LJ Idol, Week 30: "A Cataract of Voices" [fiction]
The room was painted a soothing pink; the furniture was softly padded at the edges and anything remotely harmful had been removed from the place. There was a window to the outside world, opening to a colorful, flaring garden with a soft gravel walking path, but she could only look at it through the glass. They rarely took her outside anymore; she just couldn't deal with the open areas, and pretty soon she started shaking like a leaf on the wind.
Better to be inside, away from the sounds, away from the voices. She lived here now, in this quiet pink room.
Quiet. That quiet was once the bane of her existence. She'd been the sort of person who likes to have background noise of some kind going at all times -- whether it was music, or conversation, or just the TV tuned to one of those ridiculous sports-only stations. Things had certainly changed.
**************
"This is....an interesting case, one of our most famous ones. Her name's Mary, and she's been with us for almost five years now. Shows all the classic signs of schizophrenia: delusions, audiovisual hallucinations, disordered speech and general breakdown of mental processing. For all that, she's only a danger to herself; some schizophrenics are, as you know, violent and prone to fits of rage, but our Mary is the sweetest girl you'd ever meet."
One of the interns stepped closer to the observation window in the door, peering in at Mary as she sat calmly in her chair. "What sort of hallucinations?"
The doctor looked a bit disconcerted. "That's the interesting part, really. This is the only case in the ward where there is actual evidence that the hallucinations, ah, may in fact not be hallucinations."
Another intern raised an eyebrow. "You're going to have to explain that one, I think."
The doctor cleared his throat, a bit pompously. "Well. Put briefly, Mary claimed that she could hear the thoughts of other people." The interns began writing furiously on their clipboards, two of them conferring together in low voices. "Not that unusual, really; hearing voices is one of the most common auditory hallucinations experienced by schizophrenics. But with Mary there was something more to it."
To a one, the interns looked politely inquisitive, but none of them wanted to derail the doctor. He continued, haltingly, "You see, when asked what sort of thoughts she could hear, Mary could tell you what you were thinking. In uncomfortable detail, if asked. We'd never seen anything like it before. At first, we assumed she was just extrapolating ideas from facial expressions -- that she was merely more 'in tune' with a person's thoughts and emotions than, perhaps, that person was themselves. But we kept running tests, and discovered that it didn't matter if you were in sight of her, or even how far away you were; she could really do it, somehow, could pick your thoughts out with startling accuracy.
"But she was very clear about one thing -- she didn't like this ability, she didn't want to 'hear' other peoples' thoughts. She came to us hoping that we could help her learn to shut them out.
"Well, it's one thing when you're being asked to solve a hallucinatory issue. We specialize in treating disorders of the brain, after all. But the evidence was just too strong that Mary wasn't hallucinating. It seemed that she had somehow discovered a way to tap the potential of her own brain -- to utilize areas of it that are long dormant, vestigial remnants of abilities that we once had and lost. Well, that's one viewpoint, anyway."
He looked suddenly grim. "Others thought that she was tapping into something that we shouldn't have access to at all. There was a lot of angry discussion, and Mary swiftly became a polarizing force here at the Institute: on one side, those who steadfastly refused to believe anything that could not be scientifically proven, who saw Mary and her abilities as so much ridiculous rubbish, and on the other side, those of us who were, perhaps, curious to see what Mary could teach us."
"'Us'?" one of the interns inquired, smiling. "I guess that tells us which side of the fence you were on, Doctor. You were one of the curious ones?"
The doctor smiled sadly. "I was. I had no idea whatsoever how Mary could do the things that she could do, but I wanted to learn all that I could. Maybe she wasn't disordered at all. Maybe she was just....different from the rest of us."
"Then what happened? Why is she in here now?" another intern asked. "Did she take a turn for the worse, or something?"
The doctor turned and gazed through the glass at Mary. A depth of pain was suddenly visible in that gaze, something primal and unutterably sad. He reached out fingertips to touch the glass briefly and a spasm of some other expression -- fear? rage? resignation? -- chased across his features and was gone.
"We were out walking one day," he said softly. "Mary had been becoming increasingly upset that week, saying that she was having more and more trouble shutting the voices out. That she could usually keep things locked down, but they were starting to break through. She was begging us to help her, to do something to stop the flood. But we were so damned smart. We patted her on the head indulgently and told her we needed more time, that we still couldn't understand exactly what it was she was experiencing. What we really meant, of course, was that she was too important a scientific curiosity for us to even consider 'helping' her."
He turned away from the glass, as if he couldn't bear to see Mary any more.
