Voices – Page 14
Voices – Page 14 – 3/25/04
Jen didn’t sleep easy, even before the nightmares. She lay in John’s bed, tossing, turning, moaning to herself. John sat on the couch and watched her, feeling a mixture of confusion and pity. Something awful had happened to this girl. He could guess what it was that the man in her dreams had done to her, and what she had done in retaliation. That much seemed obvious, without the help of the voices. It was the specifics, John thought, that might explain why she was slowly killing herself with booze.
Twice he got up and pulled the covers back over her, not so much for their warmth but out of a sense of propriety. Jen was again wearing one of his shirts as a nightgown, and it had long since ridden up above her waist. Jen’s plain white cotton panties were simultaneously sexy and innocent, and John felt wrong not keeping her covered up.
John sat, and waited, and after a few hours found himself nodding. He wondered if it was better to stay awake, and decided that, loud as Jen’s screaming had been the night before, it would certainly wake him if she had the dream this night. He closed his eyes and slept.
The screams came to him first in his dreams, and though her body was physically close, it seemed that Jen’s mind must have been far away. When the sounds started, they were distant, and it was not until they were nearing a fever pitch that their volume grew great enough for John to recognize them for what they were, and begin pulling himself from the depths of sleep.
He was awake to see it happen, but unable to intercede in time to prevent it, if indeed it could have been prevented.
Jen shoved herself upright, shrieking some incoherency, eyes wide and staring, and behind him John heard a thudding, crashing noise. He turned toward the sound, feeling slow and stupid and still mostly asleep. What once had been a bookcase resting near his front door was now a pile of timber and paper.
“What the fuck?” John heard himself say.
Jen was now crying “No, no, no!” at the top of her lungs in rapid litany, her voice breaking, and John heard more crashes. He watched as Jen’s head swiveled here and there. Whatever thing her staring eyes focused on simply exploded. His alarm clock became a sparking pile of plastic and wire. His closet doors were punched inward, splintered and fragmented. The coffee table burst into pieces, spraying John with chunks of wood. He raised his hands instinctively, probably saving his eyes. He could feel the bits and pieces, moving at tremendous speed, slashing him through the fabric of his shirt.
“Jesus Christ!” John shouted. “Jen, stop! You have to stop!”
“I can’t stop!” she wailed in a frightened little girl’s voice unlike anything he had heard from her before. “I’m scared and I can’t stop!”
Things around the room were still exploding, and John realized that at any moment, one of those things might be him. Desperate and terrified, he did the only thing he could think of to do that wasn’t bolting out the door: he shut his eyes and concentrated, reaching out with his mind toward Jen.
Her breath hitched for a moment, and then resumed its panicky gasping. “John, what are you doing?” She cried.
“I have no fucking idea,” he snarled. He tried to will himself into the state he had been in earlier, and all of a sudden, with an almost-audible click, there came again that sense of vertigo. John fought against it this time, and tried to stay relaxed. He tried to project his calm outward, toward Jen.
“What is that? It feels good!” Jen’s voice was still loud and hysterical, but John thought it had maybe come down a notch.
“I’m trying to help you relax,” he said, keeping his eyes closed.
“Keep doing it! Don’t stop!” Jen pleaded.
There was more thudding, but this time it was from the other side of the wall. “Why don’t you save the sexual conquests for the weekend, Storm?” shouted a voice.
“Fuck you, Jawolski!” John shouted back. He felt himself losing his grip on Jen’s mind.
“John, please. I… don’t go. Please.”
“I’m right here, Jen. You have to relax. Can you relax for me? I’m not going anywhere. Take a few deep breaths.”
Jen did as she was told. “You’re leaving me,” she said.
“Only leaving your head. I can’t hold on anymore, Jen. I’m not good at this yet. I’m still right here, okay?”
John felt the awful vertigo again as the connection severed. His gut wrenched, but he clamped his jaws shut and fought against the need to vomit. After a time, it passed. He opened his eyes and looked around.
The apartment was trashed. Jen was sitting in his bed, hands over her face. John got up, took three unsteady steps around the pile of rubble that had once been his coffee table, and sat down next to her on the bed.
“That was unexpected,” he said.
“You fucking bastard!” Jen shouted, hitting him in the arm. John let her do it, not minding the blows, wanting her to vent her anger. “I told you to let me drink. I told you! Now look, I’ve destroyed your whole fucking apartment. Look what you made me do!”
After five or six punches, John grabbed her hand, pulled her against him, and wrapped his arms around her.
“Let me go. I hate you. I hate you!” Jen pushed against him, but John held her tight. After a moment, she stopped fighting, pressed her face into his chest, and began to sob.
