Static

Perhaps it was the incessant stream of ghostly tales that spurred the waver in her otherwise firm-footed reality. Reality is only an existence and only lasts as long at the life wills it. Oh, it was never that she didn’t want to believe in some wonderful being made just for her enjoyment and her for its enjoyment, but some things just weren’t possible in her mind.1

She’d had plenty of experiences that could be pegged as supernatural, or could’ve been considered miracles by any other, but she held firm in her beliefs of scientific data, because that was just about all she had.2

She might’ve loved her mother, and adored her elder brother, but they were just a part of her dull existence anymore. “Stress rolls off you, like water on a duck’s back,” her mother had once commented, but she refused to believe such a thing. ‘I know how stress affects me,’ she would tell herself firmly, reminding herself of the childish behavior she was often caught up in when stressful times hit home. Certainly water never threw a tantrum on a duck’s back before gracefully touching down into the lake. Certainly water never wept for hours before distancing itself through evaporation.3

Evaporation was a halfway decent word for her sudden lack of reality. Intelligence evaporated into the lost dimensions of fantasy. Fantasy was always something she’d dwindled on, frequently enjoying her share of stories about werewolves and elves. But what was this //fantasy//, this fantasy that had suddenly become reality in all her definitions of the word?4

Evaporation was well and fine while speaking of the loss of intelligence, but perhaps it wasn’t a loss, but a mere arousal of imagination. ‘Imagination is intelligence with an erection,’ she’d often quoted from a friend with an amused glint touching her eye. This arousal had only turned on when she’d finally admitted to herself her true libido was currently not on speaking terms with her, and didn’t seem to have any inclination to turn around and go back on its non-word.5

There had always been static, whenever there was silence, even sometimes when it was quite loud. Words had a tendency to skew themselves on her tongue, distancing themselves from what fell so gracefully off the lips of others. Her own mind seemed naught but static at times, others it simply immersed itself in the aforementioned fantasy realms.6

For hours she might sit, silent, moving only when a cramp overtook her muscles. Occasionally, lips would whisper the meaningless jumble sifting through her mind, but never reveal the fantasy that quietly consumed her inside.7

Sometimes the static growled and snarled loudly enough to disturb her into finding a new place to amuse herself, her face contorting with bitten pain. Teeth would clench, hiding the pain with an anger unsurpassed.8

Confusion had, in the history of man and animal, a horrible way of turning to hatred. Said hatred was always corned into becoming something of her own insecurities. While stuttering had the advantage of making her seem less than what she was, it was the stumbling philosophies that echoed through her mind, turning the least important worries into life and death situations, that turned the stupidity to brilliance.9

But she didn’t want brilliance. She wanted ignorance and the crutch of religion to hold her when the weather got stronger than her ‘water on a duck’s back’ tendencies. Slowly that weather was wearing away the only reality she had left: sanity.10

How often had she questioned the sanity till the sanity itself was questioning itself? 11

Now? Now she stared dully at the flat white paint, gaze caressing every imperfection, every last wrongness and ugly feature. This was when sanity itself seemed to sidle out of the room, the static inundating her ears. This time the static never came.12

“Ring around the rosy, pocket full of posy…”13

High pitched revelry. The innocence leaked from the words like water from a wet rag squeezed within an inch of its life. ‘Therefore,’ she concluded, ‘it cannot be my own voice.’ 14

“Ashes, ashes…”15

‘I lost that innocence. It was an accident. I didn’t mean for him to go that far…No one can ever know!’ her mind screamed, though lips held firm, pursed and white in their secrets. She never understood why it must be a secret but she knew it had to be.16

“We all fall down!”17

Gales of laughter flowed like skin on silk, continuing to silence the static. ‘Such a morbid little tune. Do they know? Did I know? The symptoms, the death, the burial…Such a morbid little tune.’18

“But why do we laugh if it’s bad?” the small voice inquired.19

She was silent a moment longer, refusing to acknowledge her delusion’s voice. Refusing to acknowledge that this delusion was real. “Because children are stupid.”20

“If you believed that, you wouldn’t talk as such.”21

“I have nothing to believe, so I may talk however I please,” she quipped in a low voice.22

“Life…”23

“Merely a form of existence, a side-af-f-fect of such.” There. For not even a singular moment could her voice convey her thoughts without warping their hard reality. But she didn’t believe in reality any longer. It was far too real.24

Turning quite abruptly in her seat, to face the direction of the delusion’s voice, she promptly found herself staring only at another blank wall. “You’re here…” she murmured in soft tones, hoping to cajole the child back out from the decidedly blank and empty room. “You’re here!” she repeated in a more fervent tone, scrambling to her feet and overthrowing a chair, only to stare at the rough carpeted floor.25

‘Lost it. I’ve lost it. This is intelligence. This is intelligence being used.’ A moment’s pause for a smirk, an amused, though darkly, smile, while imagining some celebrity or another holding an egg and a frying pan. ‘Now I know why people steer so clear of their own minds…’26

Lucid as that delusion was, it was still just that: a delusion. Hands wiped themselves roughly over the previously sputtering mouth. The whisper devastated the silence, “You’re here.”27

Static unfurled slowly to greet her after its catnap.28