Like Fire (Voice chapter 4)

A Chapter by SomeoneSomewhere

Chapter four in the Voice story. In this chapter we continue to follow Azey's story and emotions. enjoy!

Being crazy was definitely overrated. Any preconceptions Azey had once had about being kept in a mental ward were immediately and rather violently shattered upon entering the Glass Walls.

She began with the first, and rather obvious one. Kept was no exactly the right verb to describe her situation. Imprisoned, caged, and incarcerated were more like it.

Second: A mental ward was supposed to be a place for recovery. That inherently meant nice, warm rooms, kind doctors, gentle nurses, and creative space. Big, sweeping glass windows were a definite plus.

Which, of course, brought her to her third point: the Glass Walls was in fact a giant metal box. Not, in any way, glass at all.

The walls themselves were just concrete, metal, more concrete, and more metal. Thick; that much was certain, but more importantly than that, they were imposing. Sometimes, Azey found, a wall could be made of paper and people would still cower behind it, deterred by the appearance rather than its width. In any case, these walls were not going to be destroyed anytime soon; giant, solid, grey concrete tended to have that effect on people.

But maybe, Azey decided, it was better this way. Maybe this way she couldn’t see outside, see everyday people doing their everyday things walking around their everyday places.

Maybe this way, she wouldn’t realize just how close she was to freedom.

It was this very sense of freedom; a giant, heavy force that enveloped the building and threatened to cave its fickle walls in, that Azey yearned for. She yearned for the beautiful implosion which would shatter the ‘Glass’ walls into a thousand tiny shards, and let the gentle breeze of freedom into its stifling innards. She pictured it, clearly, in her mind; standing outside, atop crooked rubble and spider-web glass, sucking freedom into her starving lungs with avidity and hunger.

But then again, these walls weren’t made of glass. They were concrete, and concrete was strong; held together by glue made of lies and set upon a foundation of despair.

Most people, at the very least, would be frightened. The lies would worm their way through their ears and replace the truth in their brains. The despair would slowly settle into their hearts, weighing down on any lingering hope until hope was a tiny crushed pinprick near the soles of their feet.

But Azey was not ‘most people’.

Lies? Please- look it up in a dictionary and you could find her name written right under it. Azey breathed, ate, and lived one giant lie. At first, she had to admit, it’d been hard. Learning to lie was no easy task. Face straight, voice tremble-free, hands still.

The first liar in her life had been her mother. Of course, she hadn’t been all that good at it, but at the age of five Azey was too young to know it.

“Azey, he just left us, that’s all,” she used to say when the little girl tugged on the hem of her skirt, eyes wide and asking about what had happened to her father.

“Don’t be afraid, they’re friends,” her mother said when Azey asked her about the tall, hat stand-like men with the dark coats gathered around the kitchen table one day.

“You’re special, Azey, that’s why,” was her mother’s response when the hat-stand men finally came to take her away, but the only word that remained in Azey’s head was her mother’s last one; why.

Why, Why, Why?

Why? She used to ask herself when she moved from foster-home to foster-home.

Why? She used to ask herself when she saw the hat-stand men patrolling the street.

Why? She asked herself when she saw the hat-stand men drag away that poor boy last week in the plaza.

“Why?” she asked the hat-stand man with the crooked nose and limping walk as he dragged her along the grimy streets to the Glass Walls. Not why as in ‘Why the hell are you treating me like a mindless animal and imprisoning me in a concrete prison with a somewhat oxymoronic name?’

No; the answer to that she’d known her whole life.

Instead, she asked him; “Why do you call yourself a Doctor? I’ve met plenty of Doctors in my life, and you’re not anything like them.”

She jutted her chin out then, daring him to disagree.

Instead, he just smiled crookedly and cocked his head to look her directly in her eyes. “Doctors fix people. I fix people. It’s simple.”

To Azey, it most certainly was not simple. Being a Doctor was… well, it was just so much more than fixing people. People weren’t broken toys, they were people. People had to be spoken to, smiled at, and comforted, not just fixed.

This Doctor certainly didn’t look like he did a lot of comforting. No; he was the type of person to keep his face straight, voice tremble-free, and hands still.

Therefore, the rush of pleasure Azey felt upon seeing Crooked-Nose splayed on the floor, whimpering and cowering as a result of her Word-Grenade, came as no surprise. She felt the corners of her mouth being tugged up into a smile by some invisible force- happiness, she believed it was called.

Wait- no, that wasn’t right. Happiness at what?

Happiness at seeing words- things she worshipped and dedicated her life to- turned into weapons?

Happiness at imagining the piercing shards that could very well be daggers gently pricking the ears of the doctors, then slowly slinking their way towards their brains?

No, this wasn’t happiness. This was some sort of morose, sick, twisted, convoluted glee she experienced from harming the Doctors just as they had harmed her. Any conscience Azey may have once had was gone now, snatched away by the same hands that used to rob her, steal her bread money and leave her alone and hungry on the street.

The memory swept through her mind with unstoppable force.

Cold.

Hunger.

Lies.

Fear.

Defeat.

Those words were all she could remember, or rather, chose to remember. Azey always seemed to recall words much more easily than memories.

She would cup her knees under her, wrap spindly arms around her legs, and rest her crazy head in the shallow nook formed by her thighs. It was the closest she would ever get to safety.

She was cold; that much she knew. But she would push the cold, down, down, down, until it was gone. Instead of a feeling- a Word- would engulf her mind, and she would spend every last bit of energy focussing on it.

In this case, it was warmth.

The gentle hand stroking your face

Tiny tendrils creeping up

Starting at your toes, then fingers

And working up;

Never intruding, never violent

Just the right kind of soft

All of a sudden, you aren’t drowning anymore

The water under your back;

Once insubstantial,

Threatening to swallow you up into its hungry maw,

Is there.