says Ace, “I would just do the right thing.”
The other two laugh bitterly.
“What?” asks Ace, astonished, “I suppose you have a better idea?”
Amber stops laughing too abruptly and Modesty’s giggle kept on for several tense seconds.
“We don’t agree,” Amber states coolly, “on what the right thing is, Ace. If we did, I wouldn’t bother listening to your insipid pablums, it would already be over.”
“But what is the right thing?” Modesty wonders aloud.
“You know where I stand,” says Ace, “one human life to save another is an even exchange. I might be good, but I am trying to be fair.”
“You are fair because we won’t even consider your opinion otherwise,” Amber says indignantly. “Of course, Ace, in this case there is no easy solution. So you have to rely on my deduction. Otherwise, she’d be dead already. I wont let you forget that horrible suicide affair.”
“Yes Ace, we don’t believe in killing,” Modesty reminds us.
“Well, I do,” says Ace firmly. “But only for the right reasons.”
“I don’t believe in anything,” Amber spat.
At once, I feel compelled to stand up and look at the body in the bed beside me. I dread it, but am also intensely drawn to it. The counsel chose to look and like them, I want to gaze at the twilight of the person next to me.
“She appears to be at rest,” Modesty says hopefully, “she wouldn’t notice if she died in her sleep, like right now. At least we can be merciful.”
“She doesn’t deserve mercy, Modesty,” Amber says flatly.
“She doesn’t deserve to suffer either, Amber,” says Ace.
“Oh really?” Amber mocks. “I think she does deserve to suffer. Where was she when we were drowning? Where was she when we finally finished our first novel? Look at her. She’s hanging by a thread and we are the only ones who care. I hate myself for caring. She should hang, and hang, and hang some more. I would like her to know how it feels to have your life in someone else’s hands.”
“She doesn’t really need to know,” says Ace.
“Her life is sacred,” Modesty screams. “Even if she suffers, even if she is at our mercy, she lives it, every day. All life is sacred because there never comes a moment when it ceases to belong to the person living it.”
The irony isn’t lost on me.
“You see, Ace?” says Amber, “The bitch lives, whether we like it or not, because every life is sacred.” Amber adds a sneer to the end of the statement.
Ace doesn’t reply.
“We had some good times,” Modest asserts. “I remember good times.”
I am sad, of course, crushed. I slide to the floor, groping for the hand of that person I’d known all my life. I remember having lunch on a gray afternoon with that body, that person. I remember the way she looked at me when I had made a cake in the back yard from feathers, sand, and the butter she had saved for my birthday. I remember her tucking me in, asking me what was wrong, and holding me when I was sick.
The counsel kept arguing about this situation and it made me mad, restless, sad, and confused in increasingly large amounts. What could I do?
“You could walk away, right now,” Amber replies bluntly. “Get up off the floor, you’re embarrassing yourself.”
“Quiet Amber,” says Ace, “She doesn’t get to do anything until we agree.”
“But what is there to agree on?” says Modesty desperately. “To wait is to make her suffer. To pull the plug is to be a murderer or -“
“No,” Ace interrupts, “It’s not murder if it’s merciful.”
“And who decides what is merciful, Ace?” Modesty blubbers in an uncharacteristic insight. “You? You’re the one who always wins when we euthanize our pets and defend our friends, but this,” Modestly stifles a sob, “This is our mother.”
“Yep,” says Amber with unshakable loathing, “And she never gives us anything we truly want. Every time we seek compassion or recognition, she can’t even be bothered to remember our birthday or where we live. We only asked to be thought of nicely. Now, we are taking care of her. Well, where was she when we needed her, huh?”
I hold my hand to her cheek. It is cold but the blush of life still lives in it and it warms under my fingers. My mother was not a great woman, as I remember it. I aspired to be great and in that greatness, ultimately, I was trying to get her attention, as I have since I was born. If I could recall a kind word, a genuine gesture of admiration from her I could be free and the counsel would be silent. As I stand here, I try to remember. Did she ever love me?
“Of course she did,” Ace says, sighing. “She wasn’t the best at it, but she did.”
Amber scoffs, “Oh really. As I remember it she had time for our brothers but not for us.”
“She didn’t understand,” Ace growls, “She is simple. She never aspired to great things. She doesn’t have the perspective or the knowledge to consider changing the world. Unless we really think we are worthless, then she did more than she will ever know.”
