She
hears everything.
She
hears the whispers of the curtains as the winds arouse them from a
nap. She hears the shuffling of feet on tiles, the clicking of pens,
and the rising and falling of voices. She also hears stories. Many
stories, in fact, but instead of paying attention to the words, she
clings onto the voice, for it sounds so very familiar, yet she can
never quite put her finger to it….
The most prominent
sound, though, is the beeping.
Most days she
relaxes on the ocean. She lays on her back, slowly drifting on the
gentlest of waves. She is never pulled under, yet always stays
afloat. The waves never let her drown. Sometimes she becomes the
waves, rising and falling, falling and rising, then rising and
falling again. Usually, the sky above is hazy, a white sheet, a
blanket of innocence. Fog is carefully stitched onto the sky, and the
air is clothed with uncertainty. The atmosphere is soft, but with an
edge sharper than the beeping sound coming from nowhere and
everywhere.
Beeeeeeep.
Beeeeeeep. Beeeeeeep.
Sometimes the ocean
disappears, and she stands on a glass floor with white sheets hanging
from the ceiling that drape to the floor. The room is vast, and she
is surrounded by sheets after sheets after sheets. Every time she
pulls one away, there is always another. And suddenly, she is
running, tearing through the cloth, hoping to find whatever lies on
the other end of the never-ending room.
Before she can
reach that which does not exist, she becomes a wave again.
Some days, she is
in neither the glass room nor the ocean, but a black-and-white grass
field filled with roses of no colour. And that’s when she hears the
stories. The voice of a young girl, no doubt. A young girl who reads
fairytales and nursery rhymes and other stories that fit her best.
She always tries to find the young girl, following her voice
throughout the meadow. Yet somehow, as she seems to near the echoing
voice, it gets farther and farther away, always out of reach, never
quite close enough for her to catch.
She never finds the
little girl.
What she does find,
though, is loneliness. Sometimes it is so overwhelming that all she
wants to do is give up. And if she feels that way, even for a second,
the glass beneath her feet breaks, and she falls. Every second she
gains acceleration, and only until she wants to fight again does the
falling stop. Never has her body hit the ground, and never has her
body wanted to completely fall, to completely break.
She is already
broken enough.
Today, she is back
floating on top of the waves. Water streams down her face, or perhaps
they are tears. Her tears? Or someone else’s? Often she is
confused, but confusion doesn’t bother her in this dreamy world.
All that matters is the steady rising and falling of the waves and
the comfort of the sounds around her.
There it is.
Beeeeeeep. Beeeeeeep. Beeeeeeep.
Her skin
tingles. A face stains the sky above her. Blue eyes, blue eyes,
blue eyes. They remind her so very much of the ocean she lays on.
Now, she realizes the ocean is not the colour of water, yet it is a
kaleidoscope of blue eyes all blended into one another, like buckets
of different paints all dumped onto the same empty canvas and
becoming a shade that looks like one but so many all at the same
time.
Then she leaves the
ocean.
Beeeeeeep.
Beeeeeeep. Beeeeeeep.
Now she is
back on top of the glass floor. Her eyes dare to look down. Beneath
her, she sees faces. They are streaked with tiredness, wearing
happiness blended into sadness seamlessly. Blue eyes, blue eyes,
blue eyes. She recognizes their faces, but like so many things,
she doesn’t fully remember. It is all a distant memory to her.
And now she is in
the field again. Grass tickles her ankles. Gentle breezes rush over
her face, lifting her hair and letting it fall slowly. Above her, a
sky erupts into a voice. It reads her something about a poisonous
apple and a mirror, but she does not give any mind to the story. It
is always about the voice she does not remember but almost knows.
Yet something about
today is different, she is thinking. But she does not know what yet.
She meanders
through the meadows, not trying to catch the voice, only wanting to
listen. The honey of the girl’s voice drips from the sky and lands
on the grass like morning dew. She stops walking. The voice has never
been this clear before, this beautiful. It feels like she has taken
misplaced cotton out of her ears, and suddenly she can hear
everything, from the voice of above to the beating of her heart (if
it is beating, that is, at all).
Beeeeeeep.
Beeeeeeep. Beeeeeeep.
Could it be? The
voice is louder? Yes, it is louder!
And suddenly, she
is tearing through sheets hanging from the ceiling, one after the
other, chasing after the voice that has become even more louder than
before! She runs faster than ever. Everything in her way is ripped to
shreds, pieces and pieces of cloth lying in her wake. She is almost
there! Yes, she has almost caught the voice! Her feet move quicker
and quicker, her steps becoming shorter and shorter. She reaches out
her hand to grab it-
-But
then she stops. She hears the familiar become the unfamiliar.
Beep, beep,
beep. Beep, beep, beep, beeeeeep.
The sound
itself is crying for help! She panics. The voice stops reading. The
voice is screaming. She feels like screaming. The beeping goes out of
control. She is out of control. The grass becomes rough in a sudden
wind that feels like hurricanes. The sky is falling apart.
Suddenly, she is
back on the ocean, but the emptiness above her is dark. It is beeping
erratically, and the waves are the roughest they had ever been in her
whole existence here. Water fills her lungs as she struggles to
breathe. The beeping is now coming from her ears, or perhaps it feels
that way because of how loud it is. There are so many voices now, yet
she cannot tell where any of them are coming from! A strident voice
rips the air, elephant footsteps thunder across the sky, and she is
swept away so violently, so far away from the ocean she thought was
home…
That’s when her
body breaks.
The ocean gives way to the glass floor, which gives way to nothing.
She is falling through threads, like those of a spider, and she
becomes wrapped in a cocoon. Blue eyes are everywhere. The little
girl’s voice is not screaming anymore but exclaiming. Of what is
not known.
That’s when she
hits the ground, and her body breaks into a million stars, scattering
throughout the emptiness they call space. Yet this makes her feel
more whole rather than broken, perhaps for the new constellations
create a different her, a person she used to know.
Silence embraces
the darkness.
She is not
scattered anymore. Instead, she is a sky full of her constellations.
She is not under the broken glass floor anymore, but at the end of
the never-ending room, all the sheets dancing behind her. There is
nothing in her way anymore. Nothing to tear, nothing to run through.
She is free from her entanglement of a prison, from an ocean that
tried to drown her, from the meadows that always taunted her.
There
is a light in front of her. She grabs it tightly. She is not afraid.
She is gone.
Beeeeeeep.
Beeeeeeep. Beeeeeeep.
~
A pale girl is
lying on a bed. Her eyes open. White bed, white sheets, and white
walls surround her. A much younger girl is staring wide-eyed at the
pale girl. A book from her hand drops.
Many people in
white apparel are running around. It is chaotic in the room; it is
contradictory towards the dreamy world the girl once lived in.
Then
the pale girl looks left.
She sees a monitor.
On it is a red line going steadily up and down.
The screen speaks.
Beeeeeeep. Beeeeeeep. Beeeeeeep…
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