The Little Voice

by Joss Sheldon

  “Ice-” she said with the earnest look of a discerning professor.

  “Cream,” I replied.

  “Monsters-”

  “Scary”

  “Real-”

  “Me”

  “Make believe-”

  “Cartoons”

  “Lion-”

  “Roar!!!”

  “Savage-”

  “Free”

  “Apple-”

  “Orange”

  “Fact-”

  “Lessons”

  “Fiction-”

  “Cartoons”

  “Little creatures-”

  “Cartoons!”

  As we played, Dr Saeed filled out a form; ticking off boxes and scribbling down notes in a particularly haphazard fashion.

  She paused. Then she looked up at me for the briefest of moments. Her face looked utterly sincere. Serious. Blank.

  Then it softened. Dr Saeed looked as if she was about to smile. But she resisted the urge and maintained her nonpartisan expression.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m going to show you some pictures. I want you to tell me what you see.”

  I nodded.

  The egot frowned. Its red forehead turned puce and magnolia. It looked like it was in a state of deep contemplation; judging Dr Saeed. But it didn’t say a word. It just paced up and down the alleys of my brain’s motor strip; nodding its head and twisting its whiskers.

  Dr Saeed placed a pile of A4 cards on her lap and then flipped the first one up against her bosom. It featured a picture of a cat and a dog who were both chasing after the same ball.

  I looked back at Dr Saeed.

  “What do you see?” she nudged.

  “A picture,” I replied.

  “Yes. Go on…”

  “I see a picture.”

  “What’s in the picture?”

  “A cat and a dog.”

  “And what are they doing?”

  “They’re chasing a ball.”

  “How does that make you feel?”

  “Huh?”

  “What emotions do you feel when you look at this picture?”

  “I don’t feel anything.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “No. It’s stupid. Cats don’t chase after balls.”

  Dr Saeed nodded. She flipped through her cards, which all featured random scenes. And she continued to ask her random questions.

  Then she came to a picture of a young boy. A little angel was standing on one of his shoulders and a little demon was standing on the other.

  I looked back at Dr Saeed.

  “What do you see?” she nudged.

  “A boy with an angel and a demon on his shoulders.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “Mean?”

  “What’s the message?”

  “It’s a picture.”

  “But what’s the picture trying to say?”

  I giggled. It was one of this unwelcome giggles which spurt out of you sometimes. It was a girly giggle; both ear-splittingly shrill and tepidly twee. It was embarrassing. So I swallowed it down as quickly as I could. And then I answered the doctor in a haughty voice:

  “Pictures don’t speak,” I said. “Pictures don’t say anything at all.”

  The egot smiled.

  Dr Saeed scowled.

  “Why do you think there’s an angel on the boy’s shoulder?” she asked.

  “Perhaps it got lost,” I replied.

  “Lost?”

  “Yeah, lost. Angels belong in heaven. And that’s not heaven - there’s a demon there. You don’t get demons in heaven.”

  The nauseous aroma of bleach skipped through the disinfected air.

  “Do you think the angel might be there to speak to the boy?”

  “Eh?”

  “The angel and the demon are both stood with the boy. Usually, when people stand together, they end up talking. Do you think the characters in this picture might end up talking?”

  “I dunno.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Well, maybe. I can’t see it, but I suppose it’s possible.”

  Dr Saeed flipped her cards back down onto her lap.

  “Do angels and demons ever speak to you?” she asked.

  She tilted her head and gazed into my eyes.

  “No,” I replied. “I’ve never seen an angel or a demon before. Not in real life.”

  Dr Saeed took a deep breath.

  “Yew,” she said. “Last week you told Mr Grunt that a demon told you to destroy your classroom. Is that correct?”

  “No,” I replied. “I didn’t say that. That’s not what happened.”

  I meant what I was saying. To me, the egot wasn’t a ‘demon’. It was a friend. And it didn’t ‘tell’ me to destroy the classroom. It suggested that I act like a savage. There’s a difference. A big, big difference.

