Wendla clasped her hands together lightly, looking at the other woman quizzically as she waited for MORE. When nothing else was forthcoming, however, she was forced to conclude that signing did little to improve her reticence. Wendla was forced to ponder her next words very carefully. The connection between the two felt f r a g i l e. The woman’s attention was simultaneously distressingly rapt and oddly unfocused. She didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize the conversation, so soon after its conception.
‘ You don’t speak. ’
It wasn’t really a question. Wendla had been watching the woman long enough to know that her words were true. Yes what remained unexplained was why. Wendla supposed that muteness was a possibility, but that didn’t explain everything. What she had observed in this woman went much deeper than not SPEAKING. Wendla herself didn’t speak, but what the woman lacked was something much more fundamental. And so Wendla raised her hands again, intent on clarifying what she wanted to know.
‘ You don’t COMMUNICATE. Not with anyone until this very moment. Why? Why me now, and not them when they come? ’
Wendla didn’t know what the doctors said when they walked in and out of Evelyn’s room. But their faces were kind, and they clearly knew her. It seemed odd that the woman would ignore them, especially if their voices were as gentle as their faces. It seemed especially odd in light of the fact that she seemed perfectly content to converse, however minimally, with a ghostly STRANGER.
She wondered if the question was pushing the boundary too far, however. Single-word answers did not invite her to ask a question that might have been EXTREMELY personal. She had half a mind to raise her hands again in apology, but in the end she decided against it. Truth be told, she was curious … Although this was HARDLY a new state. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and since they hadn’t really been conversing before, it wasn’t as though she had anything to lose.
SHE TILTSher head, eyes still cast at the small feet of the figure before her. her tongue felt heavy in her mouth. she didn’t speak, she hadn’t since she was a girl, before the voices came, before the fog came. her voice had been a crucifix for her, to the family who believed her to be a devil’s incarnate, she had never been hear. when one is pushed hard enough, the effort needed to produce words is no longer worth it. speaking became a burden, until she felt she’d forgotten how to do it altogether.
THE QUESTION is as elusive to her mind as the ghost’s. it’d been what felt like eternities since she had thought conversationally. it took so much energy to fight off the pounding in her head, to awake with silet screams, to kill the images of a crumpled, bloody body under her own hands. shoes stained red.
WAS IT WORTH IT, EVELYN? DID SHE REALLY DESERVE IT, EVELYN? all for a damned pair of your dead sister’s shoes
AND WHOSEfault, after all, had it been that her sister died so young? she was crippled, evelyn, because of the treatments needed to cleanse her of YOUR SIN. she had always loathed her father’s god. her hands trembled with rage at the mere thought. he who would always be held over her, against her. he who promised she would end in flames. her fingernails, ven as short as she was forced to keep them inside the sanitized walls, dug into the flesh of her palms, as if longing to draw blood. her hands unfrl, and move through the hollow air again.
‘I DON’Thave anything to say. ‘
THE WHYof the girl’s question is still coming to her in slow drawls of her clouded mind. communication was a skill so long gone. she can barely remember her once spiteful will, and a small tinge of that old, worn anger can’t contain its rage at the lost fire. but it’s so hard, now. she had nothing left to fight for. she might as well have been a GHOST herself. a hollow body left in the cold.
And HERE was some sort of communication. It was stilted and odd, not like the usual fumblings from someone not quite fluent. It was more than processing a language that the brain wasn’t used to – the woman before her signed as though processing ANY language was difficult for her. Perhaps that wasn’t far from the truth. Wendla had been watching the woman for days, now, and she didn’t think she had seen her lips move even ONCE. In fact, she hadn’t seen her interact with any of the people who came to see her. The first sign that she had even given that showed that she recognized any of her surroundings were her small attempts directed at Wendla herself.
Wendla was naive, but far from unintelligent. She knew that the VISITORS to this tiny room were all doctors, and that it was unlikely that a physical ailment was what kept her in this small, white room. However, why would that stop her attempts to speak with the other? She didn’t know WHY or HOW she had gotten here. Even if danger was a concern, it would have been a laughable one. What did a G H O S T have to fear from a mortal? And so Wendla lifted her hands, carefully, and echoed the other’s words.
‘ E-V-E-L-Y-N. ’
She spelled the other’s name carefully and slowly, hands shifting into practiced movements. It was half confirmation, half assuring that she still had the other’s attention. Now that she knew she could be SEEN, she wanted CONVERSATION.
‘ It’s nice to meet you. My name is W-E-N-D-L-A … You can call me WENDLA. Are you Deaf? ’
She gave her name sign after spelling her name carefully, not sure if the other appreciated the intricacies of the title. Finding out if the other was Deaf would go a long way to answering that question, though. It might also explain why she was so unresponsive to the doctors – although that STARE indicated another reason.
HER EYES fixate on the little girl’s hands, watching in complete silence as she carefully signs back each letter of her name. she heard it on a daily basis, from the nurses and staff and doctors who prodded, who thought she couldn’t hear when they asserted she should’ve just been killed for her crimes. on her worse nights, she didn’t disagree with them. behind her eyelids lay the truth she had been running from for however long her life had existed exclusively behind four concrete walls.
