Whisper

You know how people joke about a voice in the head that tells a person to do things? Things like flicking a lightswitch 23 times before they leave a room, because if they don’t, they’ll die? Voices that tell them to kill things, burn things?

Well, that’s me. Sometimes my job is easy, other times they put up resistance. Either way, I do love my job.

Nobody but the person I’m with knows what I say. And not even they know what “triggers” me. And they don’t even know that I’m always there, with them, whether I’m vocal or not.

22.10.05.

Today I started working with Alice. She’s a very quiet girl, with next to no self-confidence. She’s incredibly withdrawn. Timid. One of the easy cases.

Right now, we’re sitting in a cafe. We’re not eating – just nervously huddled over a cooling cup of tea hoping the world will pass us by. We’re staring out of the window, hoping that all the schoolkids that pass by will ignore her. She’s quite the target. They can smell her fear of them a mile away, and everyone knows how cruel children can be.

BANG! A schoolboy kicks the window, laughing as we leap out of our chair in fright, shattering our cup to the ground and shaking with adrenaline and embarrassment. We feel completely humiliated and victimised. This turns to anger, and we march out of the cafe, ignoring the waitress, who protests that we haven’t paid.

A few yards ahead of us we see the boy laughing with his friends about how he scared the life out of a stupid ugly girl. We hurry over to the boy with a smile on our face, and as he turns to us to deliver a taunt, we lock our fingers onto his jaw. The mocking in his eyes turns to fear, and our smile widens.

This won’t be difficult, just a little messy. The crowds are thickening now, and the police are no doubt on their way, so we don’t have much time. With a forceful snap, we leave the boy’s lower jaw hanging by threads from the rest of his face.

It was easy to get away. The crowds were huge and the police slow.

2.2.06.

We’re just walking back from the market. We don’t feel comfortable outside today, so we just bought our stuff and left. We’re nearly home now. Three teenagers are making their way towards us, though, so we try to look confident and nonchalant.

We think we’ve made it, but as we’re passing, one feigns throwing their basketball at our head, making us jump into the road where a speeding Toyota narrowly misses us. This has caught everyone’s attention and they’re all laughing at us.

As our face burns red, we grab the girl by the hair as she’s walking away. We turn her to face us – incredible – even though we have her by the hair, her features are still twisted into a mocking jeer! So we do what we always do. Smile. The smile always gets them, and now she looks incredibly uncertain.

We’re making sure she’ll never pull that stupid face again. We dig our nails into her face and start work, because this won’t be easy.

Her flesh is coming off a lot easier than expected. We’d hoped it’d come off in a relatively clean sheet, but we’re having to use our nails to work out clumps of her face. They’re hitting the pavement with satisfying wet thuds.

We think she’s screaming, but we can’t really tell. All we hear is our own gleeful laughter. We decide it’d be fitting to make her eat a few of these handfuls of her face. They’re just going to waste on the street, getting all dirty. This is going well. She doesn’t like it much, and catches us off guard as we’re then hurled into the busy road by the girl.

…Alice died at 3:47pm.

3.2.06.

Today, I met Tom. He’s a very quiet boy…

Copyrighted KPJ 2008

Posted by Wordmobi