Phantasmagoria Funereal - 1
I look around, and everything looks different. They say I have suffered no permanent damage, but I really wonder what they are basing their conclusion on. But I guess you have to trust these professionals, right? After all, not just anyone can wear a white coat, right?
I guess I’m not so sure.
I look around and see everyone else asleep, even the woman on the stretcher in the middle of the room (I was lucky to be given a bed). I’m sure I hear the tread of tiny feet, sprinting up and down the corridors but I’m as much convinced that it isn’t real as I am real myself. No child should have to be in a place such as this. I want to get up, but I’m restrained; I’ve long given up fighting. My mother weeps when she visits, and fears that I shall never find a husband, that I have ruined my life at such a young age. She weeps for her own, I’m sure. She desperately wants a son-in-law, grandchildren. She needs that sense of security, now that father is himself “incapacitated”. He drinks and he drinks, and he smokes the foul weed until his eyes glaze over and he smiles once more. He no longer works. He no longer finds excuse. He sits in the sun at the back of the house, bottle in one hand and pipe in the other, crying until his eyes glaze over and the smile spreads across face.
A nurse, cigarette in her mouth and hair pinned as only women of the city may pin, hustles over and looks in my eyes, ears and mouth with dark eyes as blank as they are efficient. She no longer sees people, women, children and men. She only sees patients, cases, bed numbers, all merely the fleshed interpretation of the charts at the foot of the beds. The woman in Bed Eleven begins screaming again, but the nurse only yells at her to be quiet, be quiet and don’t wake the others! I don’t think the woman in Bed Eleven is a local, as she doesn’t seem to understand what anybody says to her and the doctors speak loudly and slowly to her. Perhaps she came to the city for work, or perhaps someone brought her here to work; it is not polite to ask those sorts of questions of a young woman on her own. The woman on the stretcher in the middle of the room groans and squirms slightly as two nurses insert something into her arms, a monstrous machine with dials and lights clacking and bleeping in the background, just behind her pillow.
I don’t trust the machine either.
I hear a fuss in the corridor. I’ve only been here a few days and I already know what this means. A large woman with equally large lungs runs screaming down the corridor, pursued by half a dozen nurses and relatives. “You lie” she screams, “you lie. You tell me lies to break my heart and take her away from me”. The gaggle of attendants calms her down and she just sobs, deep, hacking sobs that make chills run down my spine. She is escorted back to the room she ran from, being supported by two nurses and a relative, though she collapses on the floor just outside our door and beats the floor with her fists. I want to turn away, bury my head under my pillow but I can’t. All I can do is turn my neck and look at the wall, but I can still hear her sob “why, my baby, why?”. I don’t want to think about it.
After some time she settles down and a return my gaze to the door. Nothing much is happening. I see a cockroach run past. I wish I could trade places with him. I return my gaze to the roof instead. The doctors say I should try to relax, but their last injection has not allowed me to sleep for days. The first time, I’ve been told, I ran out and threw a chair at a doctor, which is why I’m now bound to the bed. I don’t know if I believe that. I wonder with what they inject me. I wonder if they simply keep me bound to stop me fleeing back home, returning to my chores, and helping my father back into the house and to bed when he can no longer stand himself. Perhaps they have heard my mother say I have ruined my life and my future, and keep me here as another expendable young woman, injecting me until they find The Cure. Their Cure. The Cure for Their Diseases. Is that why the nurses no longer see the women in the beds?
None of the women in my room have husbands. Some are just of marriage age, but with wounds and disfigurements that no man would wish to look upon. Others, like myself, are no longer “normal” or “acceptable”, and have come here for the doctors to make them “right” again. This I do not believe. I inch my chin down to try and get a closer look at the woman in the middle of the room. She is the worst off of us all. I’ve heard that some other rooms have four or more stretcher beds in them, and that women are even in closets as there are now too many of them. The bigger hospital is too full of the dying, the bleeding, the maimed. Accidents happen more and more these days, or so I have heard. Personally, I believe the woman on the stretcher in the middle of the room met with an “accident”, but she no longer talks. During the day, the woman in Bed Six doesn’t stop talking. She speaks nonsense, but it is incessant and insistent, fighting for the attention of all in earshot. At night, when they bring some food, the doctor makes her swallow something and she falls asleep. She doesn’t wake until they inject her the next morning, and she returns to her monologue. The woman on the stretcher moans and mumbles in her sleep; she sounds content. Another patient told me she had her tongue cut out, which is why she doesn’t speak. I’m not so sure that is true, but whatever the truth is, she only has two different sounds she makes: groans of pain, and moans of contentment. Both sound the same, but after listening to them for days, I can tell the difference. The sounds she makes now, with the wires and tubes running into her body, and content, almost pleasurable sounds, muttered in her sleep. When the doctors and nurses change her machine or the tubes and wires to her body, the groans are of great agony, the kind no normal person in the city or the fields could ever understand. As scared as I am of the machine, I am equally fascinated. Why does she sometimes moan in pleasure? Why is she the only one here - I am sure of it - that feels such contentment, such happiness bordering on ecstasy? I am not sure I am envious, though.
I can see faint light through the grime on the windowpane, making small shadows play on the tiled ceiling. In an hour or so the women will start to wake. The woman in Bed Two will be allowed to sit up and eat before she is taken away, only to return hours later with the assistance of nurses who lift her back to bed as her eyes and tongue loll around like a dazed cow. Bed Six will be woken and will tell us of nothing as usual. My mother will perhaps visit again today, sobbing at me tied to the bed as my eyes dart around. Perhaps she will tell me that now it won’t be long, my daughter, it won’t be long now at all.
