Sandy stared at the second hand of
the black-on-white clock protruding from her colourless wall, fixated and
unwavering . She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, the blonde hair on
her head hopelessly tangled, her eyes empty. Her hands periodically reached
up to her scalp to pluck a single strand of hair, to chew on it mechanically
for the count of five seconds, then to cast it away. Her hair, once thick
and shiney, had now thinned out under her constant attack. Sandy hardly
noticed. Her face had adopted a gray cast right down to the bone, and her
skin sagged in a subtle way, like decay had weakened the foundations and
had just started to travel up to the surface. Ordinarily it would have
made her look old and jaded. Under the circumstances, she looked like the
undead in her rumpled off-white whites, a thin gray smudge against
the stark sharpness of her black and white room.
She stared as
thin long piece of plastic traveled around the circle, three degrees at
a time, with sharp ticking sounds. She liked that sound, the tick that
had annoyed her no end when she was alive. That tick that she willed to
fill her mind, filling it so the coldness that came in the absence of anything
else would not return. For the time being.
For the time being.
For being the time. Being for the time. Be for the time.
Sandy smiled, chewing on her lower lip to feel the comfort of
her running blood. It hurt, especially since she was opening a wound and
eating her own raw flesh. But she was past feeling much, and tasting things.
So while she welcomed the pain she could not acknowledge the presence of
those two, more desirable companions.
She could remember
when it was not so. Vaguely, but the memories were still there. They were
still hers; the abyss had not taken knowledge of life past from her. She
remembered images, impressions, emotions. Sandy remembered the mild heat
of the sun on her back, how it comforted her and made her dreary, relaxed,
and at peace. She remembered faces, showing certain endearing facial expressions,
and how this one or that would made her happy, sad, or angry, or a thousand
other emotions she could name and remember and classify. But that was all
she could do. Name and classify.
Did she regret it?
No. Was she sad? No. Did she care? Smiling, Sandy thought "I don’t even
care if I care. In fact, I don’t care if I care if I care." And she didn’t
care if anyone cared if she cared that she didn’t care that anyone cared.....
Unconsciously she knew
it was time to pluck another hair, so she did. The second hand moved past
the topmost point of the circular clock and the minute had clicked into
the next place.
There was something
she cared about, though. As always the thought came unbidden. "It took
it all away from me." That was the one thought that filled her with something
other than dispassion, and yet she avoided it. Curious, that was. The other
thought was coming, too. She could never stop either of them, and where
one went the other would eventually follow. And so it came; "And I let
it." So, really, it was all her fault she was now dead. Not dead in physical
terms, but dead in every other way. Sandy almost shrugged, almost. She
reached up with her hand again. Tick tock tick tock went the clock. Reach,
pluck, chew........reach, pluck, chew......went Sandy’s slower endless
process.
Something clicked loudly.
It was the door. For a few moments Sandy considered whether she should
acknowledge the unlocking of the door. The thought drifted into and out
of her mind, like a mist of gray against gray of the same shade, interrupting
either Sandy’s clock-watching or hair-pulling. The response came in much
the same manner. Does it matter.....?
Someone walked through
the door. "Sandy?" asked a voice. Loud to Sandy’s ears, so accustomed to
the quiet, sounding distant and alien. Reach, pluck, chew. No response.
She could think of no reason to speak. Actually, she didn’t try that hard
to think of one. She saw no reason to do that either.
"Sandy, your family
is here to see you." said the voice, in what must have been soft tones
except for that distant, foreign quality. No response. Watch the clock.
"Would you like to
see them?" The gray messenger drifted into Sandy’s mind again, bearing
notice of the fact that the owner of the voice was expecting a reply. Let
her expect. And let Sandy return to total isolation. Because she would
get no response, and should know that by then.
Reach. Pluck. Chew.
Watch. No response.
Eventually the messenger
made itself known again by bring to Sandy’s notice the fact that the owner
of the voice had left, and she was again with only herself. That was good.
That was blessing. That was home. That was not life, or happiness, but
Sandy had little of ever returning to either state. But at the same time
that was regretful.
Vaguely, suddenly, she felt
a ceasing of the process. When her mind turned to her eyes, she saw that
she was no longer watching the clock, but the door. Watching, and expecting.
What, she didn’t know. But it was interesting, whatever it was.
Interesting. The door
was unlocked. The slot was green, so it was unlocked. Sandy became aware
of the freedom she now had. She could leave, and since they had been so
careless with her door it could be assumed that they would be equally careless
about what remained of her. She could go out in the world...and then what?
Would she wander around, mill around the crowds in a daze? Would she travel?
Maybe to the clock, Big Ben, in London. To continue the process in central
Greenwich time.
