Reticent Rain

by Richard Acosta

  Axis X

  “The leaf of the oak is carried by the currents of air to rest at the steps of the cathedral.”

  The praying mantis figure of the young woman had sat patiently awaiting the young doctor’s return; back straight, hands folded into each other, but her thumbs were pretending to feverishly spool some unseen silk. Her once ammoniated long black hair was newly cleansed and neatly brushed covering the protruding spikes of bone from her back. Her paisley dress had been recently washed of months of accumulative piss and overall hygienic neglect. She had transformed herself anew.

  A few of the rats took long gazes in amazement at her transformation as they passed the interns room. She never minded their attention. She never once took her eyes off of her spot on the wall that centered and calmed her. She had focused all of her energy into a piece of dust that crawled like tumbleweed across the edge of the wall and floor. This calmed and subdued the anxiety that had welled up in her from all the years of internment; fading to the simple glory of the tumbling bunny. Some their toothless grins caterwauled out to her whistling the acceptance of her newfound beauty.

  She had begun to briefly peer through the horrors’ eye of her internment here at Westwood as the whistling recovered a deeply buried memory. Her introduction to the vile cavities of human existence was foul indeed. She had fought at first, but the inhabitants surely had their way with her in the dark quiet afterhours night after night. After a few years, she had come to allow herself to accept her own fate with the other rats at the hospital; all the while presenting outwardly as a mute ghost. Even as shit encrusted and ammoniated as she allowed herself to be, this was no defense against the wills of this society’s ilk. Their perversions had prevailed over her like a willful puppet being manipulated by its master.

  As Dr. Pierce entered the room, the mantis’s eyes briefly followed the young intern as he supplanted the long shadows which peaked through the window and had painted the weathered leather chair. The young intern barely flinched or even made eye contact with the mantis as he quickly perused through the encyclopedic sized chart. The only exchange made thus far between both of them was that of the fervent breathing of atmosphere. Somebody had to break the wall of silence between them and the reluctance only grew stronger with every passing second. This was Pierce’s first formal offering as not just an intern but as a purported psychiatrist; as such was prescribed. Minutes had begun to accumulate and not one utterance was delivered. The room grew cold as his fingers curved around the many pages of progress notes and observations made by various other professionals. Nothing stood out to the intern that could signal him as to how to even begin to go about “treating” his patient.

  He closed the encyclopedia and had begun to look at her for some sort of inspiration to begin his analysis. He was frozen. He couldn’t muster anything. All of the many years of training were tossed out as the fear had begun to take hold inside of him. He just watched her as she spun her silk and followed the tumbling bunny crawl across the edge of the wall. He sat back in his chair to gain some sort of center; to calm himself as well. He took one long big gulp of air and exhaled as slowly as he could manage to do.

  Paige had begun to nervously raise her head up slowly. Her eyes never left the tumbling bunny though. She whiffed in a quick burst of air through her nostril then she opened her lips ever so slightly and had begun to exhale slowly. She was calm now. Her eyes started to see little speckles crawl up over her vision as she moved her eyes over to glance at the young intern. He had sat shadowing the bar less window.

  “They have seen me just as you have.” A soft whisper had begun to fill in Pierce’s left ear. “They never minded me, which am the same as you right at this moment.” A soft female’s whisper came and went again in his left ear.

  Pierce had now begun to stare at her intently. Her mouth never moved. Her lips stayed shut and were still connected to one another but yet he had heard a female voice within his ear. He had begun to slowly rise in his chair as his interest was piqued.

  “Never minding me you stare in wonderment. You ask yourself, is it me before you or your own mind?” The voice rambles on.

  “Is that you speaking to me?” Pierce whispers aloud in the glorified broom closet but only loud enough for the mantis to hear. Her lips never separate from each other; he makes sure of that when the voice answers-“Yes.”

  He sits back reclining in his chair. His mind is thoughtless. Pierce can hear the voice but cannot form any words to converse with her. He is still without thought as he gazes at her. He just stares confounded at the situation of hearing her voice without her moving her own lips. The voice is audibly very clean sounding albeit whispered. Maybe she is a ventriloquist and he is her dummy-he had thought.

