Scrabble Story Week 2 ("ridiculous voiceovers" 1-7 February 2010) part 1 of 2
So, week 2 is done. I'm happier with this first draft than I was with the one last week, but it's still pretty rough. Author's comments will get posted later today.
Also, this is part 1 of 2, since LJ determined that the entire story in one fell swoop made for too unwieldy a post, apparently.
now
“Can you hear me?”
The voice drifts in from far away, muffled and distorted.
I am slumped over something hard and uncomfortably-shaped. Steering wheel?” I mumble. I open one eye-the other feels as though the eyelid is glued shut-and see only a curtain of red and black. I close my eye again.
“Can you hear me?” It is a woman’s voice, shaky but gentle.
I lift a hand to my eyes but feel my hair draped over my face, wet with something sticky and warm. Brushing it aside, I gingerly touch my face and feel the same warm sticky wetness. “Ick…”
“Ma’am?” A hand brushes my shoulder. The woman’s voice again. “Can you hear me?”
I don’t try to open my eyes again.
“Uh-huh.” Something feels loose in my mouth. I spit halfheartedly and expel a broken tooth. It clinks against what sounds like broken glass in my lap.
AND SHE’S AWAKE! BATTERED BUT NOT BEATEN, FOLKS! The man’s voice pierces through the ringing in my ears as though he were shouting inside my skull. He sounds like a sports announcer, but somehow mocking.
“Ow!” I whine. “Not so loud.”
“I didn’t say anything, sweetie,” the woman murmurs, patting my shoulder. “What hurts?”
“He did,” I insist. “Tell him to be quiet. Everything hurts.”
Everything does hurt. The pain is everywhere, sharp and explosive in my head, dull but intense in my stomach, harsh and stinging on my arms. It dominates my awareness. I stifle a scream, and tears mingle with the blood on my cheeks.
She sounds puzzled. “There’s no one else here yet. But the ambulance is on the way. They’re going to help you,” she reassures me hastily.
“Wha’ happened?” I mumble through swollen lips, around a mouthful of blood and another broken tooth.
“Your car hit a tree, dear,” the woman answers, and I try not to whimper when she gives my shoulder a comforting squeeze. “It must have been the rain…”
I remember the rain, now. A slick road and sharp curve, the sensation of spinning and the blur of a sudden impact, then darkness. Thinking of my car, I groan.
The wail of sirens approaches.
MEDIC NINETY-THREE ARRIVES TO SAVE THE DAY IN RECORD TIME! The obnoxious voice blares at me again. I wince at its volume. BUT WILL THEY BE IN TIME TO SAVE OUR DAZED DAMSEL IN THE DAMAGED DODGE? TUNE IN NEXT WEEK, FOLKS!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
four days later
RISE AND SHINE! ANOTHER SUNNY DAY IN FAIRFIELD, AND BOY, IS IT COLD!
I groan and pull a pillow over my head, but that only traps me under the pillow with the inescapable voice.
THE ELUSIVE CREATURE RETREATS BACK INTO ITS DEN…
“I’m not a marmoset on the Discovery Channel, thank you.” Surrendering with bad grace, I sit up. I am still clutching my pillow and wishing there were someone tangible to fling it at it.
REMEMBER, KIDS, DENIAL IS JUST THE FIRST STAGE OF- Denial. I have been trying to deny this ridiculous voiceover in my head for four days since the wreck. Dr. Williams is still denying it, but I suppose that must be easier when the voice is in someone else’s head. -ADMITTING YOU HAVE A PROBLEM IS THE FIRST STEP TOWARD GETTING HELP!
“I admit it!” I grumble, then sigh as I realize I am starting to respond to it. “So much for denial.” My frustration sends the pillow in a wobbly arc across the room to whump sadly into the dresser. Feeling oddly sorry for it, I stand and hobble gingerly over to the dresser. Movement still hurts, but I believe Dr. Williams when he tells me I am fortunate not to have spent more than a night in St. Joe’s ICU.