“Sort of like Oppenheimer, eh?” Amber chides. “You know, just because someone doesn’t understand what they are doing doesn’t excuse them.”
“But that is my point, Amber,” Ace says furiously. “She didn’t know. We became something great and that is not her fault. It isn’t her fault that she can’t see us for how truly great we have become.”
I remember selling my first piece of work. I remember how she asked me to repeat my work and sell more of the same thing. I remember hiding my best things away because they just made her upset. I remember her bewildered when I explained something I had learned in an introductory science course. If anything, my mother could grasp nothing of what I was capable of or conceive of the world I lived in.
“It will end her pain,” Modesty says. “It will end our pain as well. We know better than she what has happened to her. We know that what she suffers is her own doing due to ignorance.”
Why couldn’t she listen to me?
“Her habits were not your fault,” says Amber. “You learned that early on. How many of our friends died because of one bad habit?”
Why wouldn’t she take my word over her doctors?
“She never understood how much we loved her,” Amber resigns, “but it is for us to help her now, because it is within our power and we do, in fact, love her.”
I press down on the flickering switch on the power strip. There is no ringing of a flat-line electrocardiograph or the slam of the door opening to a flood of doctors and nurses. There is only her sigh. And the counsel is, at last, silent.
-FW
The Counsel
“She always loved music,” says Ace.
“I really liked dancing when I was a girl. I learned the tap,” Modesty says.
“She fixed that for us proper, didn’t she,” snarls Amber.
The owners of these three voices sit in the same room in identical chairs. The lights are dimmed so as to reveal nothing, hiding the speakers from one another and from their witnesses. This is the chamber where the counsel meets and the voices are the ministers of the body.
To the consciousness that controls the body, someone who might refer to herself as “I” or “me,” the counsel is always discussing something. Usually, they were not loud and the world was not quiet, so “I” am not compelled to listen. But at this moment, as I am their witness, they are very loud. So loud, in fact, that I can’t even see the world around me.
That is because our body is in a room with another body. We’re in a hospital. The other body rests on the platform in front of us, the warm fragile center in a cold womb of electronic life support fed in through gray wires.
To them, I imagine, our body is a thing detached. They are not concerned with its needs or its existence - I take care of those things. They discuss important things and when they reach a conclusion, the body responds. The body does not understand the result of its sequence of complex instructions. I sometimes do, but usually I don’t.
Incidentally, I do not determine what constitutes an important decision. The counsel decides when something is important. While I might actually know that something is beyond the body’s control and beyond consideration, the counsel may require an all-night session to debate and worry about things that cannot change. They scream at each other in the dark restlessness of my bedchamber. They are my worry, my regret, and indeed every emotion that I feel. I am most in control of myself when they are quiet.
For example, I took a test at the end of the last quarter. I knew a great deal about the subject, I had studied very hard, and I knew the answers to almost every question. The grades had not yet been posted when the counsel started debating whether to quit school now because I had done so poorly on the last exam. The counsel is a very harsh critic.
When it comes to something like this, standing over the fragile body of a life I knew, the counsel is the only voice within me. I know why - it is a very important situation. Lives are at stake, the future of us all. What would you say in such a situation? What would you do?
“I wouldn’t say anything,” says Ace, “I would just do the right thing.”
The other two laugh bitterly.
“What?” asks Ace, astonished, “I suppose you have a better idea?”
Amber stops laughing too abruptly and Modesty’s giggle kept on for several tense seconds.
“We don’t agree,” Amber states coolly, “on what the right thing is, Ace. If we did, I wouldn’t bother listening to your insipid pablums, it would already be over.”
“But what is the right thing?” Modesty wonders aloud.
“You know where I stand,” says Ace, “one human life to save another is an even exchange. I might be good, but I am trying to be fair.”
“You are fair because we won’t even consider your opinion otherwise,” Amber says indignantly. “Of course, Ace, in this case there is no easy solution. So you have to rely on my deduction. Otherwise, she’d be dead already. I wont let you forget that horrible suicide affair.”
“Yes Ace, we don’t believe in killing,” Modesty reminds us.
“Well, I do,” says Ace firmly. “But only for the right reasons.”
“I don’t believe in anything,” Amber spat.
At once, I feel compelled to stand up and look at the body in the bed beside me. I dread it, but am also intensely drawn to it. The counsel chose to look and like them, I want to gaze at the twilight of the person next to me.
