by Shaun Allan
There was a steep dip, the surface treacherous with holes and dips and boulders. The ground beneath my feet shifted. My feet above the ground didn't.
I landed on my bum. It hurt. A small cloud of dust danced around me, laughing at my less than graceful decent. I coughed and it sounded flat as if the fullness of my voice had been squashed under my bottom by my fall. Something glinted in the setting sun, a flash that made me blink. I leaned forward and pulled the coin from the ground at my feet.
I almost said 'Hi.'
It was warm. I held it in my hands, letting the heat spread up my arms. I was suddenly cold and this was battling the chill into submission. I closed my eyes and let the desolation of the Hills wrap around me. For the first time in SO long, I didn't feel outcast.
Yes I had friends. Yes, Zoe and I were almost sisters, we were so close. But still. There was an edge - a boundary around me. A salt circle. I didn't know whether it was my own invention or that of others, but it was there. Mine, I suppose. People liked me, but I just couldn't give it all back.
In the Seven Hills, there was no-one to judge or to need or to bother. I felt at home, if a little dishevelled.
Odd that. I was in a place that most my age would avoid. Most any age for that matter. I'd not set foot in here in my life, yet I felt as if I knew it better than my own house.
I gripped the coin, the warmth dissipating into my body. Being there had altered my opinion of it. It was no longer something to cast aside. It was something to be held close.
I could have asked 'why me?' There'd be no answer. Who would I ask anyway? My parents? If I wanted the sort of derision that was usually reserved for my brother, then yes. A teacher? Hardly. As good as some of them were at teaching - and as dire as others were - I didn't think they'd quite understand.
What would I say?
A couple of incidents didn't make that the case. A coincidence or two hardly proved my gut feeling. I'd be laughed at. Talked about. I'd be taken to a counsellor. I'd be made to talk about how people seem to like me.
Narcissism, I think it's called. An exaggerated idea of one's own importance. I didn't have that. I had the reality of it. It was something I'd just lived with. People tended to do as I asked. I didn't often get told off or bullied or treated with anything but respect. In most cases, at least. Occasionally someone would slip through. But now, with this coin, it had been taken to a new level.
I needed to test it. I should make sure, before I said anything to anyone, just how true my feelings were or how effective the coin was.
And if I was right, if I could do it, then what?
I had an argument with myself. Part of me wanted to ignore the coin and do everything I could to get rid of it. Live the life I was living. Another part, stronger and more forceful, insisted that I should do something with this gift, or whatever it was. I should use it to help people. Yes, it made me feel sick. Yes, it scared me. But, I must have been given it for a reason, isn't that what they say in the movies?
For Spiderman, with great power came great responsibility.
For Joy, there came questions and fears and doubts.
Not that I had anything resembling power - great or otherwise. I had a poxy two pence coin, one that somehow wouldn't leave me alone. One that somehow acted like a magnifying glass to the 'liking me' thing. I just hoped that magnifying glass wouldn't, eventually, burn me out.
Well. If only you could turn your head and make HINDsight FOREsight. You can't, though. So I made my decision on a stupid, movie-inspired, sense of right.
In many ways, it was the right choice. For others. For those I aided and for those I indirectly helped by altering the outlook of the bully or the thief or the murderer.
It was also the path that led my descent into Hell.
If only I'd known. If I could have seen the future at that point, would I have carried on? I don't know. I really don't. As I stood, brushed off my clothes and walked out of the Seven Hills, I couldn't foretell that each flip of the coin would eventually feel like I was being flayed, the skin stripped from my body and the spirit stripped from my soul with every catch.
You know that the heels are going to kill your feet, but you still go on the night out in them, and suffer the pain. Not quite the same as knowing I'd suffer from helping people but doing it anyway, but I'm not the lyricist my brother is. I'm sure he wouldn't call himself lyrical. He'd say he was just weird, as if it was something to be proud of. Who'd want to be normal?
Well, I wouldn't mind.
I knew, though, upon leaving the Hills behind me and walking home, that I would keep that coin close. I'd do what I could, however it might make me feel. You don't have the voice of an angel and leave it to the frogs to sing. Or something like that. How come these things always sound better in my head? How come my brother could always twist the words around his little finger, having them dance across his tongue to whichever beat he chose?
There's been many times since then when I've wondered at my choice. After all, I'd only found the coin - or it had found me - the day before and already I was convinced that it was haunting me and making me do things. A possessed coin, perhaps, one with the spirit of... what...? A saint? Not something demonic, I was sure. Otherwise people would die when I flipped it. There and then, I'd chosen to keep it and let it guide me. To use it to help people.
I was always the decisive one, though. My brother could turn procrastination into an Olympic sport, if only he would get around to it. If this had happened to him, he'd no doubt be trying to rid himself of the tuppence for quite some time, denying the possibilities of the good he could do. I wasn't like that. It was happening and I had to deal with it.
On the way home, I passed an old couple. They had faces like walnuts, the lack of elasticity in their skin making it collapse upon itself. They must have been nearing the end of their eighth decade each and were holding hands the way I hoped I would be with someone when I was that old. The man was shuffling, leaning heavily on his stick and the woman was a little spritelier, with less of a shamble and more of an actual step as she moved. She laughed at something he said and the pair of them smiled warmly at me as I passed.
