The Voice

An excerpt from a short story - wider context or progression unknown at this stage!

The day drips awake.  What time is it?  It’s dark, really dark. That kind of darkness throws a silencing blanket over the town before the dawn.

 

“Do I dare?” the voice hesitates before cautious flexing of the body, “Ouch. Yep, shouldn’t have done that.”  Lists of reasons scroll over the lowered screens of closed eyelids.  Reasons to fight the soreness and face the day appear dutifully first, and then, her reasons. “Up” the voice spoke through the stillness, “Ok. Up.”

 

Feet pad along the relentless floor.  Squeaks of unattended metal precede a welcome rush of thousands of healing drops.  Feeling the sting run away with the water, she tenderly tenses her muscles.  Absorbing the pain, a rough sponge scrubs away the guilt and scores a raw, blank surface for the new day. 

 

She stares into the clear glass, peering at a hopeless face that shows her no enlightenment, offers no revelation, and no relief. “Really. No. Wait, really?” her voice pushes her mind into gear, “why is this a big deal. It’s just my life, just little me, amongst all of this, it can hardly be history.”  She braces her thoughts with clammy hands clenching the harsh white functional porcelain.

 

A sigh escapes, which, to the credit of her mind, comes not from no hope, but from the tiresome search for a fleck of white in the blackness, or a speck of black in the blinding white. “Really? Can I really come out of this alive?” answered by silence she probes the edges of reason further, “Well, it’s better to be a whole of someone that once was, than a half of someone haunting reality, like a creep. Isn’t it?” Her legs pace mechanically and then stop. She is staring blankly in front of a choice, a very new, but not unexpected, choice, all the more confusing because she saw it coming. She can’t use her instinct.

 

The uniform has no identifying patches yet the power of commanding silence is woven into each fibre. It moulds the wearer to it.  “If I put that on” she considers, “I know what to do next. I know who I am. Nobody.”  They’d be looking today, looking for a ghost.

 

She considers the known harsh fibres of the khaki, wool, and black, very black, clothes that lie in expectation, and then turns slowly to the new, normal, bright, but daring clothes that offer a mask of freedom.  “There is shelter in the dark; lonely, harsh and hope depriving, yes, but safe,” she reasons.

 

Her mind races to beat the unstoppable tick of day, “Can I misdirect them �" they’d be looking for me not as I really am, not as me, but me as a shadow.” Her mind bargains, “They will look in the dark,” and then she decides.

 

Her coerced body steps out into the day and into the mercy of the light.  Disorientating steps take her forwards, across the eternal cobbles of the town until the warmth of the sun appears.

 

“This is it,” chants the Voice “No more lies, no more time. No more hiding.”  She looks up, catches a reflection, and for the first time sees herself looking back.  “This is it. This is me” determines Rebecca as reveals a divinely jewel-toned turquoise dress perfectly matched to her every feature. Rebecca strides ahead into the light and into the future not looking, nor longer caring, to see them silently sweep the shadows that fall behind her. 

Author's Note

completely unfinished short story - not even really sure if I can 'make it work' or if it will go any further - comments...suggestions?

Ps - not sure that I like the name Rebecca here, but it suited at the time!