The cicadas sizzled in the summer afternoon, spiraling in an erratic murmuration through the yard, and Fen dropped her sidewalk chalk to cover her ears. Her father, working on changing the oil in his pickup, called to her. “Fen, what’s wrong?” “They’re so loud,” Fen said, still holding her ears. “What is?” “The bugs. They’re so loud.” Her father laughed and rolled back under the pickup. And the years passed, and Fen learned not to bring up the volume on the TV, or the music at concerts when her friends shouted and jumped up and down. People didn’t understand that it hurt, that it made her want to curl up and just stop for a while. She learned to hate her ears, and how she couldn’t decrease the sound rolling into her head like a relentless tide, crashing and tumbling her thoughts into surf. She bought sound canceling headphones with the money from her first job and online, she found playlists of quiet things, like the moon creeping across the sky, or a spider spinning his web, or someone doing ASMR on how to cook an omelet. She worked as a janitor on night shift at an art exhibit, avoiding people, avoiding raised voices and the blaring sounds packaged with the sun. But the spiders encouraged her to talk to the visitors. They motioned at her from the corners, for out of all the creeping things spiders know the most about loneliness, and one time they insisted with such emphatic gestures of their legs that she sighed and slid off her headphones. The building would close in the next few minutes anyway. She gripped her pushbroom in readiness. “This painting,” the exhibit’s recorded voice explained to a small boy and his parents, “displays a bouquet of tiger lilies. In the background, a spray of purple-gray lavender sets off the brightness of the orange lilies. The painter named it ‘The Importance of Gray, and—” The voice, recorded at what everyone else termed a normal volume, did not set off Fen’s alarm as she’d expected. The story immersed her, settling into her far corners, saturating her lungs so she could not breathe. It overwhelmed in a new way, a happy way, and she held her hand over her heart. “What’s happening?” she asked the spiders in the barest of whispers. The pushbroom clattered to the ground. She’d dropped it. “Are you alright?” The mother asked. So loud. So loud. But not as loud as she’d expected. She hadn’t spoken to humans in years. Maybe . . . “Your ears have matured,” the spiders said. “They are a strength, not a curse.” “Let’s go,” the father said, shepherding his son and wife away down the hall. Fen bit her lip and turned back to the display of lilies and lavender. The recording had started over. “In the background, a spray of purple-grey lavender . . .” And the wave rolled through Fen once more, and she caught the hue of orange in it, of a sunlit place where sound didn’t hurt her, but lifted her instead, buoyed her higher than any other of her favorite moments; higher than eating mousse chocolate cake or falling asleep in a memory foam bed. The sound affected her with such strength that she cried for the next fifteen minutes, until closing time, and the little boy and his parents left. She waved, and kept her headphones off, to test her new ears. “Bye!” the little boy said. And the volume still clanged in her ears, but not as bad. Not when she imagined his words as a tiger lily, bright and happy and center stage, while she provided the importance of gray. “Have a good night,” Fen said in her small voice. The doors closed and she asked the spiders, “What is this? What is happening?” They wove their webs in concentric circles, and the sound of their spinning reverberated in her ears. “Isn’t it wonderful?” they said. “The beauty of sound? Not many humans can hear it, you know!” The clock ticked on the wall, the air conditioner hummed downstairs, and the boy’s words echoed in the air— “Bye!” and it all created a symphony. Something had unlocked inside Fen. Her ears had developed to handle the beauty behind noise; instead of roaring, it resonated, instead of clamoring, it sang. Stories told out loud sang the sweetest. She couldn’t wait to listen to the people the next day, all talking and telling stories in the art exhibit. About the author:
Emmie Christie’s work includes practical subjects, like feminism and mental health, and speculative subjects, like unicorns and affordable healthcare. She has been published in various short story markets including Ghost Orchid Press, Infinite Worlds Magazine, and Flash Fiction Online. She graduated from the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2013. You can find her at www.emmiechristie.com or on Twitter @EmmieChristie33.
