The Voice

‘Good morning,’ the voice said. CLAP.

She didn’t believe it. It was still dark; the moon was a milky eye peering through the oak tree. If it was morning then it was very early morning, that or she had slept right through to winter. The voice was quiet and directionless, carrying an echo that permitted her not to ignore it. The voice required attention and attention it received, although it had to wait 15 minutes or so first. It was clapping in her drousy eyes. CLAP, CLAP, CLAP.

                By this time Felicity’s mind was a jigsaw missing most of its pieces. She recalled a dinner for two, and a lady who called herself Madam. Words were attached to this memory: angry words. “Officious C**t” came to mind. She recalled dinner and gagging on dry pills in the dark, spitting up the hand of a strange dark-suited man. She recalled none else but the turtle, the Oaktree, and ‘Good morning.’ The voice began again. An omniscient whisper creeping along the shadows. It told her a story. A story of a chair-bound woman being marched along a sweeping golden hallway, alongside her was a woman (Officious c**t) and a strange suited man. The woman’s rejecting hand raised at the DING of an elevator. The suited man remained, and the two women arose with the clang of a cage and the second DING. The tall woman whispered something in the chair-bound woman’s ear, something sinister. The voice regretted that it could not recall exactly what was spoken, between the sleeping, crippled woman and the resplendent (officious c**t), only that it was sinister.

The voice was wrapping around her now. It was warm and consumed the air she breathed. She felt it tickle along her exposed flesh, the numbness was pulsing and infuriating.

‘God, look at you,’ the voice said.

She thought the voice was God, and maybe it was, but as it grew louder it seemed to take on a different form. One that was familiar and one she didn’t want to recognise.

‘Look at you, how did you get here?’

For the first time she hovered a hand across her folded knees. Across one she felt the cold rush of a metal buckle continuing into a tough leather strap. She hovered her hand further, basking in the space between her thighs. Then, she found her right thigh. It was mushy and pale, but she couldn’t feel it. She tried to nip the skin and she felt nothing but the creasing skin between her fingers. Then, her hand fell into a patch of nothing. The air that concluded the limb dropped her hand to the leather of the chair. Along the leather was a matted streak of something, perhaps dead skin and drying blood. She slept.