  “Yew?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you telling the truth?”

  “Yes Miss.”

  “So you didn’t tell your headmaster that you heard a voice inside your head?”

  “Well, yeah, I did tell him that.”

  “And that voice belonged to a demon?”

  “No. Not a demon.”

  “Where did that voice come from?”

  “From a creature.”

  “What sort of creature?”

  “A strange one. But a nice one.”

  “And this creature, it spoke to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it lives inside your head?”

  Dr Saeed’s questions were unsettling me. I felt that I was being interrogated, like a defendant in a court of law. I was in the dock and Dr Saeed was my prosecutor. The hangman’s noose was waiting. Loose lips could swing the verdict.

  I didn’t say a word.

  Dr Saeed didn’t move an inch.

  The egot skipped through the corridors of my mind, slid down a tendon, and ran a spindly claw through its bright yellow hair. It finally looked like it was ready to speak.

  “Well, hello!” it said in its quiet voice; taking a full five seconds to say the word ‘well’, and echoing the word ‘hello’. “If you want to get out of here you should probably deny my existence. Maybe tell the good doctor that you invented me. I expect they’ll think you’re mad if you tell them the truth. And they do horrible things to mad people. Horrible, horrible things. No, I don’t think you’d want that. No, no.”

  I was supposed to tell the truth. That’s what good boys do.

  “Horrible, horrible things,” the egot repeated.

  It bounced its belly as if it was a ball.

  “They put mad people in straightjackets, in padded cells. They feed them gruel. Sticky, grey gruel. Nothing else, only gruel. And they electrocute them every day.

  “Horrible, horrible things. No, you wouldn’t want that.”

  The egot sank back into my brain matter, like a cat in a beanbag, and removed a piece of chicken from its claw.

  “I’m only telling you what you want to hear,” it said without looking up. “You can get away with this. You can avoid those horrible things.”

  Dr Saeed cleared her throat.

  “And it lives inside your head?” she repeated.

  I looked down at my feet.

  “No Miss,” I replied.

  “Where does the creature live?”

  “There’s no creature, Miss.”

  I paused for effect.

  “I made it up Miss. I’m sorry.”

  My body didn’t know how to react. My heart pounded against my innards; ‘Boom! Smash! Boom, boom, smash!’ My stomach vibrated. My chest shook.

  I felt queasy. I felt sick.

  “Really Yew?”

  “Yes Miss, really. I didn’t want to take responsibility for my actions. It was ever so naughty of me. I really do feel ashamed.”

  Dr Saeed sat there in silence; staring at me with those earnest eyes of hers and that impartial face.

  I was silent t
oo.

  It’s like Lao Tzu says; ‘Silence is a source of great strength’.

  Well, I wanted to show ‘great strength’.

  And, in the end, it worked. Dr Saeed broke the silence before I did:

  “Have you ever heard voices?” she asked me after many minutes had passed. “Have you ever heard voices inside your head?”

  “Never,” I lied. “Not even once.”

  FOUR

  I was made to see to Dr Saeed every week.

  She probed gently; interrogating me like a loquacious detective. But I don’t think I ever said much myself. I spent most of my time playing with the doctor’s wooden train set. I was fascinated by that thing. I loved its spinning wheels and its clunky track.

  Dr Saeed wrote lots of notes. And I mean lots of notes. Reams of the things! In lined notebooks and on blank pads. Using gaudy ink and ashen pencil. Her endless squiggles usurped countless pages. Her meandering pen created a never-ending maze of tangled lines.

  Then, after a year had passed, Dr Saeed packed those notes away, skedaddled and never returned. I had to attend maths classes after that.

  I wasn’t entirely sure why Dr Saeed upped and left. But I think the egot might have had a part to play. It was my guide. It helped me to steer clear of the traps which were hidden in Dr Saeed’s innocuous questions.

  The egot had begun to visit me on a regular basis. Its sage advice had protected me from precarious situations. And its mischievous temperament had lifted a curtain on my self-restraint. I’d started to do the things I’d always wanted to do, deep down, but had never had the courage to perform.

