“I’m still not sure how long I’ve been here.” She was not quite sure who she had been talking to, either. The past hour or so had been a confessional with someone she either could
not see or would not look at. Nothing was clear enough for her to make up her mind. “I mean, I know it’s been too long, but that is really all I know.”1
“Do you know why you’re here, Persephone?”2
She could almost remember hearing the warm voice before. More than that, though, she remembered the underlying accusation in everything he asked her.3
“Maybe,” she answered, recoiling a bit at the sound of her name--recoiling, that is, from where she thought the voice was coming from. “I mean yes, but I don’t want to talk about it. You’re wrong about me.”4
It had been storming when she was brought in. The extra thematic element added by the large drops of rain and occasional flashes and cracks of thunder and lightning reminded Persephone of made-for-TV movies she wished she had never seen. She could not have thoughts like that any more; she was too tired for introspection, too confused to think for long.5
They had led her in like it was going to be a grand tour of some sort of resort, and called it “a place for you to get better.” Everyone who knew anything about treatment knew getting better was a relatively short journey to a small room with a bed, one barred window, and a promise of intravenous, experimental treatment for problems that didn’t even have names yet. Persephone’s journey took exactly three minutes and forty-seven seconds over a dingy-grey tile floor. She could only remember three sounds, three things about the slow walk down the stark grey hallways. They'd given her slippers, and they scraped on the floor as she shuffled along, and they were exactly two people, a woman and a man.6
The woman spoke first, addressing Persephone directly. “If I’m right about you, this plan we’ve developed will show results within the year.” 7
The man was definitely not in agreement, quieter, and spoke like Persephone was already a body locked in a room and a piece of paper on his desk. “Did you read her file? I don’t think we’re ever going to see results. Do you know what she did?” To him she wasn't human, she was a criminal but worse, a crazy criminal.8
He was fine... If Persephone had actually spoken the words, the other two pretended not to hear them. I don’t think he was even really hurt, she thought.9
Regardless of how dismal that day had been, Persephone was desperate to dwell in something as clear as that memory. Still, the doctor’s questions were pulling her back to the quiet room and over stuffed couch that served as the interrogation center.10
“Tell me why they brought you here, Persephone.”11
“You already know why,” she answered him flatly.12
“Yes,” the voice said, a long pause following the blunt admission. “I’m not certain that you know why.”13
“Of course I know. I did it.”14
“Why?”15
“Because I wanted to be bound to a bed every night, and to choke on pills while some dirty hand covered my face. I suppose it was my deepest desire to talk to you every day and get asked the same questions over and over again, even though the answers never change. I have to admit, doc, this is the life.” She would’ve kicked her feet up onto his desk and folded her arms behind her head, were she allowed the luxury of his high-backed leather chair and the freedom to move as she pleased.16
“Where am I right now?” she whispered.17
“In a facility for the criminally insane,”18
“You don’t think that is a little harsh?” She wanted to be loud, but it was dark and warm in the office, or behind her eyelids, so she whispered. “He was fine, he wasn’t even mad. He didn’t die, so he was just fine.”19
“You tell me that a lot.”20
“That he was fine?” She couldn’t say that she ever recalled telling him that.21
“Yes,” the doctor answered her in the few seconds she took to pause and think. 22
“If I’ve said it a lot, that is only because it’s true.” She would’ve continued even without his affirmation. When have I ever said anything about this?23
“I’m not sure you’re repeating it because it’s true.” The doctor spoke up after some scratching of pen on already impossible-to-decipher notes. “I think you’re saying it so often because you very desperately want it to be true.”24
Persephone couldn’t remember her last meal, her last shower or even her last breath of fresh air. As far as she knew, they had been (in that order) the events immediately preceding her incarceration in this facility. She could usually remember her last dose of medication and the darkness that followed it, she could remember a couple of voices, and she could remember Paxton and the fact that she’d never intended to hurt him.25
“Is memory always in black and white?” she had asked the doctor once, on what he called one of her verbal days. 26
“I suppose I haven’t given that thought much attention.” He had intentionally kept his tone uncommitted, but almost irritated. “Are your memories black and white?”27
“Some of them are.”28
“Only some, hmm?” He had to be careful what he said, how directly he pressed. Persephone’s honesty was a rare thing to stumble across. Talk of memories was usually met with shrugged shoulders and the occasional nod. 29
“That’s what I said,” she muttered back, sounding a bit more like the young woman he was used to seeing. 30
“Alright you caught me,” he chuckled, almost sounding genuine. “I was prying, not clarifying.”31
“I’m here because he thought I was crazy, not because I’m retarded. I know you were prying.” A grin broke across her face and she shook her head before saying the next words. “I just wasn’t certain you knew that.”32
“Because who thought you were crazy?” he asked, choosing to ignore her jab despite the already satisfied smirk on her face.33
“The man I only remember in black and white.”34
“Persephone…” An almost painfully long pause punctuated that word, that name she only ever heard him say any more. “Do you know the real reason you are here?”35
Whether or not treatment was a game to her, Persephone knew exactly why she needed the IV that was being changed. Similarly, she knew why her wrists and ankles were bound in Velcro and leather, chained to the steel frame of her bed. She was well aware that she was considered dangerous, and she knew why, but she would not talk about it. The days and nights she had spent with Paxton, and the acts they’d contained, weren’t stories to be passed on. The nights she hung between consciousness and actual rest were the only safe place for the memories of the home and lies they’d shared. 36