I want more than nothing else to know what it is that she is waiting for.
I guess I’m not so sure.
I look around and see everyone else asleep, even the woman on the stretcher in the middle of the room (I was lucky to be given a bed). I’m sure I hear the tread of tiny feet, sprinting up and down the corridors but I’m as much convinced that it isn’t real as I am real myself. No child should have to be in a place such as this. I want to get up, but I’m restrained; I’ve long given up fighting. My mother weeps when she visits, and fears that I shall never find a husband, that I have ruined my life at such a young age. She weeps for her own, I’m sure. She desperately wants a son-in-law, grandchildren. She needs that sense of security, now that father is himself “incapacitated”. He drinks and he drinks, and he smokes the foul weed until his eyes glaze over and he smiles once more. He no longer works. He no longer finds excuse. He sits in the sun at the back of the house, bottle in one hand and pipe in the other, crying until his eyes glaze over and the smile spreads across face.
A nurse, cigarette in her mouth and hair pinned as only women of the city may pin, hustles over and looks in my eyes, ears and mouth with dark eyes as blank as they are efficient. She no longer sees people, women, children and men. She only sees patients, cases, bed numbers, all merely the fleshed interpretation of the charts at the foot of the beds. The woman in Bed Eleven begins screaming again, but the nurse only yells at her to be quiet, be quiet and don’t wake the others! I don’t think the woman in Bed Eleven is a local, as she doesn’t seem to understand what anybody says to her and the doctors speak loudly and slowly to her. Perhaps she came to the city for work, or perhaps someone brought her here to work; it is not polite to ask those sorts of questions of a young woman on her own. The woman on the stretcher in the middle of the room groans and squirms slightly as two nurses insert something into her arms, a monstrous machine with dials and lights clacking and bleeping in the background, just behind her pillow.
I don’t trust the machine either.
I hear a fuss in the corridor. I’ve only been here a few days and I already know what this means. A large woman with equally large lungs runs screaming down the corridor, pursued by half a dozen nurses and relatives. “You lie” she screams, “you lie. You tell me lies to break my heart and take her away from me”. The gaggle of attendants calms her down and she just sobs, deep, hacking sobs that make chills run down my spine. She is escorted back to the room she ran from, being supported by two nurses and a relative, though she collapses on the floor just outside our door and beats the floor with her fists. I want to turn away, bury my head under my pillow but I can’t. All I can do is turn my neck and look at the wall, but I can still hear her sob “why, my baby, why?”. I don’t want to think about it.
After some time she settles down and a return my gaze to the door. Nothing much is happening. I see a cockroach run past. I wish I could trade places with him. I return my gaze to the roof instead. The doctors say I should try to relax, but their last injection has not allowed me to sleep for days. The first time, I’ve been told, I ran out and threw a chair at a doctor, which is why I’m now bound to the bed. I don’t know if I believe that. I wonder with what they inject me. I wonder if they simply keep me bound to stop me fleeing back home, returning to my chores, and helping my father back into the house and to bed when he can no longer stand himself. Perhaps they have heard my mother say I have ruined my life and my future, and keep me here as another expendable young woman, injecting me until they find The Cure. Their Cure. The Cure for Their Diseases. Is that why the nurses no longer see the women in the beds?
None of the women in my room have husbands. Some are just of marriage age, but with wounds and disfigurements that no man would wish to look upon. Others, like myself, are no longer “normal” or “acceptable”, and have come here for the doctors to make them “right” again. This I do not believe. I inch my chin down to try and get a closer look at the woman in the middle of the room. She is the worst off of us all. I’ve heard that some other rooms have four or more stretcher beds in them, and that women are even in closets as there are now too many of them. The bigger hospital is too full of the dying, the bleeding, the maimed. Accidents happen more and more these days, or so I have heard. Personally, I believe the woman on the stretcher in the middle of the room met with an “accident”, but she no longer talks. During the day, the woman in Bed Six doesn’t stop talking. She speaks nonsense, but it is incessant and insistent, fighting for the attention of all in earshot. At night, when they bring some food, the doctor makes her swallow something and she falls asleep. She doesn’t wake until they inject her the next morning, and she returns to her monologue. The woman on the stretcher moans and mumbles in her sleep; she sounds content. Another patient told me she had her tongue cut out, which is why she doesn’t speak. I’m not so sure that is true, but whatever the truth is, she only has two different sounds she makes: groans of pain, and moans of contentment. Both sound the same, but after listening to them for days, I can tell the difference. The sounds she makes now, with the wires and tubes running into her body, and content, almost pleasurable sounds, muttered in her sleep. When the doctors and nurses change her machine or the tubes and wires to her body, the groans are of great agony, the kind no normal person in the city or the fields could ever understand. As scared as I am of the machine, I am equally fascinated. Why does she sometimes moan in pleasure? Why is she the only one here - I am sure of it - that feels such contentment, such happiness bordering on ecstasy? I am not sure I am envious, though.
I can see faint light through the grime on the windowpane, making small shadows play on the tiled ceiling. In an hour or so the women will start to wake. The woman in Bed Two will be allowed to sit up and eat before she is taken away, only to return hours later with the assistance of nurses who lift her back to bed as her eyes and tongue loll around like a dazed cow. Bed Six will be woken and will tell us of nothing as usual. My mother will perhaps visit again today, sobbing at me tied to the bed as my eyes dart around. Perhaps she will tell me that now it won’t be long, my daughter, it won’t be long now at all.
I want more than nothing else to know what it is that she is waiting for.