"We were out walking," he said again. His eyes had gone distant, and the interns looked at each other nervously. "I had drawn the duty for the day, to take Mary for a walk down at the park. It was sunny and cool. There were dogs barking, and people sitting on the benches talking, and joggers jogging past, and the scent of flowers was on the breeze, and it was all so......fucking......idyllic."
His hands curled into fists. "Mary was holding my hand. She was telling me earnestly that she felt like she was in the middle of a hurricane sometimes, with all the voices that she heard."
He looked at one of the interns. "Can you imagine what that would be like? To be an unwilling party to the inner thoughts and feelings of every Tom, Dick and Harry that strolled past you on the street? To be unable to shut your ears against the flood of babble? To have all the spectrum of the human condition, from nadir to apex, dumped into your head, all at once?"
He looked into the distance again. His mouth twisted. "I remember how her hand felt in mine, so small, so vulnerable. I remember how it wrenched at mine, clenching convulsively. I remember looking at her in alarm, thinking she was having a heart attack. Her face had gone bloodless, pale as chalk. Her mouth worked uselessly. Her eyes were lost and terrified. I remember that more than anything else. How terrified they were.
"She dropped to the ground. Curled into a fetal position. She was making this horrible keening sound. Like a trapped animal. Hopeless and lost."
He trailed off. The interns waited. The silence stretched.
The doctor shook himself, like a wet dog. "She's never been able to 'hear' anything since."
The interns stood gaping for a moment, then burst out all at once: "Wait a minute! That's not...." "You didn't explain why...." "But what if she...." "Couldn't possibly be that....."
The doctor silenced them with a short chopping motion of his hand. "We don't know what happened. No more than we know anything about how Mary could do what she did. We've asked her time and time again. What happened. Was there anything we could do for her. Did she want to talk about it." His lip curled again. "But what we really meant, naturally, was 'what does this mean for our studies if she can't do this anymore?' "
He sighed. "She did talk to me about it, once. Only once." He turned to look at Mary once more, and she gazed tranquilly back at him through the glass, her blue eyes trusting, guileless. "She said that she usually kept a wall up to keep things at bay. When she.....'heard'......the thoughts of others, it was like......like she was dropping the wall, briefly, to take it in, hear what she could hear. The trouble was, this time she was....exposed -- I can't use any other word for it -- exposed to the worst mind she'd ever 'heard'. Twisted, black, corrupt, a stench of thoughts, a cesspool of evil, a mind so filled with filth and hatred that it sent her quite round the bend. In one of her few lucid moments since, she said it was 'like I was dumped into a tar pit, like I had it poured over me, like I was drinking the stuff, being force-fed it till I wanted to throw up.'
He looked at them, standing in a little group, several of them looking through the glass at Mary, the rest of them looking at him, carefully now, as if he'd lost his own grip on reality. "We had to move her into the Level Three ward after that. When she came out of her catatonia, she immediately began beating her head against the nearest hard surface. Gave herself a concussion before we could get to her and stop her. Ever since then she's been here. She hasn't repeated the self-destructive acts, but she slips farther away from us every day. Her speech is rambling, disjointed. She's friendly as a puppy, but any attempts to get her to talk about that day, or about her....abilities.....and she closes up like a flower at night."
One of the interns said, curiously, "Did she ever talk about who it was that she'd......heard?"
The doctor narrowed his eyes. "Strange question. No, she never identified anyone. There were dozens of people in the park that day, and in any case Mary's 'range' had been demonstrated to work reliably when you were miles away from her. There's no telling who it might have been."
His hands curled into fists again, and suddenly all pretense of a bedside manner dropped away. He looked like a bear at bay, growling, deadly. "But I'll tell you one thing. If I ever find out who it was.....I'm going to kill them."
He turned on his heel and began stalking down the corridor away from Mary's room. The interns looked at each other, eyes wide, and followed en masse.
All except for one, who stayed behind a moment longer, to look through the glass at Mary.
Their eyes met -- and Mary's widened in shock and terror. She shrank away, pressing herself against the wall. Her hands came up in that warding gesture which is instinctual, but hopelessly ineffective against prolonged assault. Her mouth opened in a silent shriek.
The intern smiled. Coldly. Cruelly. "I've found you, Mary," she said softly. "It took me a long time, but I've finally found you. We're going to have a lot of fun together, you and I."
She adjusted her lab coat and followed the others down the corridor, leaving Mary behind, sobbing in a crumpled heap in the corner.