Retrieving the pillow, I replace it apologetically on the bed, feeling a little silly.
My bedroom door creaks when I open it. I pad barefoot out into the hall, letting the door hang open behind me as I limp toward the bathroom.
SHE’S OUT THE GATE AND DOWN THE STRAIGHTAWAY…
I sigh. Following my sister’s advice, I try to focus on real sounds-the rumble and slosh of the washing machine and the clink of dishes downstairs.
MOVING WELL TODAY DESPITE A MID-SEASON INJURY, ISN’T SHE, NORM?
Norm? I think. Geez, Mr. Subconscious, where the hell did you get “Norm”? I wonder why the people in my hallucinations can’t have more exotic names.
TWENTY FEET TO GO…. FIFTEEN… TEN…
I try humming to block out the voice, and by the time I am halfway down the hall I find myself singing, belting out the chorus to “Yellow Submarine” at the off-key top of my lungs.
The announcer’s voice just gets louder, overpowering my attempts to drown him out.
…FIVE FEET… FOUR… THREE… TWO! ONE! GOOOOOOAAAAALLL!
With a sigh, I slump against the bathroom counter and quip, “What? All I get is you? No cheering crowds going wild?”
I reach over to flip the switch-AND THE LORD SAID “LET THERE BE LIGHT!” CAN YOU SAY HALLELUJAH WITH ME? HALLELUJAH!-and frown at myself in the mirror. (description of injury to forehead)
“Jessica? You okay up here?” I turn toward the bathroom door to see my sister Allison standing there in her worn blue terrycloth bathrobe. She has a limp bundle of wet gray fabric draped over one arm. I realize that it must be my shirt; when the bloodstains refused to yield to bleaching, Allison had found a home fabric dyer kit and determined that my pink shirt would begin a new life as a black shirt.
“I thought I heard yelling.”
For one half-hopeful, half-terrifying moment, I think she means the voiceover. Then I realize she must mean-“Oh, no, I was… uh… singing,” I mumble sheepishly. I don’t have to look in the mirror to know that my face is now crimson under the bruises.
THE JUDGES DIDN’T RATE THAT LAST PERFORMANCE SO WELL… TOUGH CROWD FOR A CONTESTANT WITH NO TALENT!
“Singing?” She arches an eyebrow. “But you never… I mean, I’m not saying it was bad or anything, just that you don’t usually…”
ON TODAY’S CAN’T-MISS EPISODE: WILL THE BOND OF SISTERHOOD BE STRONGER THAN AN ARTIST’S PRIDE?
“It’s this stupid voice.”
She nods, giving me the look of patient sympathy she had perfected over the last four days. I can see worry starting to creep in around its edges. “That sort of thing isn’t uncommon with head injuries, apparently,” she says. “I did some nosing around on WebMD last night.”
“So did I, two days ago while you weren’t letting me out of bed.” I am still bitter about three days of forced inactivity with only that horrible announcer hallucination to distract me.
“I let you go pee,” she counters magnanimously.
“Under supervision!” I retort. She hrmphs at me, and I shrug. “Anyway, I checked around too. This kind of effect is supposed to go away within a few hours after the trauma unless there’s something underlying.”
Allison frowns, and from her silence I discern that she has read the same thing. “Jessica…”
AND THE PLOT THICKENS…
“Stop it!” I yell at the mirror. My imagination wants to supply something shadowy slipping around behind the eyes of my reflection, but I refuse to give it that satisfaction.
Behind my own image in the mirror, I can see the fear on my sister’s face, and for the first time since the wreck, I really want to cry.
I can’t meet her gaze, not with that expression, so I stare down at the counter and speak as quietly and gently as I can. “I didn’t have a voice in my head before the wreck. You know that. Now I do, and I don’t think it’s going away on its own.”
HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE TO STAY! My TV announcer can sing, apparently.
“But Dr. Williams didn’t want to medicate you too heavily until the swelling went down…” she says soothingly. I am not really in a mood to be soothed.
“Easy enough for him to accept this as status quo! No one’s in his head but him! I can’t live like this! It’s going to drive me crazy.”