The bathtub was as old as the house that Persephone and Paxton were living in-the kind with claw feet, loud pipes, and persistently ice cold water. Paxton obsessively kept it white, as white as he kept every other tile on the bathroom floor, and as shiny as he kept the black ones. Persephone told herself that the grey mess she had made of that bathtub, and the black dots she’d left on the white tiles were the reasons that “the incident” had been the proverbial last straw. In its nature, it couldn’t have been anything else, really. The mess hadn not been grey or black anyhow. It had been red, smeared, diluted and dirty, but that still was not why it was the last time.37
The liquid in the syringe was a clear yellow. In her mind, it was a slightly less opaque grey than the bathtub water, but a darker grey than her pale skin in the pictures he’d taken of her that morning. Persephone remembered asking him why he chose to remember things that way, with grayscale pieces of paper that robbed the moments of all of their saturation. Paxton didn’t answer. Instead he just snapped another shot of her thoughtful face, his own more stoic than it usually would have been in the middle of subtly expressed, misplaced love.38
She could only assume he would’ve taken pictures of the rest of the day too, had it just been something she was doing, not something she was doing to him. “This will make it very hard for you to move,” she had told him, after waking him with a quick, but expertly-placed needle poke. “I need you to get up right now and let me help you to the bathroom, okay?”39
She’d been careful to keep the water warm, not to cut his wrists too deeply, not to let them both bleed into the water. Attention to specifics was most important when life and death were hanging in the tangles of details. Persephone had learned this the hard way. “I am going to make sure you make it through this one, Pax. Please don’t be scared.” She knew that he would’ve told her she was being stupid, if he could have. There was no way for him to understand why it was so important for her to be told time and time again that she’d probably saved his life, whether or not she’d probably almost ended it with the same planned and re-planned act.40
Persephone knew she’d been clinging to him, letting her clothes get drenched in the bloody water when the paramedics made it to the bathroom. She remembered every word of her plea for them to help him, her pointless pleading with him to hang on. She was told to change quickly and hurry behind the ambulance to the hospital, but it was some time before she even hauled herself out of the pink, rapidly cooling bathwater. 41
In the here-and-now, wrapped in the warm cocoon of her drug induced catatonia, something about that day started to bother Persephone. The what she’d chosen and carried out was clear, and the why was the same one still driving every one of her actions. The problem Persephone was facing dealt with the when and the way time was starting to slip from her grasp. 42
Long after Persephone had left him alone with his notes, the lumpy couch and stagnancy in Dr. Knol’s office still spoke only of dead-end questions from another session with the most uncooperative patient he’d ever dealt with. Regardless, more than three hours after she was given no choice but to sleep, her doctor refused to allow himself any escape from her. He was starting to wonder if maybe it was her plan to drive him mad through inconsistency, false compliance, and nearly constant mocking. He knew she was smart enough to cause this obsession within him, but couldn’t get in her head enough to imagine a motive for it. So he sat for entire nights sometimes writing down every sentence to leave her lips that could be mistaken as meaningful and recording every musing he had about her on little black cassettes.43
“Persephone doesn’t seem to remember the incident as anything more significant than a book she’s read or a song she really likes. I think the blame for this may be the Thorazine injections the hospital personnel give her too frequently, or some other treatment I have not been consulted on.” The doctor’s gentle but ragged voice broke with a short chuckle, in spite of himself. His eyes drifted to the still rolling tape-recorder and he couldn’t help but chuckle again at this situation. His tobacco-and coffee-stained teeth flashed in a less than dazzling and almost self-mocking smirk as he scratched a little at his once well groomed cheek and chin. “I shouldn’t be losing sleep over this. She is here because no one could make her talk. No one is willing to really lock any one up for something so fundamentally crazy--she didn’t even bother to defend herself.”44
A sort of pathetic sigh drowned out the click of the tape stopping itself. The thirty minutes of rambling he’d just finished recording were part of a bottomless file he couldn’t keep himself from amending. He had already decided by their second session that it was absurd to think he could nail down exactly what had inspired, driven and (for the most part flawlessly) executed Persephone’s crimes against her lover’s health-and eventually his life.45
“I don’t get paid enough for this.”46
“I wasn’t trying to kill him,” she mumbled. The words would’ve just been brushed off as more attempts to make a certain impression. That is, were it not for her graciously allowing the doctor his second ever dose of eye contact with the blue-grey, empty windows to the only honest part of her.47
“What happened to your insistence that you didn’t do anything to him at all?”48
“You don’t believe me when I say that.” The answer was simple enough, and she kept her eyes locked on his. “I just needed to be able to say I saved him, the way you need to be able to say you saved me.”49
“I don’t think it is the same, Persephone.”50
“I know it isn’t the same. You have the education, the degree, the recognition, the skill associated with actually saving a person. Still, I’m the one who was commended for it.”