“She appears to be at rest,” Modesty says hopefully, “she wouldn’t notice if she died in her sleep, like right now. At least we can be merciful.”
“She doesn’t deserve mercy, Modesty,” Amber says flatly.
“She doesn’t deserve to suffer either, Amber,” says Ace.
“Oh really?” Amber mocks. “I think she does deserve to suffer. Where was she when we were drowning? Where was she when we finally finished our first novel? Look at her. She’s hanging by a thread and we are the only ones who care. I hate myself for caring. She should hang, and hang, and hang some more. I would like her to know how it feels to have your life in someone else’s hands.”
“She doesn’t really need to know,” says Ace.
“Her life is sacred,” Modesty screams. “Even if she suffers, even if she is at our mercy, she lives it, every day. All life is sacred because there never comes a moment when it ceases to belong to the person living it.”
The irony isn’t lost on me.
“You see, Ace?” says Amber, “The bitch lives, whether we like it or not, because every life is sacred.” Amber adds a sneer to the end of the statement.
Ace doesn’t reply.
“We had some good times,” Modest asserts. “I remember good times.”
I am sad, of course, crushed. I slide to the floor, groping for the hand of that person I’d known all my life. I remember having lunch on a gray afternoon with that body, that person. I remember the way she looked at me when I had made a cake in the back yard from feathers, sand, and the butter she had saved for my birthday. I remember her tucking me in, asking me what was wrong, and holding me when I was sick.
The counsel kept arguing about this situation and it made me mad, restless, sad, and confused in increasingly large amounts. What could I do?
“You could walk away, right now,” Amber replies bluntly. “Get up off the floor, you’re embarrassing yourself.”
“Quiet Amber,” says Ace, “She doesn’t get to do anything until we agree.”
“But what is there to agree on?” says Modesty desperately. “To wait is to make her suffer. To pull the plug is to be a murderer or -“
“No,” Ace interrupts, “It’s not murder if it’s merciful.”
“And who decides what is merciful, Ace?” Modesty blubbers in an uncharacteristic insight. “You? You’re the one who always wins when we euthanize our pets and defend our friends, but this,” Modestly stifles a sob, “This is our mother.”
“Yep,” says Amber with unshakable loathing, “And she never gives us anything we truly want. Every time we seek compassion or recognition, she can’t even be bothered to remember our birthday or where we live. We only asked to be thought of nicely. Now, we are taking care of her. Well, where was she when we needed her, huh?”
I hold my hand to her cheek. It is cold but the blush of life still lives in it and it warms under my fingers. My mother was not a great woman, as I remember it. I aspired to be great and in that greatness, ultimately, I was trying to get her attention, as I have since I was born. If I could recall a kind word, a genuine gesture of admiration from her I could be free and the counsel would be silent. As I stand here, I try to remember. Did she ever love me?
“Of course she did,” Ace says, sighing. “She wasn’t the best at it, but she did.”
Amber scoffs, “Oh really. As I remember it she had time for our brothers but not for us.”
“She didn’t understand,” Ace growls, “She is simple. She never aspired to great things. She doesn’t have the perspective or the knowledge to consider changing the world. Unless we really think we are worthless, then she did more than she will ever know.”
“Sort of like Oppenheimer, eh?” Amber chides. “You know, just because someone doesn’t understand what they are doing doesn’t excuse them.”
“But that is my point, Amber,” Ace says furiously. “She didn’t know. We became something great and that is not her fault. It isn’t her fault that she can’t see us for how truly great we have become.”
I remember selling my first piece of work. I remember how she asked me to repeat my work and sell more of the same thing. I remember hiding my best things away because they just made her upset. I remember her bewildered when I explained something I had learned in an introductory science course. If anything, my mother could grasp nothing of what I was capable of or conceive of the world I lived in.
“It will end her pain,” Modesty says. “It will end our pain as well. We know better than she what has happened to her. We know that what she suffers is her own doing due to ignorance.”
Why couldn’t she listen to me?
“Her habits were not your fault,” says Amber. “You learned that early on. How many of our friends died because of one bad habit?”
Why wouldn’t she take my word over her doctors?
“She never understood how much we loved her,” Amber resigns, “but it is for us to help her now, because it is within our power and we do, in fact, love her.”
I press down on the flickering switch on the power strip. There is no ringing of a flat-line electrocardiograph or the slam of the door opening to a flood of doctors and nurses. There is only her sigh. And the counsel is, at last, silent.
-FW