Censored

A woman becomes free, to her shackles, writing is the key.

Alyssa O’Connor

Censored

As she shoved the worn key into the ignition of her rusted maroon station wagon, as always, she reveled in the sound of the ancient engine revving to life. A grin crusted onto her weathered face, she rolled down the window to hear the furious roars of trucks as they whizzed past her on the city streets. While crossing the street outside her vibrant auburn stucco office, just for a moment, she paused to listen to the intermingling echoes of the sounds of the city; the tinkles of distant laughter and the shrill howling of sirens.

She also listened the playful whispers inside her own head; they were so quiet.

She swung open the dense iron plated door, started down the hall, and entered her minute office. As soon as she’d entered, she allowed her smirk to heighten at the sight of her space. Not an inch of wall remained visual, for plastered sloppily on its’ surface were masses of dog-eared fluorescent magazine articles, whole newspaper pages, and handwritten paragraphs and sketches, looking as if they’d been hastily torn from a notebook to be put on display.

It was her personal gallery of vision, of words.

In amongst the chaotic disarray stood a desk with just a dusty computer and keyboard atop it. The monitor illuminated, she opened a new document and begun to briskly type. With this, the stark page on the screen was ignited by the brilliant technicolor words that her spindly fingers uttered. They stirred from deep within her and erupted, suddenly, with a fiery passion, spilling outward onto the keyboard. They splattered, silently, onto the document like ants scrambling to escape an imploding hill. In the enclosed space, she felt so liberated, and with the frenzy of words swirling about she suddenly begun to tremble violently. Her mind was a cacophony. She felt tears streak down her cheeks, and a repressed maniacal shriek of laughter exploded from the confines of her throat. She was thrashing about, tearing the hung articles from their places, and also screeching, howling, wailing. At the final climax of her glorious creation, she slapped her fingers twice more across the keys, pressed print, and backed away from the screen.

Finished, she turned off the monitor and left, her new documents placed neatly inside a manila folder tucked under her arm.

The house was dark and the sheer blinds were drawn tightly closed when she arrived, its’ bleak nature only emphasized by its’ dismal smoke-colored furnishings. The thick blanket of dust that coated everything only added to this effect. She glanced over to the ticking clock that hung crooked on the wall, just above the window, even though she didn’t need to do so to know that in moments, he would arrive to the house too. She lowered her gaze to the window sill, bare if not for a ring of dirt; residual mess from a potted plant that had promptly died due to the dim lighting, as well as a thick black ballpoint pen.

Immediately, upon noticing the pen, she’d become ultimately fixated on it; the edges of her vision blurred and she was unable to focus on anything but the utensil. As if in a trance, she glided silently towards it, completely absorbed in the mystical allure of the object, reached out, and curled her trembling fingers around it. The frigid metal stung her outstretched hand. She took a sharp, gleeful, intake of breath as the sound of the pen clicking to life behind her thumb filled the room. She felt compelled, almost obligated, to do something, anything with it; it seemed to hold so much power. The point gleamed and glinted in the wavering rays of sun that peeked through the gaps in between the blinds, and all at once she was shuffling frenetically forward, her arm extended, stretching desperately to the wall ahead. The whispers that usually echoed softly in her ears had evolved into harsh murderous cries.

However, all the same, they remained internal; she was absolutely silent; voiceless.

The pen brushed the coarse surface of the wall, so airily that only the faintest marking could have been detected, but nonetheless it was there. Then, the words that had been condensed within her chest exploded violently out the end of the pen, splattering on the ceiling, the surrounding walls, and the partially drawn curtains.

The impulse was executed with such haste that the entire action was, to her, just a momentary blur. With glazed, glassy eyes she spun all around to admire her handiwork, her awesome stupor a cocktail composed of one part ballooning pride, and two parts absolutely feverish horror.

“Monster” gazed piercingly at her, scrawled messily on the space above the door frame.

“STOP” protruded menacingly from in between the fluttering ruffles of the curtains.

“Silence” swept down and screamed at her from the ceiling.

“Censored” stared wisely, emblazoned crookedly on the wall opposite her.

The doors swung open forcefully with a shrill creak of the hinge, and she whipped her head around with a start.

He had returned.

A burly man appeared in the light of the entrance, his eyes streaked with crimson, his unshaven gruff face creased with grime and apparent disgust. His meaty fingers were curled loosely around a nearly empty glass bottle, and his languid gait suggested that it was not his first. In a lumbering fog he trudged right passed where she stood, statuesque, swaying his thick ape-like arms from side to side. To her ultimate terror, as he passed her, his arm, equipped with the bottle, swung out and struck her hard in the gut, causing her to double over in alarm, the manila folder escaping from its’ snug safety under her arm. Time seemed to decelerate to a frame-by-frame motion picture as the folder crashed to the floor, the numerous precious documents inside dispersing widely like a drop of ink in a glass of water. Her breath was snagged deep inside her throat and she had to exercise immense caution to keep from trembling; the slight hope remained that he had not taken notice of her fault.

He had stopped, taking survey of the creamy white papers assaulted with her black ink, and then suddenly spun to face her, his eyes ablaze with a drunken fury. She exhaled shakily, the pen still gripped tightly in her fist. He started towards her, grunting ferociously, the glass bottle thrust high above his head. Inside, she was feral, moaning and shrieking, and yet she was frozen to the spot where she stood, and in a crude act of self-preservation she forcefully threw her arms straight out in front of her body.

She squeezed her eyes closed as his dense body connected with hers, and immediately a deep guttural howl of anguish radiated from the man. He staggered back, clutching a fresh wound in his abdomen, gushing impressive volumes of rosy liquid, his lips flapping open and closed, as if trying to utter words that did not exist. Then, he promptly flopped to the ground, limp. His eyes stared up vacantly, to the word “Silence” etched into the ceiling.

The pen, still protruding from his body, had cracked in the impact, the black ink combining with the growing pool of blood around him, appearing to her like a newly blossoming flower. She glanced at his face, frozen in eternal horror, and it struck her as somewhat comical. Without really registering her actions, she knelt down beside his still-warm body, dipped her calm, slender fingers in the liquid, and with a natural serenity floated back to the wall and began to write with it, humming quietly, so quietly.

She wrote.

And wrote.