  Please understand, dear reader, that I’m only talking about small things. And it has been said that small things amuse small minds. Perhaps I did have a small mind. But Lao Tzu says to ‘Achieve greatness in little things’. And I guess that was what I was trying to do.

  One morning, for example, our class was waiting to go to assembly. Our teacher that year, Mr O’Donnell, had left the room. So I took advantage. Yes I did! I got all the girls in our class to stand with their legs apart. And then I slid on my back beneath them.

  Gavin Gillis joined me. You could always rely on Gavin to join in the fun. He was such a good egg, that lad. He had a sense of mischief which was almost equal to my own. And he always had the best packed-lunches, which he shared with all his friends. Yeah, I really liked Gavin.

  Anyway, Gavin and I slid between the girls’ legs. We saw all their knickers! We saw them all!

  Amy McLeish’s were pink with white polka-dots. Kelly Evans’s were like something out of the eighteen-hundreds; giant things the colour of a brown paper bag. And Chantelle Stevens wore a slinky thong. She was only seven years old, the devious little minx!

  It was a violation; a violation of those girls and a violation of society’s expectations. One simply wasn’t supposed to do that sort of thing. But it felt great. It felt like I’d satisfied a gnawing urge. Like Gavin and I had released our inner-beasts; our true, savage selves.

  The egot had encouraged me to do it.

  “You’d like to see their knickers,” it had prompted whist leaning against my brainstem. “This might be your only chance. You’ll get away with it. And you’ll like it. Think of all those beautiful little panties.”

  The egot spoke so quietly that I couldn’t help but give it my undivided attention. It spoke with such indifference, as if unconcerned with my presence, that it pulled me in. The sweet melody in its voice put me into a heady trance. It intoxicated me. It threw me down onto the ground and propelled me beneath those untouched thighs and virgin groins; sucking in their femininity; frolicking in my wayward tomfoolery.

  But it’d be wrong to blame the egot for my behaviour. The truth is that I’d wanted to look up those girls’ skirts. I’d had an insatiable urge to get close to that forbidden fruit. The egot had helped me to overcome my inhibitions, but it hadn’t turned me into another person. Far from it.

  Lao Tzu says, ‘When you are content to be yourself, without comparing or competing, everybody will respect you’.

  Well, I was being ‘myself’. My real self. And I think my classmates did ‘respect’ me for that. No-one told Mr O’Donnell what we’d done. Gavin and I got away with our indiscretions, just as the egot had predicted.

  I got away with a lot over the months which followed.

  I got away with copying Snotty McGill’s classwork. I got away with eating a chocolate bar I took from Mr O’Donnell’s desk. And I got away with urinating in a plant pot. Twice! Although I did get caught the third time I did it.

  “Put on an innocent face,” the egot told me. Its own face faded from a guilty shade of red to a coy shade of pink. “Tell Mr O’Donnell you’re sorry. You couldn’t hold it in. You’ll never do it again.

  “I’m sure he’ll be sympathetic. Yes, yes.”

  Mr O’Donnell listened as I repeated the egot’s words. He rolled his eyes and then continued on with the class.

  Coltish smiles flickered across my classmates’ cheeky faces. Their stifled giggles rang in my ears. I was sure they were laughing with me, not at me. And that made me feel so proud! So rebellious! So darn-tooting invincible!

  I puffed my chest. I felt like I was the king of my castle and the master of my class.

  I was caught again the fifth time I peed in the plant pot. As a punishment, I was made to use a potty for two weeks. That was pretty embarrassing. It brought me down to earth with a real bump.

  The plant died.

  I stopped urinating in public.

  And I started to receive other little punishments too.

  I had to sit cross-legged on the floor, facing a sudatory radiator, the time I used Sleepy Sampson’s sleeve as a handkerchief. My face became as red as a prostitute’s lamp and my legs became completely numb. But I was back at my desk within thirty minutes.