Author notes
This is the first of a few of my musings about this cluster of characters, mostly about Persephone and the people surrounding her. Feedback is very appreciated. This is probably the most complicated stuff I've ever played around with.
This is options 9 and sort of 5 in litteangel's "Seriously deep" contest
- Storywriter Inc group list • next in list
A contest entry
- Anything & Everything by On.Cue.
300 points, ended June 9, 2007, 58 entries
• next story in this contest, remove from contest - Pre-write Pandemonium! by B Chandler.
200 points, ended April 1, 2008, 12 entries
Bronze trophy winner
• next story in this contest, remove from contest - I'm Looking For A Good Story by WillyLee.
550 points, ended May 23, 2008, 25 entries
Honorable mention
• next story in this contest, remove from contest - Your Character by WritersEffigy.
350 points, ended June 28, 2008, 14 entries
Honorable mention
• next story in this contest, remove from contest - Seriously Deep by Melancholic Smile.
525 points, ended July 5, 2008, 25 entries
Bronze trophy winner
• next story in this contest, remove from contest - A story to blow minds by Holey Pastry.
300 points, ended March 8, 14 entries
• next story in this contest, remove from contest - Enter What You're Proud Of !!! (2) by tsh369.
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• next story in this contest, remove from contest - My Muse Has Abandoned Me by Atticus Unanimous.
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• next story in this contest, • Add to finalists list, or remove from contest
tell me what you think it is about
Comments
1 - 26 of 26
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Huh, I really enjoyed this piece. Maybe because it reminds me of Silence of the Lambs for some reasons and I simply adore that movie. Yet at the same time, I felt as if I was sitting with them, next to the doctor trying to get into her head as well.
Overall a wonderful job, thanks for entering and good luck!
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I really enjoyed reading this and was intrigued to read right through and find out what happened. I was quite hooked to it the whole way through. You used a serious issue of mental health and portrayed it well. Yes there are a few areas that need a little work which have already been pointed out by others but overall it's a really good read and something a bit different from anything I have read on here before. Once I am finished commenting all the entries for the contest I will be having a look at the next part - I'm intrigued about this character now! Thank you for entering and good luck!
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thanks for the comment and the trophy!
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Right, here we go again. Para 6, second sentence, once again, rather too clumsy. It does make sense, especially when you add a comma after 1958, and "treatment". Incidentally, later on you talk about velcro bindings; they didn't appear till the 1970s, so watch your history. The penultimate sentence is dreadful. Why not join the last two sentences thus; "Three sounds Persephone remembered; the shuffling and scraping of her slippers on the walk through stark hallways to her room; a man's voice, and a woman's." Keep it simple and economical; there's a time and place for expansive vocabulary, but it isn't when you are recording details that aren't too significant. Admittedly, these details help form the backdrop to a mind that is in a debatable state, but don't make too much of them, let the reader realise their worth.
Para 7. This therapist or doctor or whatever wants a job as a mafia hit man in a D-movie. Think about it for a moment. This dialogue has no support, no previous question or remark, so its interjectory nature isn't apposite. It follows, therefore, that the dialogue in Para 8 cannot subsist either. please go back and think it through. I know you want the information in there, an indication of attitude, but this is completely unnatural; it would hang together better if it were Q&A between the two others, with Persephone an assumedly unconscios eavesdropper.
Para 10 Dwell on, rather than "in". hyphenate "over-stuffed".
Para 13 This is as clear as mud. you've switched tenses here, and ther's an ambiguity about who made an admission. Try a full stop after "Said". change "following", to followed, see how it flows.
