Hey Everyone, this is my entry to Vernon's Bed contest. In the story we must personify a bed so here's my story. Critisism is much appreciated!
Speechless
I still remember the day she came. The overseer led her into the room where all of the kids slept in bunk bed cots. I was near the window, staring out at the rainy day, watching time drip by. None of the other orphans had caught my interest like she did. Curly brown hair, slightly ratty, squiggled down to her thin, petite shoulders. She couldn’t have been any more than eight years old. But it was her blue eyes that haunted me, weary with her travels, tired of everything she had endured. She looked older than she was.
She stared around with those eyes. I straightened myself up, trying to get her attention. A boy walked into the room. “New here huh?” he said, looking at her with wide eyes.
She nodded, her lips set in a thin line. She hugged her arms around her shoulders, trying to keep herself warm through her threadbare dress.
“You can put yourself over by that empty one over there,” the boy said, pointing at me. I smiled in her direction, but she barely noticed.
“Where you from?” he asked. The girl returned his question with a blank stare and he narrowed his eyes. “You dumb or something? I asked you a question,” he said, taking a threatening step towards her.
Fear replaced the blank look now and her eyes widened, shaking her head. She backed away from him, tripping over her own suitcase.
The boy laughed at her. “Well anyway, welcome to hell. You’re lucky if you ever get out of here,” he said with a mean glance. With that he walked out of the room.
I watched her carefully as she slowly stood up, brushing herself off. Without a word she came over to me and placed her suitcase beneath my wooden frame. I, unlike my fellow beds, had no bunk mate. I had always been starved for company. She sat down on the bed, taking out a rather beaten up bear from her suitcase. She hugged it tight against her chest and the springs of my mattress squeaked with sympathy. As she curled up among my starched sheets, I wished for a moment that I was human. I would love to be her friend, to help her, but alas, a bed can only do so much. I tried to make my sheets warm as she slowly drifted off to a turbulent night sleep.
* * *
The days passed, and from her nightmares I was able to piece together what little there was left of her broken life. Her mother had left her when she was less than three years old, leaving her in the care of her alcoholic father. One day after school, he never came to pick her up. I watched her in her dreams, the worst one being the memory of that day. She kept glancing at her surroundings, looking for him, but every few minutes she returned to examine her hands, disappointed. Tears leaked down her face in a never ending stream as night approached. When darkness had completely set in, a police officer who was scouting out the area pulled up to the bench.
“You okay, kid?” he asked. When she didn’t respond, the officer got out of his car. Kneeling down so he was eye level with the trembling girl, he asked, “Where are your parents?” Again, she refused to answer him, the blood draining from her face in fear. He slowly stood up, looking around.
“You want to go for a ride?” he asked. She nodded and he helped her into the car. He drove her back to the station. In the white building, the Police Force of Hanover, the other officers asked her questions but she didn’t say a word. She was too young to remember where she lived. The police put posters of her all over town, but they never found her father. That’s how she ended up here, silent as she always was, her teddy bear clutched against her chest.
One day when she was outside playing with the other children, the overseer entered the room. She was speaking with a woman dressed in a white lab coat. “This is where she sleeps,” the overseer pointed at me.
The woman nodded, “Does she have trouble sleeping?”
The overseer shrugged. “No, she sleeps like a baby. Why?”
I wanted to cry out, “No, you liar, she never sleeps. Her nightmares keep her awake. How can you be so blind?”
The woman wrote something down in her notebook. “It’s just that when people are mute, it’s has something to do with fear. Since she’s an orphan, maybe something or someone from her previous home kept her quiet for good.”
I was shocked. Mute. At least we had something in common. Our natures required both of us to be silent; hers because of her fear and mine because, well, as much as I hated to admit it, I was an inanimate object. The psychologist worked with her day in and day out for years but the girl never said a word. I tried my best to comfort her, trying to erase her dreams of darkness and fill her mind with dreams of light. Slowly, the color returned to her face, but she never truly healed.
The years passed. The only indication of the girl, who slept nestled in my covers, changing was that the tips of her toes began to protrude from the bottom of my bed frame. She was tall and thin, beautiful in a haunted sort of way. But since she was silent, no one ever came to adopt her. None of the other children associated with her because of her silent nature, and I looked on, powerless, as she was shunned.
Her loneliness led to more damaging effects. Soon, she came to bed smelling like tobacco. At night, she would take sharp tools and spill blood from her wrists onto my sheets. I was stained with her hurt, watching, without being able to help the little girl who was left on that park bench years ago struggle inside her teenage body. The salt of her tears stained my own pillowcase, and soon I wasn’t able to tell if they were hers, or my own.
Then one day she was gone, disappearing entirely from the home. From the conversation that the overseer had with those around her, the girl had grown too old and was required to leave. I felt empty for the years following her departure. We had found something in common, the fact that we couldn’t speak, me and that girl. But it had not been enough for her to want to stay or for me to try and help her. Our common ground was our downfall. I know what it’s like to be alone and forgotten. If only I could speak, I would be able to tell the world of my hurt and share in those whose pain is similar to mine. But, now I resign myself to my fate to be alone, speechless, and empty, forever.
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