( THEY WEREN’T HER SHOES. THEY WERE YOUR SISTER’S. SHE HAD NO RIGHT. IT WAS HER FAULT. )
it was her fault… ?
she would awake drenched in her own perspiration, a silent scream would come. one with no sound. she wasn’t sure she knew how anymore, or if she had the energy to push enough air past her tongue to form the proper words. still, her eyes had not moved from the small visage in the corner as her delicate fingers traced out her name. evelyn raised her hands again, a long breath expelled at the sheer ENERGY it took from her, and mimicked the gesture.
‘ WENDLA. ‘
and then she pondered the question for a long time. she wasn’t sure it could be classified as a though, more as a state of the unknown, a state in which she lived permanently. she heard every last word out of the mouths of the nurses who tended her, but she could never answer. words had once clawed at her throat, like devils digging their nails in until her vocal chords ran with blood, but the words never escaped. was she mute, or was she just ( c r a z y )?
it wasn’t my fault. they weren’t her shoes. they were my sisters.
Well, it certainly SEEMS like a response. But it is so slight, almost imperceptible, and Wendla can’t be sure just w h a t it is that the other is responding to. Shaking the head can mean I don’t want you to go, or I don’t understand you. Still, the woman is STARING at her, directly. Wendla clearly isn’t invisible to her, even if she uses a language that the other doesn’t understand. She tries again, if only because WRITING is a bit more of an effort now than it had been in life. BESIDES, it could have been a response to her words. Wendla just isn’t sure.
‘Do you know SIGN …?’
It is a question she is used to asking, whenever she meets someone new. In her travels, she has met MANY people. She likes to think that, for some, she’s even improved their lives, if just slightly. She t r i e s, at any rate. She can’t really say WHY. Maybe she does it for the girl she USED to be, or the one she could have been. She spends her afterlife making up for the life that she never got to live. Or maybe she just doesn’t like suffering. In life, she had hoped to take her friends’ suffering on to herself, instead. Now, she realizes that she can do much MORE to make the world better, even if she can only do it for a singe person. It’s something to do, at least.
SHE HADlearned it once, or rather, taught herself, in another life it felt like. she never been TALKATIVE in her young years, she hadn’t cared to speak to anyone around her family’s farmhouse, all words of her father’s had been either harsh or in selfish prayer. her ribs bore bruises from those same hands, her hair cut in uneven lengths, her nails uncut and her teeth unruly. no one had tended to her, and no words had softened her. she had picked up sign only as a way to pass time. lessons were painstakingly simplistic for her, and her time had been well bode by activities from miscellaneous borrowed books and careful observations of those around her enclosed world.
still, the skill was nowhere near fresh in her mind. and her limbs, as of late, seemed always HEAVY, like an impossible weight dragged on each and every square inch of her flesh, that which was riddled with scars and marks, even through her muddled vision, images of drying blood and screaming teeth marks. those which were not her own.
HER HANDSraised shakily, and agonizingly slowly. still, they didn’t falter on her yet. fingers outstretched, aching of FREEDOM from the clenched position in which they so often sat, and carefully, tenderly, they moved through the air, her eyes locked on their every position.
There was no sleep in heaven, or so Wendla had been told. The girl was inclined to AGREE with them, far more literally than how the words had probably been INTENDED, at first. While many others slept p e a c e f u l l y beneath the earth, she that found her own wanderlust far surpassed even death.
And, now, here was another soul, restless and without sleep. She still had FLESH and BLOOD, unlike Wendla herself, and she couldn’t help wondering what CAUSED her distress. Ever curious, Wendla tried to make sense of the girl, watching, sitting in her room for DAYS on end as she tried to understand.
Sometimes, she got the idea that the girl could SEE her. Wendla decided to TEST that theory.
‘… Am I frightening you? I could LEAVE, if you wish …’
Fingers moved hesitantly, although it seemed very doubtful that she would get a response. Even if the other did see her, what would be the chances of her knowing sign language?
HER EYES shift wordlessly to the figure, pale and solemn in the corner of her dismal room. she’s sat there for DAYS, perhaps weeks. time seems to blur together for her now. she’d seen her, how she moved listlessly, a child- like INNOCENCE that surrounded her. in her waking state between nightmares and reality, she hadn’t questioned whether the figure shrouded in light was REAL or not. nothing felt real anymore, anyhow. what was she to be afraid of some little girl with a haunted smile. it was not unlike that of the girl her own hands had taken life from.
her gaze locks on the other and her head shakes ever so slightly. words are not foreign to her, they come every so often from those who bring food and medical equipment each morning and evening. but they, themselves, have not passed her own lips in so long. she feels as though she no longer REMEMBERS how to speak. it is now ( s i l e n c e ) that comforts her most, and so she says nothing, but gently folds her hands and stares.
SHE ENJOYSthe quiet presence, she doesn’t want it to go. but her lips remain stuck together as if some paste had joined them years ago. and she stares.