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I. Intro (A Lay of the Land This story explores aspects of untreated mental illness. Mentions of self-harm, disordered eating, agoraphobia, psychosis, depression, abuse, etc If you’ve read the caveat above, welcome. My name is ever-changing. But today, I’ll introduce myself as the Girl King, only because I grow tired of beasts calling me Princess. I am a girl king, first of my lineage, and I am in pain. I have swam the seas of madness; my legs grow tired, but my tongue works just fine. Fine enough for me to tell you this story. Now, don’t be fooled. This isn’t a psychology lesson. I’m writing this as a cautionary tale. I’m writing this from outside my prison. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way… Hello once again, dear reader. Let me spin you a yarn. II. Solitude This is where it starts. Every morning, I watched the sunrise through a dirty, moss-covered window. And every night, I watched it set through even dirtier, moss-covered eyes. Throughout the day, beasts would lope around the cobble, their shadows stretched tall under the beating sun. Eventually, I realized that they were just people, and not all people are beasts. The difference between the people below and me, the Girl King, is they don’t sequester themselves to a tower. They don’t hide from the sun. They don’t devour a single grain of rice a day and call it a feast. They don’t study the ghosts in the mirror. They don’t fear dragons. Or maybe they do. Maybe they get up in the morning and choose to walk away from phantoms. Maybe they’re brave. Braver than me. They face the world beyond, so they must be. They shield their eyes from the sun, and they see dragons for what they are: Arcane but nothing to fret over. I don’t talk to these people. These everyday folks. Not because I think I’m better than everyday folk, but because I don’t talk to strangers. I don’t talk to anyone. My mouth has been stitched for millennia. More often than not, the only person I talk to is myself. Or, rather, my own ghost. She’s not much company, by the way. All she does is stare and cry and tremble. This isn’t to say I am or was completely alone. It only feels that way at times. Beyond the tower, I have many faithful subjects. They contact me via pigeon carrier. They say things like, “Whilst we love thou, thou art an idiot. Come down from thy tower, Girl King.” Of course, they said it with some semblance of grace. Unlike myself, who replied, “Take your pigeons and kindly piss off.” Not a very nice nor kingly thing to say, I know. These types of sicknesses (depression, psychosis, and the like) as you will learn—or maybe you already know too well—can make the nicest kings seem cruel. Therein, lies my next point. III. Melancholy I see the world in black and white, but I am not color blind. What am I? Depressed, as it turns out. Do you like small talk, dear reader? I mostly loathe it. Life is too short for filler words, which is ironic considering I’m spouting this stream. There’s a method to my madness. Bear with me. Melancholy and solitude go together like peanut butter and jelly. A delicacy where I’m from. Except the bread and the peanut butter were too heavy, making my legs akin to an elephant’s. Don’t get me started on the jelly, dear reader. The seeds inside look like tiny pins that’d hook into my guts, and the sugar would no doubt rot my fangs. Needless to say, I went long swaths without sandwiches. Poor Girl King. Can’t eat a bite. How sad, right? In the vein of sadness, and in the vein of veins-- Should I not go there? Should I spare you the stories of gore? You must know what I’m referring to, yes? Maybe you’ve witnessed the kind of sadness that steals your breath and the rosiness from your cheeks. The kind that robs your mobility and your personality at large? Maybe you’ve felt the anguish that draws blood, causing the flesh to grow back thick, shiny, and white. I think you get the picture. I’ve painted the monochromatic subject quite colorfully. Let’s not linger. Curses bloom that way. IV. Disorder In the Court Moving on. I will keep this section brief. For there is only so much you can say about matters of self-image and sundry violence. In the incredibly rare event that I came down from my tower (perhaps once every full moon), one of two things put me back in my place: I. A poor, random beastie passing by who’d no knowledge of how badly they’d startled me. II. My own reflection glaring back at me. My witch-like appearance was a point of contention between me, myself, and I. And with the majority of the court banished by my hand, I had no one to tell me otherwise. Plot twist: I did. I just couldn’t hear the voices of angels—angels I once thought were common beasts—over the sound of hatred. All I had left were a hall of mirrors I avoided to keep my ghost at bay, the occasional hallucinated critter (please, refer to Part VII), and my own body. Of which was not my temple and only existed to be abused by myself and others. Where do we learn such violence? Or, better yet: Why do we pick up where the abusers left off?