Para 38. Saturation? Of what, colour? pleasure? emotional content? Don't get me wrong, saturation's ok, but we need a pointer to what the moments are saturated with.
One general thing I noted was the the abbreviated verbs. "Would've" in para 39 is a typical example. This is fine as dialogue, it's the way people speak, but avoid it when you are the narrator, unless the narration is in a specific idiosyncratic accent or dialect. Stick to formal English, it gives the narration integrity.
Second sentence of para 40 is a horrible mish-mash. I suspect you were trying to avoid the cliche about it hanging in the balance, but the way you've done this merely draws attention to the more cliched ending to the sentence. Try a full stop after "important", lose "when" and "were", replace "hanging" with hung, maybe a trifle better.
Para 43. Please don't do this! the first sentence is so clumsy, it's almost worthy of George W Bush. A harsh thing to say, but surely only he could imagine a couch and stagnancy could articulate anything. this is really unworthy of this piece, which, in case I haven't mentioned it, is very well thought out and constructed. the second sentence...you haven't been collaborating with Georgy, have you?
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Ok, I'm doing the quick comments routine here, and straight away there's something. para 1 really needs re-written, because you're trying to tell us in too many ways that Persephone is confused; Why not say something like, "Persphone had lost track of time, but felt she had been talking for an hour to someone she couldn't see." It's a good opening sentence, because it tells you the name of the character (A very striking name, specially if you know your mythology) and it also dispenses with irrelevancies. And straight away, I'm looking at your dialogue. It's simply not natural.
Look at the question in Para 2; it's the perfect way to open dialogue.
para 3. The voice stirred a chord in her memory. It was warm, but with an underlying note of accusation. Try something like that.
para 4. Two things here. You recoil from something specific; it's a reaction to a specific action, therefore it can't be vague. And look at the end of the first sentence; why two "froms"? Lose one of them, better still rephrase the sentence.
para 5. I will admit that this is a pet hate of mine, but please don't have storm as a verb in this context. It's what prima donnas do, but it's not what weather does. There might be a rain/thunder/snow/lightning/sand storm, it might be stormy, but weather simply does not storm. And thematic is an adjective, not a noun, so the thematic what? backdrop, undertone,, menace, it could be any of these. Lightning, not lightening.
"She was too tired and confused to think for long." Don't be tempted to elaborate, you'll only lose the rhythm of the piece.
Sorry, duty calls. will come back to this asap, but the overall piece is, as you promised, agood deal more promising than Smoke, so i will go through it for you if you still want me to -
I always like a crazy person. Thanks for entering!
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She's not crazy, she's misunderstood...
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awesome
This was good but sadly I can only pick three finalists, so sorry. -
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no worries
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It is complicated.
I had a hard time following it and was somewhat confused. Persephone killed her lover or husband, or at least has been convicted of that. I don't really see what the doctor is trying to accomplish.
Smoking was only mentioned in as much as it stained the Doctor's teeth. That is a nasty result of smoking.
Thanks for entering 'Smoking''
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Yikes--it sucks people think she killed him.
sorry it confused you, it is kind-of the point. No fair for you to know what's going on if she doesn't.
sorry the smoking was bullshit, I thought this had more to it. In the second part there's smoking.
whoops.
thanks for reading anyway.
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This is intriguing. In portraying a mentally disoriented character through her point of view, you end up disorienting the reader a little bit. I kind of like that. We get to know Persephone (queen of the underworld?) largely from her point of view, although the pov shifts back and forth between her and the doctor. I don't have a big problem with pov shifts, but it seems to be a no no with some people.
I cannot say how authentic any of this is, because I've never been as mentally distressed as Persephone, but it definitely seems authentic and is very convincing and real to me. I still don't know exactly what is going on, or even if I am supposed to. For instance, I don't know if the year is 1958 or many years later, because there are references to velcro and cassette tapes. I don't know Persephone's age, and I don't know if she knows her age. Something seems strange about the doctor, but I don't know if that is Persephone's distorted perception, or if he really is strange. In spite of my confusion, I get a clear picture of Persephone's general inner state, and the dialog is very realistic. The story is complex, and largely happens inside the mind. I love this kind of story.
There are probably subtleties that I missed, and I pick up more on these things than most people do. This is really ambitious stuff, the kind that requires a lot of effort to pull it off successfully.
I guess this is part of a longer story. For the contest each work is being judged as a total, self-encapsulated story, so by that standard this falls a bit short. However, I really like this as a partial story, and I would like to see more.
Thanks for entering the contest, and for writing and sharing the story.