The coin curling through the air was welcome. The punch in my stomach wasn't, but I could live with that.
The old man stopped. I thought it was for a breath. He arched his back as if to ease his aching bones, then they continued to walk.
Except he was twirling his walking stick with a perfect Charlie Chaplin spin.
The pain in my tummy lasted longer that time. With each toss of the two pence, it worsened. But the smiles on the faces of those affected were a warm soothing hand to gently rub it away.
I revisited the Seven Hills many times after my first venture in. Whilst my parents thought I was drinking cider on street corners with my friends, I was exploring the dips and the hollows of the one place I felt calm. It was as if there was a lull in the world, particularly at the centre. No sounds from the busy roads that surrounded the wasteland could be heard. The depression prevented me from seeing the outside world, but also served to defeat anyone's attempts to seek me out. Not that anyone would. In all my time there, I'd not seen one other person enter.
That was fine with me. I liked the solitude. Just me, myself and the silence. And the coin. Even on the odd occasions I neglected to pick it up, it had always appeared in my pocket or purse. Once, when I had neither pocket nor purse, I'd found it under my watch on my wrist.
I gritted through the pain in my stomach. My parents, however, were uncharacteristically concerned. They became increasingly worried as time went on and I went from a grimace to a groan to a doubled up heap. I did my best to ignore it - it was the price of happiness - but they thought something was wrong rather than very right. Hence the hospital. Hence the tests for cancer or for Crohn's or for any other illness I might but didn't have.
The protests of a yo
ung girl were shouted over. Mum knows best. Dad couldn't bear to see his baby girl in so much pain. I wondered where my real parents were. I knew that, if this had been my brother, the same concern wouldn't have been displayed. Knowing that nothing would be found, I had no choice but to succumb to the invasions of the doctors.
School had been left behind and I was officially an adult, but the medical staff listened to my parents. I should have fought it. I should have hidden it. But how could I? I'd become some sort of avenging angel in the face of Sorrow, the flip of my coin being my sword and the catch my shield. And when the afflicted is my friend...
It had reached the point where I didn't have to see the person. I didn't even have to know them. I'd find the coin landing in my palm and it would feel like the number five bus was driving through my stomach. A couple find out they're having a baby naturally after numerous failed IVF treatments. A wheelchair bound ex-soldier would begin to feel his toes and eventually be able to move them. A car would manage to brake just before it hit the child. The failed engine on the plane would splutter into life once again.
It left me breathless and reeling on the floor, but it was ok. I'd chosen this. I'd accepted my fate so many years before. My parents and the doctors, of course, knew none of this. To them I wasn't fine. To them I was a stubborn girl who needed to listen to reason and let them help.
I was laying on my hospital bed. My mother was sitting beside me. She was reading a magazine, the fact that she was actually in attendance proof enough that she cared. She wasn't required to interact with me as well. I was pleased. She didn't need to be there. Nor did I.
I hadn't seen Zoe for a while. We were still relatively close, but she had a boyfriend. She had a life. My life was other people. I didn't own myself anymore.
I didn't even know she was pregnant.
But I felt it. I felt her anguish. Her pain. I felt the slowing of the baby's heartbeat as the placenta became detached.
I reached beneath my pillow and retrieved the coin. I hadn't time to pick it up from home when I was practically dragged in here, but I knew it would be there. My mother's attention was on whichever celebrity was being unfaithful to whichever celebrity with whichever celebrity.
She didn't see me toss it. She didn't see me catch it.
I woke up, groggy. My throat hurt. My stomach had a sharp, jagged pain across it. I was still in my hospital bed, but something was wrong. Very wrong. I had an empty feeling inside of me.
My mother was sitting next to me, not holding her magazine. My dad was standing next to her. When had he come in? My brother walked in a few seconds after, holding a cup of water. All three members of my family were there at the same time. That didn't even happen at tea time, really. It was darker, too. Later.
Once my mum had told me what had happened, I began to scream. And shout. And swear, something I didn't regularly do. They left soon after. It was the shock, of course. I'd get used to it. It was for the best. I calmed down a long time after that, though, even now, my anger bubbles up like Etna on the rampage.
I'd passed out. After a long screech of agony, I had fallen off my bed, clutching my stomach, hit my head and not got up again. They had rushed me to the operating theatre. I have no idea why seeing as they had no idea what, but they, in their infinite medical wisdom, had given me an emergency hysterectomy. Perhaps that explained why I had been hysterical upon finding that little fact out.
Perhaps it was because of what I'd done. What wrong I had righted. With the flip of my magic coin, I had reached out, taken hold of Zoe's umbilical cord, and reattached it. I'd held the unborn baby in my metaphysical hands until its - her - heartbeat had steadied and strengthened. She would be born four weeks later, fit and well with a good set of lungs and a beautiful smile.
I only know that because I... just, somehow knew it. I didn't see Zoe again. I couldn't. Not after the birth of her child had resulted in the loss of any chance at children I might have. I didn't blame her, not at all. Nor did I really blame my parents or the doctors. How were they to know? They did what they thought they should. What they felt they had to. Much as I had been doing.