LOOKS LIKE A QUICK COMMUTE TODAY, THE ROAD IS CLEAR AND DRIVE TIME SHOULD BE SHORTER THAN YOU THINK!
She reaches forward to place a gentle hand on my shoulder, and the gesture shatters the last of my composure. I turn to accept a hug, sobbing my next words into the fuzzy shoulder of my sister’s bathrobe. “I don’t want to be crazy.”
“We’ll call Dr. Williams,” she says.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
three days later
The door of the exam room swings open.
HEEEEEEEERE’S WILLY!
Dr. Williams, a portly middle-aged man with a bald spot and a paisley tie, falters a bit when he notices no patient on the empty exam table. His gaze slides toward me, curled up in the doctor’s wheeled office chair with my book.
“The exam table, please, Miss Sawyer,” he intones, pointing.
THE WOMAN MUST REMEMBER HER PLACE AT ALL TIMES! My subconscious is channeling a televangelist now, of the reactionary fire-and-brimstone variety.
“Oh, shut up,” I mumble, then hastily add, “Um, not you, Doctor… the voice.” I make the undignified hop up onto the exam table, tearing the paper cover in the process, and sit there swinging my feet. I hate exam tables. They always make me feel like a child.
SHE’S IN A VULNERABLE SPOT HERE, the voiceover breaks in, as though narrating a reality show this time. PLACED IN A CHILDLIKE POSITION JUST WHEN SHE MOST NEEDS TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY. OH, THIS, it enthuses, WILL BE A TREAT TO WATCH.
“I… see,” the doctor muses, looking slightly unnerved. I notice that he keeps himself between me and the door. “That… er, symptom… of yours seems remarkably persistent, Miss Sawyer. Has there been any change since the wreck?”
BETTER… FASTER… STRONGER! HE’S UNSTOPPABLE!
“It’s getting worse,” I reply firmly, refusing to accept any of those adjectives. “Look, Doc, either you start listening to me and do something about this, or I’m finding myself another doctor.”
“Now, Miss Sawyer,” he protests, holding his hands up in a defensive gesture. “We must err on the side of caution when it comes to medicating head trauma cases, and I dislike medication as a reflex solution to psychiatric issues-”
I cut him off. “I do not have psychiatric issues, Doctor!” DENIAL IS THE FIRST AND MOST PERSISTENT SIGN OF A SERIOUS PROBLEM, the voiceover says in a tone of insincere concern. “And I’m not asking you for medication, just for some kind of treatment. I can’t really ignore this the way you think you can.”
He sighs, settling into the chair he had recently driven me out of, and wheels across the linoleum to the exam table. “As it happens, Miss Sawyer, I believe there’s a particular anti-hallucinatory prescription drug on the market now-it’s expensive, mind you-which may mitigate your symptoms.”
I nod and hold out my hand. I expect him to hand me a prescription, but instead he drops an oblong lavender tablet into my palm.
JUST SAY NO TO DRUGS!
In answer to my questioning look, he smirks. “Let’s see if it works before I write you a potentially pricey prescription, Miss Sawyer. Chew and swallow, if you please. It should taste like mint.”
“I don’t really like mint,” I mumble just for spite, but I pop the tablet into my mouth.
SIDE EFFECTS INCLUDE NAUSEA, DIZZINESS, VOMITING, INSANITY, DEATH… the announcer taunts.
Deliberately, savoring the idea that the increasingly mocking voice in my head is helplessly enduring its death, I chew and swallow the tablet. Mint never tasted so good.
“How do you feel?” Dr. Williams asks.
I open my mouth to answer, then hastily clamp a hand over it as I feel my stomach turn. I lay back on the exam table, too dizzy to sit upright, and moan, “I feel terrible.”
“What you’re experiencing is a common side effect,” he says. He sounds more patronizing than reassuring. “The medication should take effect more or less instantaneously. Is your… ah… voice still… er, there?”
SURVEY SAYS… OH YES!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~