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Okay, first: Yikes...Paxton -isn't- dead, and two people now have assumed he is. Fudge sticks. Any suggestions. What made you decided me must be dead, because I had hoped that saying she faked a suicide -attempt- was good enough, but I was wrong [insert pouty face]
second: bummer that it can't stand alone. i wanna cry.
Thank you for the time you took to look at it though. It means the world. -
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There's nothing in the story that actually says that Paxton is dead, but a couple of things made me assume that he was. In paragraph 41, you mention Persephone's "pointless pleading" for Paxton to "hang on." "Pointless" indicates that he will die. In paragraph 47, she tells the doctor that she wasn't trying to kill Paxton, and that gives the impression that she did kill him. I see you have more to this story, and I am going to read it soon.
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I'm thinking perhaps, in the instance in paragraph 47 she can say
"I wasn't trying to kill him, he would've died if I had been."
Yeah?
I can't explain how excited I am that you picked up on the subtleties like the fact that I disorient the reader to keep them on par with Persephone, and the things I did wrong too. You picked up on things only my profs did, I want to do a backflip over it. thanks so much for all of your input.
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wow this really kept my attention... i saw a few places where the language wasn't completely clear but this story is still fantastic. im off to part 2
great work =]
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Would you terribly mind telling me where it was unclear? I'd love to improve it and thank you for your comment
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“Maybe,” she answered, recoiling a bit at the sound of her name--recoiling, that is, from where she thought the voice was coming from. (is the room dark? i know you clarify this later but maybe you should state the dark warmness of the room sooner)
thunder and lightening reminded Persephone of made-for-TV movies she wished she’d never seen. (what's her grudge against made-for-TV movies then? and why does the thunder and lightening remind her of them? the reader can assume but might assume wrong...)
He was fine... If Persephone had actually spoken the words, the other two pretended not to hear them. I don’t think he was even really hurt, she thought. (The 'if persephone had actually spoken the words the other 2 pretended not to hear them' was unclear to me. did she say that to them previously, or did she think that she was talking out loud when she was really only thinking?)
were she allowed the luxury of his high-backed leather chair and the freedom to move as she pleased (once again, even tho you clarify later that she is restrained it might be better if you state that earlier.)
This piece was actually better the second time I read it... mainly because i'm in a quiet room now instead of a loud study hall T.T
I think I'm starting to understand WHY Persephone did that to Paxton, but it be nice to see it expanded upon in future chapters =] -
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Thank you for clarifying.
a couple of those things that were confusing were very intentional. My prof and I went back through it after i wrote it the second time (my god...this is like, the 8th draft)and very painstakingly decided where it was ok to confuse the reader and where it wasn't. Like you said, I do eventually explain what is going on, she's heavily drugged and she doesn't really understand that is what's happening to her. I wanted to reader to be as confused as she is. I want to reader for a second to be uncomfortable with what she did and what is being done to her, because none of it is okay.
Does that make it make any more sense?
The made-for-TV movies part, I've argued about with a couple of readers. I was playing with making her memory cliché, and knowing Persephone the way I do means I know that she would hate remembering that something so "lifetime originals" had happened to her...She'll start to be more real.
Just FYI the next piece will be disjointed at first too. That's why I had to make them separate pieces, they don't flow together seamlessly.
WOW, I'm excited to have dialog going with someone about this thing. -
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yea, that did help lol. it makes sence now ^_^ figured it was something like that.. just couldnt pinpoint it x_x
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this is so wonderful! I read the second part first and now reading this part makes me want to read more. I can't wait until you post more, I'm a fan. this is a wonderful abusive/crazy romance you're setting up here and you handled the cliche incarcerated in a mental institution thing really well. Most people are dumb about it, but your description makes it seem more real.
very great work
-gibson -
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Thank you, I'm glad you didn't think it was dumb, and that it kept your attention. I wouldn't call the romance "crazy" personally. It actually makes a lot of sense, the fill each other's needs
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yes - intriguing
What surprises me is that the first word that came to me was intriguing, then I read the other comment. Still, that is my response, too. Well done, good character develpment. You kept me interested, and eager for more. Thanks.beginning: 5, language: 5, plot: 5, ending: 4, dialog: 5, characters: 5.
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thank you!
both for reading it and taking the time to comment. i appreciate your appreciation and there should be more soon. Sorry to keep you waiting
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Intriguing
This is very thought provoking and kept me reading. Even with the "truth" still hidden and hard to decern of the main character's past.., its still a tale that grabs your attention. If there is more, I'd liek to see more! 
beginning: 5, language: 5, plot: 4, ending: 5, dialog: 5, characters: 5.
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there is more, i'm working on editing.
thank you for the comment, and for taking the time to read it and think about it
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