But no. She knew she
would never do such.
The door opened in
a strange manner. What was stranger was the fact that Sandy realized something
was amiss so quickly, so clearly. The door opened timidly, but with backing
strength. It opened quickly at first, then slowed as if the opener fell
prey to doubts, then sped up again. And it didn’t open very much.
It was in amusement
that Sandy realized she was classifying the manner in which doors open.
A child slipped through
the opened door. He was small, but capable of speech, intermediate motor
skills, and common sense. He was dressed colourfully. Sandy found herself
straining to convert the colours to black and white values. The blue trousers,
orange tee-shirt, polka-dot cap, and bright yellow shoes stood in contrast
to all but her memories. The clear blue of his eyes, too, threw Sandy off.
They were focused on her the whole of the time the child was in her eyesight.
The undercurrents of
tension in the room soared, gathering itself into tense cords. There was
something important going on, and neither participants knew what, or cared
to admit to the tension in the room. For her part, Sandy thought briefly
about the process. The process had died a quiet death, in the shadow
of something bigger. And infinitely more animated.
The child blinked. Tension
snapped, filling the room with it’s previously contained energy. He moved
on foot forward, obviously considering moving further into the room. The
foot stopped, held still, then reversed it’s movement. The child turned
and ran out of the room. Not in terror, nor in uncertainty, thought it
was almost certain the child was not aware of his purpose. For there was
a purpose to his running, and his running exactly thus, making exactly
that much noise, starting at that second particularly. Sandy felt certain
of it.
Slowly she uncrossed
her legs and dangled then off the edges of her mattress. She couldn’t dangle
her legs. They reached the floor to soon. Sandy stood, and the messenger
told her that she was feeling dizzy and unbalanced. But the door was open,
the child had ran, and there was purpose somewhere. So she would follow.
The first step was
the hardest. It jarred her heavily out of her world of slow, mechanicalism
and back into a personal sort of consciousness. Her knees were weak, her
whole body was weak. Neverless, the step was taken. The rest followed at
very little prompting on Sandy’s accord. A new process, then. A moving
of limbs and shifting of weight. But unlike the last process, this one
drove her towards empty clarity. Clarity, in the condition of lack of lazy
drift or staggered consciousness. Empty, in the way a blank canvas is empty.
Then she was out of
the room, and within the confines of the hall. Sandy looked this way and
that. A dead end was at one end of the hall. The child was at the other.
Sandy urged, and the process of walking moved her towards the child and
the destination he would guide her to.
Eventually Sandy became perfectly aware. First colours started
becoming less strange and more natural. Consciousness and will became increasingly
important to her. She didn’t merely want to walk, she wanted to know the
mechanics of walking, and walking to where, and why she was, and why she
should or shouldn’t.
But still she followed
the child. She followed the child through halls and stairs both abandoned
and sparsely populated. At some forgotten time in their journey the child
had started to run, making Sandy quicken her pace as well. She was not
immediately aware of the change, but soon she was running frantically through
pleasant-looking halls, past pleasant-looking people who cast bewildered
glances at her as she pushed past them. Soon the hallways became crowded,
and it was hard to avoid people, and even harder to keep track of the child.
He would dark around and behind people’s legs, turn around corners so fast,
disappear than reappear within the blink of an eye.
Sandy rounded a corner
and she—Lost him! It was that corner, she was sure of it, but then where
was the child? After a few more moments Sandy began to panic. She scanned
the crowd for the complimentary colours of orange and blue, but he was
nowhere to be seen.
Despair descended upon Sandy quite suddenly. Despair, then a
return to her dispassionate state of mind and consciousness, now so much
the deeper for another failure. Colours faded, muted, and grayed. People
became as distant and alien as the language they spoke. The world’s perspective
zoomed in on Sandy, then left her in the dust.
She sat down on the carpeted
ground and buried her head in both hands. Sandy started to cry. She started
to cry, and didn’t stop crying. She couldn’t stop crying, but that didn’t
matter since she didn’t want to stop crying. Pain and sorrow, and joy for
the pain and sorrow, flowed out in the form of tears. Yet....the more that
left the more she was left with. So she cried and cried and cried until
she could cry no longer. It seemed a long time.
When the world started consisting
of more than just Sandy, she became aware of hands on her back, exerting
a pressure and warmth. There were soft voices, murmuring soothing words
and sounds into her ears. Sandy looked up with reddened eyes in to those
of her mother. Their eyes locked, and for a moment all things tittered
on an edge. Then Sandy smiled. And laughed. And cried a few more tears
even though she would have sworn she had no more left. Sandy’s mother did
the same, and as Sandy hugged her she saw, a flicker in the mirror, of
a child clinging to the arms of a parent.
END