Cherish yourself, little finite being. You are the only you to exist in this space and time. V. Slumber (or Lack Thereof) Do you hunger for something? Out of all the hungers (for thirst, for feast, for love or lust, for power, et cetera and suchlike), which do you think is the worst? Dear reader, I can tell you my answer, plain as day and dark as night, without a moment of hesitation. The worst hunger of all is sleep. There’s a reason insomnia is popular amongst torturers. It scrapes away one’s humanity fleck by fleck. You enter a place not of this world. It’s dark, and vast, and warbled. A state of never-ending confusion where you ask yourself, “Am I asleep? Am I dead?” You obsess over sleep, but at the same time (in my case, anyways) you fear what lies beyond the waking world. It’s a paradox with one cure. Sleep. The thing I feared but also craved. The bottle helped on occasion, but not enough to satisfy my hunger for slumber, so I gave up on that in short order. I know. How dare a girl king get drunk? Listen to this. It gets worse. I also sit with my legs open. Egads! VI. Disorder In the Court, Part Deux: Paranoia Edition On those days where I caught nary a wink, seeds of doubt suckled in my swollen head. Sometimes I would lie awake at night (might I redirect you to Part V?) and gawk out my mossy window. I’d tremble at the thought of demons, wolves, and other unmentionable beasts outside my tower. The worst unmentionable of all—though, it can’t be unmentionable now because I am, in fact, mentioning it—is an unwanted suitor. One who’d scale my dark fortress, burst in, and profess not their love, but their lust. If I resist? Well, off with my head. Many jilted suitors have declared me to die by their sword or their fists for daring to refuse them. One would think I’d be accustomed to such treatment, but nay. Except for now, where I am writing this outside my prison, do I implore them to try. My sword is bigger, methinks. Some have said I should be so lucky to have a suitor. For I am as tall as my tower, and some days I appear grotesque like an ogre, and more to the point, I speak like a man. I don’t tread softly. Apparently, that is frowned upon. Suitors aside, there were other times when the creeping crud of paranoia struck me. Often I skipped meals, thinking a member of the court had poisoned me. I floated around my sleeping quarters listening for vile whispers and death plots. Sometimes I remained inside my body amidst my eavesdropping. Other times, I fled my flesh like a phantom. It’s a special and, in my personal opinion, very undesirable talent called dissociation. Maybe you’ve heard of such things. Was there ever disorder in the court? Yes, there were many liars. I myself have lied. I’ve lied to myself about the state of my head, and I’ve lied to members of my court thusly. Life is too short for lying, even if it’s as simple of a lie as, “I’m fine.” Life is too short for lying. Belay that shit forthwith. VII. Mirages and Monsters In times of little light, where the only eyes I saw were my own—and they were bloody, and black, and ready to drop from my skull—I conjured creatures from thin air. Pacing, bent shadows stealing glances; tiny mice with curious eyes who looked at me not like a mad girl king but a fellow beating heart; crows who nary cawed but were an omen of what was to come if I didn’t awaken. I should’ve listened to the crows. Instead, I danced with shadows for so long that I became one. I found myself caught between the real and unreal, the tangible and intangible. I wasn’t real. I wasn’t tangible. There was no reflection in the mirror. No breath in my lungs. And every soul I met, flew through me, looked through me. I was dead already, existing in a purgatory I’d created for myself with the help of the beasts of old. I had to make myself real again. I had to say, “Enough.” VIII. I Escaped Thy Prison & All I Got Was This T-Shirt …and so I did. I said, “Enough. Fin. Fare-thee-well.” One day, for reasons unknown to myself even now, I sent my carrier pigeons en masse, enlisting help in the battle against shadows, against demons, against beasts, against…me. Against me fueling those shadows, those demons, those beasts. Fueling them because I didn’t know any other way. I didn’t know how to be anything less than nothing. I did it. I conquered. I cleaned the moss from my eyes (not from my window, though; it’s there to remind me of what not to do). When I journeyed outside, beyond my dreaded tower, I found… Here there be dragons. About the author:
J. Moniz suffers from various chronic illnesses, both physical and mental. When she isn’t writing, you can find her haunting your local antique shop or sunbathing in the forest. "Cookies," the old woman hissed, standing over the churning cauldron. With steam rising to swathe her face, she continued in that same plaintive monotone, "Cookies. Cookies, cookies." Her voice was dry, sibilant as a snake. She stirred the great iron pot with a large wooden paddle, sometimes splashing the mixture over the rim of the cauldron, where it landed upon the oaken floor with a loud hiss and a little dissipation of steam. She ceased stirring and turned to a little room off the kitchen, where her "assistants" lay on the floor, chained to posts with collars about their necks. There were dogs and cats and red and gray squirrels and raccoons and other creatures, seven in all. Because seven was a Lucky Number! "Here, try a little of this," she murmured, approaching an orange cat with a filled spoon of the concoction. The cat sniffed the brew, then lifted a paw to bat at the spoon, spilling its contents. "Bad cat!" snarled the old woman, bopping the cat sharply on the nose with the wooden spoon. The cat hissed at her and made to scratch the old woman but the chain round the cat's neck impeded her. This set off a woofing and barking and snarling and hissing among the other captives, so the woman soon quitted the room. Some time later, after the cauldron had boiled for hours, the old woman reemerged at its side and, taking up a pair of ancient steel tongs, extracted the fruits of her labor: a large, plate-sized, perfectly browned chocolate chip cookie. "Cookies," she drooled yet again. "An' there's more where that come from!" The old woman wielded the tongs again and again and eventually turned up a large platter of Magic Chocolate Chip Cookies. But her night's work had just begun. Entering the little room containing the pets and forest creatures once more, she began breaking off pieces of cookie and placing them before the little animals. The dogs