  I was made to sit in silence when I pulled a moony. But I still whispered to my friends, to stand up for myself, and to rail against the system. The egot told me to do it. It puffed its chest and I puffed mine.

  And I was made to read a book whilst my classmates were outside learning about plants, because I’d farted really loudly during a school assembly. It was a particularly squishy fart, if the truth be told. That was a little naughty. It made the egot laugh.

  But none of those punishments ever stopped me from listening to the egot.

  The egot encouraged me to hide the chalk, in a failed attempt to stop our maths class from going ahead. It encouraged me to reset the clocks, so that we’d be able to leave school an hour early. That almost worked. And it encouraged me to cut clumps out of Stacey Fairclough’s hair. Well, I felt I was doing her a favour; she looked so sweet whenever she had short hair.

  I got away with all those things and more. It made me feel pretty damn invincible. It made me feel pretty damn great indeed!

  FIVE

  Each time I listened to the egot I felt a little freer. A little happier.

  The egot was my drug. When I followed its suggestions, I got high. For sure, getting caught was like a comedown; wretched, sickly and bleak. But I became ambivalent to my shame, I overcame my guilt, and I survived my punishments. I still wanted more. I still craved more.

  I was addicted.

  But that all changed when I overdosed on the egot’s advice…

  It happened on a crisp spring morning; on one of those dewy days where the ground is luminous and the air is forever fresh. But I was stuck inside, and the stifling nature of school was getting to me. I’m a bird, you see; I need to fly free. I need space and freedom. And, back then, I needed to be a child; to frolic like a child, laugh like a child, and cause mischief like a child. But there I was, forced to sit behind a desk; held captive by four insensitive walls and enslaved by my teacher’s omnipotent authority.

  I suppose, being stuck inside like that caused me to contract what Richard Louv calls ‘Nature Deficit Disorder’. It’s a disorder that develops when a person doesn’t spend enough time
outdoors. As well as leading to a wide range of behavioural problems, Nature Deficit Disorder can also dull the senses, increase the rate of illness, and lead to attention difficulties. According to Dr Stephanie Wear, being stuck inside can increase your stress hormones, blood pressure and resting heartbeat.

  But, if you’d asked me about how I felt back then, I wouldn’t have intellectualized things in that manner. I wouldn’t have mentioned the likes of Louv or Wear. That’s not how my mind worked.

  My issues were emotional. I felt them. I felt trapped by the drip-drip indoctrination of the national curriculum. I felt like a prisoner in that stuffy classroom. And I felt that I was losing my individuality; wearing a generic school uniform and following a generic set of school rules.

  I just didn’t feel natural. I didn’t feel right. I wanted to break free, run around, and revel in the playground of infinity. I wanted to be young. I wanted to be a member of that endangered species; the child in its natural environment.

  I inhaled, sighed, and gazed out of the window.

  I saw a rainbow. To me, it looked like a crown atop the sky. It was beautiful. Vibrant. Dazzling.

  The violet was so vivid! The indigo was so indulgent! The red was so real!

  My glutinous eyes feasted on that rainbow. It filled me with wonder. I could feel its magic. I was entranced by its mystery.

  I wanted to run out of our classroom and chase that rainbow down. I wanted to dig up the pots of gold which were buried at either end. I wanted to twirl in that rainbow’s colourful vapour and frolic in its luminous mist.

  I wanted to take my shoes off and feel the grass between my toes.

  I wanted to dance in the rain.

  But I couldn’t. I had to stay inside, trapped within that airless classroom. Suffocating. Feeling restless, tense and twitchy.

  And so, during Mr O’Donnell’s seventh lesson on past participles, I started to laugh out loud. I laughed for the sake of laughing. Belly-laugh followed belly-laugh. Thunderous guffaws knocked me over. And hearty convulsions forced me to roll around.

  I was following the egot’s advice:

  “Let go,” it whispered to me whilst tipping its flat cap. The word ‘go’ had echoed four times; ‘Go-go-go-go’.