I didn't deal with it very well. I almost felt as if I had actually lost a child, not just my womb. The spirits of any offspring I could have given birth too had been cut away to save me. Except I hadn't needed saving. I had been doing the saving.
My parents died while I waded through the mire of my misery. I couldn't stop it or help it, nor could I feel it. They were gone. They could quite easily have gone shopping.
The coin changed from being my friend and comforter to being my tormentor. I left home. My brother no longer lived there. He'd escaped, but I'd stayed behind. I wished I'd done as he had. I spent two days and two nights at the heart of the Seven Hills, without eating or drinking. I simply sat there. Wallowing probably, but at the time I needed what only the Hills could give me.
Focus.
I felt myself slipping away, and I couldn't hold on tightly enough. My sanity was a mist that was clearing in the morning sun and I was still walking around in the night.
I went home, showered and changed, then made myself comfortable at the computer. I needed to research. I needed help. I had lost my mind, I realised, long before - so I believed. At school. The day I found that coin.
Asylums. The internet can tell you anything about everything. I surfed using a mouse and keyboard to skim the waves of information. Eventually, I picked one at random.
Dr. Henry Connors. Psychiatrist. He was as good as any. Any port in a storm, isn't that the saying? Well, I was at sea and looking for somewhere to dock before I was dragged under by the Kraken of my craziness. Connors would suffice.
Of course, I was wrong.
I told him everything. From the coin to Will and the bullies and everything up to Zoe. I even showed him the two pence. He didn't laugh, as I thought he must. He just listened, then he gave me a hug and took me through to the recreation room of the asylum.
And I waved goodbye to the world.
I had hoped it would stop, the things I could do. Maybe taking away my womb would remove the power I had. My ability to become a mother had gone, so perhaps my ability to mother in the way I had been for so many years. It hadn't. As my own mother hadn't particularly known what she was doing, clearly I had no real awareness of such things either. The coin had gone. I suppose it couldn't enter the walls of the mental home, though I couldn't see why. But it was no longer in my possession. I can't remember when I'd lost it, but, as much as I was pleased it was no longer constantly by my side, I missed it.
But its absence made me realise something. When it all carried on, when I was still healing and fixing and suffering, I understood, finally. It wasn't the coin, not at all.
It was me.
Two years I stayed under Dr. Connors care. I don't remember all of it. Often I would be drugged to stop me screaming in a pain I couldn't possibly have. In that time, the asylum flourished. People seemed to want to throw money at Connors and he was glad to accept it. I didn't know, at first, if it had anything to do with me. It never occurred to me that it might. But then, one day, the drugs didn't work. Whether they'd messed up the dose or given me someone else's medication, I still don't know. Whichever is the truth is irrelevant. I was subdued, but not in the complete daze I would usually be in, oblivious to everything except my own name when it was called.
Connors took me to a treatment room. He showed me a photo. I don't recall who it was of, but the person, a man with a beaming smile of artificially whitened teeth, was obviously very wealthy. Connors told me to 'do it'. He pushed me to 'do my thing'. I didn't know what he meant at first. How stupid was I? Then I realised and did it.
Somehow.
Instead of flipping a coin and having my stomach wrenched from my body and shove back upside down, I pushed with my mind. It felt like I was licking the photo. Caressing the cheek of the millionaire's printed visage. 'Good girl' he told me. Then I was led me back to the recreation room.
Nobody prevented me from leaving. Why would they? How could they? A little push was all they needed. I was a fast learner. Always had been.
I returned to my parents' home. In the middle drawer in the kitchen had always been, for as long as I could remember, a writing pad and a pen. For all I knew, it had been the same one for all those years, never used apart from a quick shopping list or to jot down the odd phone number or two.
I wrote my brother a letter. I needed to explain to him. Whether he believed me or not didn't matter. He just needed to know. My parents would have thought it was all down to the hysterectomy and, to be honest, they could think what they liked. My brother was different - in more ways than one. He didn't suit this family. I was odd and our parents had been a couple who acted as if they didn't have children. Or that their children were there for the entertainment value. My brother was... normal. He had a dark, dry sense of humour and sometimes had strange, rambling thoughts, but he was just an ordinary guy.
He deserved to know the truth, even if he might think I was crazy.
I told him everything. Well, almost. Strangely, I could tell him about the coin and how it had affected me and what I could do, but I couldn't bring myself to talk about Connors and the asylum. I thought that, if I mentioned a mental home, he'd automatically dismiss everything I'd said. Besides, I didn't want to admit I'd been used. I didn't want to say that Connors had used my gift for himself. It made me feel dirty. It tainted all the good that I had done.
I told him what I was going to do. And how. And I said goodbye.
Beneath the writing pad was a pile of envelopes. All were stamped. Mum had a weird habit of getting a book of stamps and putting them on envelopes ready for when she needed them. She said she'd prefer that than having to write a letter and not having a stamp ready. It resulted in some messy envelopes as she made mistakes and scribbled them out - preferring scruffy to losing the cost of a stamp.