  “No.” The voice answered back.

  “How does this work between us?” The doctor quietly asked aloud.

  No utterance was given in response. They both sat in solitude as he was trying to bear witness to the reality of what was going on.

  “I can project into your theater of mind.” The female voice latently responded back. “I, before you, can manifest a voice within thought. It is best that you do the same as well, but unto me only.”

  “Again, how does this work…”

  “Project onto me, for now I know my projection works within your theater. It is only a matter of thought not perception.”

  Pierce had begun to think of what was happening between the both of them at this moment. His heart had begun to race at the mere thought that possibly he had manifested an acute schizophrenia. “This is not real.” His own mind had finally whispered out.

  “The projection is now reciprocal, just as you hear it so do I. Do not speak aloud, hence forth, but only project.” The female voice was stern with instruction.

  The young intern had started to grasp the imaginary beard his face once held while searching the many corridors of his mind for thought. Every faint whisker he brushed equated to a mere thousand thoughts with each brushing of his right hand to his face. From his nose, over his lips and down to where the beardless face ended he stroked for a single thought to spark at his fingertips.

  “I have come to you baptized.” She had started to project her whisper again to the young intern. “I will never truly speak through my voice aloud ever again, this you must understand.”

  Pierce had begun to think of a few words that his minds’ voice could project unto her. “I don’t understand, any of this.”

  “It is best that I give to you the real answers of my existence.” She whispers again.

  “I need to assess you formally and not in this theater of mind.”

  “Everything that has been told has already been written before you. There is nothing more to add. There is no formal progress made on my part. Up until today, earlier as I saw you, I had no reason to want to participate for recovery.”

  “In order to help you though I have to relay back to the powers that be that some form of progress is being made on your behalf and that involves doing a formal assessment.”

  “Perhaps I was wrong to project unto you. I thought I saw the scar of Jerome’s lion upon you. I thought you were to open my cage for good.”

  A brief exchange of silence was passed between them. Once again Pierce had begun to scan through the pages of the encyclopedic chart. Then he came upon an axis of history notes of Paige’s that had caught his eye. There was no known previous history of any psychiatric events noted prior to her admittance into Westwood. She was under the care of her biological mother and stepfather. The interview of her parents had revealed she was slowly deteriorating; showing bouts of erratic behavior and dolefulness. Her real father had been murdered sixteen years ago but no circumstances were given unto his case and it was long suspected that this must have been the event to trigger her psychosis.

  “There are no answers in there only observations, one dimensional ones at that. You can assess just as they have before; no progress. I have no issue with my exi
stence within these walls. I have made due diligence with what I have left of myself. But this is the only time my voice will ring out to you. Hence, will it be true nevermore.”

  “Can you explain to me your existence?”

  “Existence is a state of being not a condition but nonetheless I will explain. My true form is that of Blaesilla. I have survived the sickness of the wilderness voice. He has tried to guide me into the darkness of his wills and have his ways with my physicality. I am but a sparrow with clipped wings before you now.”

  “Who has had their way with you?”

  She hesitated to let it out. She had begun to throttle her torso back and forth slightly. It had begun to hurt her as her minds voice whispered “Brother Stark.”

  Pierce looked back at the chart. There was no other sibling in her family dynamic. She was an only child even after her mother had remarried she had no other brothers or sisters for that matter. “Are you talking about John?”

  Paige’s head had sunk lower and her lips had begun to nervously quiver. She was still spinning her silk but now her eyes started to disappear. Diamonds could have been formed between the tight crushing of her eyelids. The river of tears quickly escaped from the corners as she began whimpering. “Yes.” This time her real voice whispered aloud and this had surprised the young intern because she had just explained that she would never speak aloud again.

  “We don’t have to talk about that at this time.” The young intern had spoken aloud to Paige. “I just need to do my assessment and then at a later time we can delve deeper.” He spoke aloud to her once more but she gave no response. Her eyes were still shut hard with the glue of tears flowing all over her pale bony face.

  “This, you must understand…” She had begun to project once more. “…is the only time I will project to you. I have no more time to waste if you will not open my cage.”