[This has been the first of five entries for Week 30 of LJ Idol. There were five topics to be written this week: "gobsmacked", "disappear", "appropriation", "cesspool", and "scared money never wins". This was the "cesspool" entry. I hope you enjoyed my efforts on this and the other entries this week! Please check out the other participants' entries and show them some love as well.]
Better to be inside, away from the sounds, away from the voices. She lived here now, in this quiet pink room.
Quiet. That quiet was once the bane of her existence. She'd been the sort of person who likes to have background noise of some kind going at all times -- whether it was music, or conversation, or just the TV tuned to one of those ridiculous sports-only stations. Things had certainly changed.
**************
"This is....an interesting case, one of our most famous ones. Her name's Mary, and she's been with us for almost five years now. Shows all the classic signs of schizophrenia: delusions, audiovisual hallucinations, disordered speech and general breakdown of mental processing. For all that, she's only a danger to herself; some schizophrenics are, as you know, violent and prone to fits of rage, but our Mary is the sweetest girl you'd ever meet."
One of the interns stepped closer to the observation window in the door, peering in at Mary as she sat calmly in her chair. "What sort of hallucinations?"
The doctor looked a bit disconcerted. "That's the interesting part, really. This is the only case in the ward where there is actual evidence that the hallucinations, ah, may in fact not be hallucinations."
Another intern raised an eyebrow. "You're going to have to explain that one, I think."
The doctor cleared his throat, a bit pompously. "Well. Put briefly, Mary claimed that she could hear the thoughts of other people." The interns began writing furiously on their clipboards, two of them conferring together in low voices. "Not that unusual, really; hearing voices is one of the most common auditory hallucinations experienced by schizophrenics. But with Mary there was something more to it."
To a one, the interns looked politely inquisitive, but none of them wanted to derail the doctor. He continued, haltingly, "You see, when asked what sort of thoughts she could hear, Mary could tell you what you were thinking. In uncomfortable detail, if asked. We'd never seen anything like it before. At first, we assumed she was just extrapolating ideas from facial expressions -- that she was merely more 'in tune' with a person's thoughts and emotions than, perhaps, that person was themselves. But we kept running tests, and discovered that it didn't matter if you were in sight of her, or even how far away you were; she could really do it, somehow, could pick your thoughts out with startling accuracy.
"But she was very clear about one thing -- she didn't like this ability, she didn't want to 'hear' other peoples' thoughts. She came to us hoping that we could help her learn to shut them out.
"Well, it's one thing when you're being asked to solve a hallucinatory issue. We specialize in treating disorders of the brain, after all. But the evidence was just too strong that Mary wasn't hallucinating. It seemed that she had somehow discovered a way to tap the potential of her own brain -- to utilize areas of it that are long dormant, vestigial remnants of abilities that we once had and lost. Well, that's one viewpoint, anyway."
He looked suddenly grim. "Others thought that she was tapping into something that we shouldn't have access to at all. There was a lot of angry discussion, and Mary swiftly became a polarizing force here at the Institute: on one side, those who steadfastly refused to believe anything that could not be scientifically proven, who saw Mary and her abilities as so much ridiculous rubbish, and on the other side, those of us who were, perhaps, curious to see what Mary could teach us."
"'Us'?" one of the interns inquired, smiling. "I guess that tells us which side of the fence you were on, Doctor. You were one of the curious ones?"
The doctor smiled sadly. "I was. I had no idea whatsoever how Mary could do the things that she could do, but I wanted to learn all that I could. Maybe she wasn't disordered at all. Maybe she was just....different from the rest of us."
"Then what happened? Why is she in here now?" another intern asked. "Did she take a turn for the worse, or something?"
The doctor turned and gazed through the glass at Mary. A depth of pain was suddenly visible in that gaze, something primal and unutterably sad. He reached out fingertips to touch the glass briefly and a spasm of some other expression -- fear? rage? resignation? -- chased across his features and was gone.
"We were out walking one day," he said softly. "Mary had been becoming increasingly upset that week, saying that she was having more and more trouble shutting the voices out. That she could usually keep things locked down, but they were starting to break through. She was begging us to help her, to do something to stop the flood. But we were so damned smart. We patted her on the head indulgently and told her we needed more time, that we still couldn't understand exactly what it was she was experiencing. What we really meant, of course, was that she was too important a scientific curiosity for us to even consider 'helping' her."
He turned away from the glass, as if he couldn't bear to see Mary any more.
"We were out walking," he said again. His eyes had gone distant, and the interns looked at each other nervously. "I had drawn the duty for the day, to take Mary for a walk down at the park. It was sunny and cool. There were dogs barking, and people sitting on the benches talking, and joggers jogging past, and the scent of flowers was on the breeze, and it was all so......fucking......idyllic."