and raccoon and squirrel ate immediately and voraciously, but the cat sniffed suspiciously, remembering the bop on the nose; but soon even she was placidly consuming the confection. Moving furtively, the crone unlocked and removed the collars from round the creatures' necks. Consumed with eating the cookie fragments, they paid her no mind. At length, the old woman grunted. "Huh," she said. "I s'pose you'd better have some more." And she continued feeding the seven inmates till all the cookies--the whole big platter full--were gone. She turned away, muttering gravely, when suddenly there was a loud Pop! like the sound of an emerging Champagne cork. The old lady swivelled her head at once, just in time to observe the gray squirrel change into a little boy of about 5. Another Pop! and the orange cat changed into a little girl. And so it went, with each furry little creature magically transforming into a young child. They wore no clothes, of course, but seemed upset by their nakedness not at all. They sat in a little semicircle facing the old woman, waiting expectantly. "Okay, Beryl," she addressed the former cat, "What is there to steal at the Dickens's place?" Beryl began speaking rapidly in a little girl voice, while the old woman tried to write down what she said. And so it went with the other children, who retailed what they knew of private treasures in the vale and how best to purloin them. "Now, I'll get the older children to actually clean the town out," she muttered to no one in particular. The children still stared up at her from their seats on the wooden floor. "But for you kids, I've got a new assignment: find out what there is to take in Shelbyville; it's only a half mile away." The seven little faces bobbled up and down in agreement. "Now," she said seriously, "as for your disguise." So she fed them chicken wings and beer and switched on a football game, turning them all into animals again. About the author:
Bill Tope is a retired Public Assistance caseworker who lives in Illinois (almost in the very shadow of the majestic Gateway Arch) with his mean little cat Baby. He has been a construction worker, a cook, a nude model, you name it. Once upon a time there was a girl, she had a chronic illness that made her have balance problems and dizzy spells. It was very dangerous for her to just walk around like a normal person. She was a constant fall-risk. So one day, she met the sweet little prince who would be the one to save her. She ordered him online and he was sent out to her by airplane. She went to the airport and picked up her little prince. He was a cute fluffy ball of fuzz hiding in the back of the small crate he was in. She reached in and called him by name, for she had already named her little prince. His name was Amos. He inched towards her as she put her hand into the crate to try to get him to come out from his hiding place. The little prince crawled towards her and climbed gratefully into her lap. She gave him some water and a little food to comfort him after his long cross-country trip. She put a collar and a leash on him and took him for a short walk to stretch his furry legs. Then they climbed into the car together where the little prince met the girl’s husband who was just as happy to see the little prince. The girl’s husband drove them home while the little prince sat in the girl’s lap the whole way home. She held him tightly and scratched him behind the ears and spoke to him softly the whole drive to his new forever home. The man and the girl took the little prince to their humble home where prince Amos was allowed to sleep on the soft and warm bed with his two new friends. They slept together as a pack, which was something the young prince was familiar with doing, having recently left his litter himself. The little prince was so smart that within two weeks, he had already figured out what his job was supposed to be, and he taught himself how to alert the girl when she was having balance problems, and he would walk beside her and take her hand in his mouth and pull her to the ground gently, so she could avoid falling down. Amos then went to service dog school with the girl to learn how to do his job better. Amos was always at the top of his class. He learned very fast and outshone all the other dogs in his classes. He got to the point where could alert his girl with 100% accuracy. A feat unseen before by his trainers. Amos got so good that when his girl had to start using a walker to be able to walk, that Amos could use his front feet to kick the girl’s feet gently as she walked to keep her gait proper as she used her new walking aid. All of these things were instinctual for the little prince. And he consistently helped her with her ailments. Then a day came where the little prince sniffed his girl and he smelled something different. He alerted her and she checked where he was sniffing. She called her doctor and told her doctor that her precious boy had found a lump. Her doctor said to always trust the dog, especially Amos because he was so in tune with the girl. And Amos was right. The lump got checked and the girl was diagnosed with cancer for the second time. This time the cancer had metastasized, and had spread throughout her body. Amos was on constant alert for new symptoms and ways to care for his girl. The cancer had entered the girl’s brain and paralyzed half of her body. So Amos kicked up his skills on his own and started alerting her to various side-effects and issues. He continued to help her to walk as much as he could and he started helping her to move her wheelchair. One arm was weaker than the other, so Amos took on the job of trying to pull the chair straight. He continued to help her in every way he could with alerting her to impending seizures. And helping her on her left side whenever her muscles failed her. This is not a story about how a damsel in distress needs a man to save her. In this girl’s case, she needed a service dog, and Amos the little prince came to her rescue. He was the love of her life, and he rescued her every single day for as long as they knew one another. And they lived happily ever after as they cared for one another constantly. About the author:
Judy lives in Arizona with her husband and her Giant Schnoodle Amos. She is a former library clerk. She struggles with a chronic illness and stage 4 cancer. Judy writes mostly fantasy, but occasionally delves into other genres. She writes books and short stories for all ages. Visit her website at JudyLunsford.com.a |
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