  “How am I going to help you any further if I don’t know where you are at right now as far as your progression? We have to begin somewhere to get to where you can get to a place of recovery.” The doctor spoke aloud.

  She had begun to cry aloud at the thought she had reached a roadblock with the doctor though it was apparent that, between both of them at that moment, they had connected on an entirely different level. No doctor or human being for that matter had ever connected with the likes of her in all of her years of internment here at Westwood. No one understood the pain of her merely existing especially Doctor Pierce. To her, no one would ever have the means to make her better. As the tears flowed, so had the thoughts in her head; in her mind the thoughts were like a racquetball ball being bounced on all of the surrounding walls. Her mind had been racing through the many insufferable years in mere seconds’ worth of thought and the young doctor was being privy to them as well. She was unknowingly projecting her racing visualized thoughts to him.

  “Break it down.” She had begun to whimper out aloud with very elongated breaths.

  The horror show was evident in his eyes as he was coming to know her life through these vignettes of thoughts. In mere seconds, he was a witness to the forth wall of her life. He had become an unwilling spectral zombie; unable to stop or participate in her theater of thought. In one instance she had discovered the brutal homicide of her real father in the dawn of morning. Her hands caressed the last drops of his last life filled blood while her tears diluted the fresh red coagulated mess on the entirety of his flesh. It appeared he had been weeping gallons of it from every fresh stab wound throughout his entire naked body. Then in another instance her stepfather, John, had been introduced into the picture at the wake of her father; a long revered family friend. John would console her mother enough to eventually get married to him; not out of pity for her but of his wanton desire of the mother all along. The loss of Paige’s real father was too much as her mother eventually succumbed to the night after night will of the many prescriptions that numbed her daily anxieties. She too exited Paige’s life very soon thereafter; peacefully of her own accord. The wake of her mother was a desolate affair between the stepfather and Paige; the eyes of her community scolded at her mother’s actions of quickly “moving on” with another man.

  “Break it down.” She once again whimpered out.

  Doctor Pierce had begun to rise from his leather rolling chair as the thought of John knocking down Paige played in his mind’s eye. John would be the only caretaker left for Paige and for this he imposed penance towards her in any way he saw fit. She was made to be an unwilling de facto housewife for him; in every way unimaginable.

  “Break it...” She exhausted the ends of a long breath falling to the ground as she spoke her words.

  The young doctor had sprung from his weathered leather rolling chair. As he neared Paige the thoughts of John binding her to her bed in the horrors hour and masticating his body on top of her entered his spectral vision. Pierce had made his way around the fixed table of a desk and dropped down to her. John had murmured loud enough in their theater to be heard “feels good, huh...” Paige had finally locked eyes with the young doctor as John spoke “This will teach you…”

  She had in one instant toppled Pierce and had begun delivering closed fisted blows all over his body. Then the mirror from his table of a desk came crashing down to the floor splintering jagged shards everywhere. She had managed to grab a piece and begun to plunge it everywhere replacing her closed fisted jabs. Her goal was to merely incapacitate him long enough before any of the staff grabbed her. The blood had sprayed in every direction of the glorified broom closet. Both of their bodies were painted of it. That is when she had begun to use what was left of her adrenaline to accomplish her true goal. She had swung around the bolted down table and had begun lifting the weathered leather rolling chair above her head. All it took was one pitch to the bar less window in Pierce’s office for the glass to shatter.

  Paige exited quickly out of the small opening like a cat burglar. The jaws of glass tore into her skin but she never minded; she was finally free. She did however take one fleeting glance back at the doctor. The carnage echoed that of her father but this was of her own doing this time. She noticed Pierce looking at her as his life pooled all over the floor. Somehow he knew in some small way, through being sacrificed, he had helped her as she blew a soft kiss to him. The sparrow had begun to fly away and quickly at that. Her descent was too rapid for any of the orderlies to catch a hold of her. She had run off into the encroaching eve’s mist that fed the entrenched morning glory. And it was there that she had truly become lost in the wake of freedom. She never looked back, only forward.