His hands curled into fists. "Mary was holding my hand. She was telling me earnestly that she felt like she was in the middle of a hurricane sometimes, with all the voices that she heard."
He looked at one of the interns. "Can you imagine what that would be like? To be an unwilling party to the inner thoughts and feelings of every Tom, Dick and Harry that strolled past you on the street? To be unable to shut your ears against the flood of babble? To have all the spectrum of the human condition, from nadir to apex, dumped into your head, all at once?"
He looked into the distance again. His mouth twisted. "I remember how her hand felt in mine, so small, so vulnerable. I remember how it wrenched at mine, clenching convulsively. I remember looking at her in alarm, thinking she was having a heart attack. Her face had gone bloodless, pale as chalk. Her mouth worked uselessly. Her eyes were lost and terrified. I remember that more than anything else. How terrified they were.
"She dropped to the ground. Curled into a fetal position. She was making this horrible keening sound. Like a trapped animal. Hopeless and lost."
He trailed off. The interns waited. The silence stretched.
The doctor shook himself, like a wet dog. "She's never been able to 'hear' anything since."
The interns stood gaping for a moment, then burst out all at once: "Wait a minute! That's not...." "You didn't explain why...." "But what if she...." "Couldn't possibly be that....."
The doctor silenced them with a short chopping motion of his hand. "We don't know what happened. No more than we know anything about how Mary could do what she did. We've asked her time and time again. What happened. Was there anything we could do for her. Did she want to talk about it." His lip curled again. "But what we really meant, naturally, was 'what does this mean for our studies if she can't do this anymore?' "
He sighed. "She did talk to me about it, once. Only once." He turned to look at Mary once more, and she gazed tranquilly back at him through the glass, her blue eyes trusting, guileless. "She said that she usually kept a wall up to keep things at bay. When she.....'heard'......the thoughts of others, it was like......like she was dropping the wall, briefly, to take it in, hear what she could hear. The trouble was, this time she was....exposed -- I can't use any other word for it -- exposed to the worst mind she'd ever 'heard'. Twisted, black, corrupt, a stench of thoughts, a cesspool of evil, a mind so filled with filth and hatred that it sent her quite round the bend. In one of her few lucid moments since, she said it was 'like I was dumped into a tar pit, like I had it poured over me, like I was drinking the stuff, being force-fed it till I wanted to throw up.'
He looked at them, standing in a little group, several of them looking through the glass at Mary, the rest of them looking at him, carefully now, as if he'd lost his own grip on reality. "We had to move her into the Level Three ward after that. When she came out of her catatonia, she immediately began beating her head against the nearest hard surface. Gave herself a concussion before we could get to her and stop her. Ever since then she's been here. She hasn't repeated the self-destructive acts, but she slips farther away from us every day. Her speech is rambling, disjointed. She's friendly as a puppy, but any attempts to get her to talk about that day, or about her....abilities.....and she closes up like a flower at night."
One of the interns said, curiously, "Did she ever talk about who it was that she'd......heard?"
The doctor narrowed his eyes. "Strange question. No, she never identified anyone. There were dozens of people in the park that day, and in any case Mary's 'range' had been demonstrated to work reliably when you were miles away from her. There's no telling who it might have been."
His hands curled into fists again, and suddenly all pretense of a bedside manner dropped away. He looked like a bear at bay, growling, deadly. "But I'll tell you one thing. If I ever find out who it was.....I'm going to kill them."
He turned on his heel and began stalking down the corridor away from Mary's room. The interns looked at each other, eyes wide, and followed en masse.
All except for one, who stayed behind a moment longer, to look through the glass at Mary.
Their eyes met -- and Mary's widened in shock and terror. She shrank away, pressing herself against the wall. Her hands came up in that warding gesture which is instinctual, but hopelessly ineffective against prolonged assault. Her mouth opened in a silent shriek.
The intern smiled. Coldly. Cruelly. "I've found you, Mary," she said softly. "It took me a long time, but I've finally found you. We're going to have a lot of fun together, you and I."
She adjusted her lab coat and followed the others down the corridor, leaving Mary behind, sobbing in a crumpled heap in the corner.
[This has been the first of five entries for Week 30 of LJ Idol. There were five topics to be written this week: "gobsmacked", "disappear", "appropriation", "cesspool", and "scared money never wins". This was the "cesspool" entry. I hope you enjoyed my efforts on this and the other entries this week! Please check out the other participants' entries and show them some love as well.]