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Member
Join Date: Jan 2004
Posts: 8
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Green Cross Code
Green Cross Code
The world stopped for me on January 17th, 2001. It stopped rushing around, bypassing me wherever it could, barely stopping to let people in. The world was still...
Can you imagine? A world with no people to hide from because you owe them money, no scales to weigh yourself on and feel sick afterwards, no trashy bimbo who you always slag off but yet are secretly jealous of.
People say you die and go to heaven where angels will sing and you are happy. Well I’m happy here. This is my heaven - a world of nothing. It’s not even black. I thought nothing would be black but its not. It’s…nothing.
I don’t know why I’m here. I have no voice to ask, no eyes to see who I’m asking, no ears to listen to the answer. The only thing I have is my own thoughts constantly talking and I never sleep. At least I don’t think I do since I don’t know if I dream. A dream is just you talking to yourself but in a random fast way surely. Well I’m always talking in my world so there’s is no difference between dreams and…reality? No. This isn’t reality. This is my world.
I have no wishes, no desires, and no worries. Sometimes I wonder what the date is, how many years have passed of me just thinking, but I secretly know the answer. It’s January 17th, 2002. As it always has been and always will be. But hang on. It hasn’t always been January 17th. I remember something. A time when nothing was something. I don’t want to remember. Don’t make me. Oh god. The noise. So many people talking - They’re shouting, screaming. Why won’t they stop? Leave me alone. Go away. Please? Let me go back. I can’t hear them but I just know they’re there shouting at me - from the time before. It was so busy, so many other voices – not just me. People passed me by, so many people didn’t know I existed. In my world I am God, I created me, I listen to me and I talk to me. Everyone in my world knows I exist. No one passes me by. I was more nothing there than I was in my world.
Oh god I can feel. I don’t like it. What is this? I didn’t ask for this to happen. This is my world. You can’t invade it like this. GET OUT. I don’t understand.
The pain...it hurts more than I ever thought anything could. It hurts more than what happened at the start of my world. It’s wrenching at me from everywhere and turning my nothing into black. Why won’t it stop?
Black turning lighter and lighter until the burning white comes. It hurts so much. I just want to go back to nothing.
I can hear now. And I can feel something. I can move it. I don’t understand what’s happened to me.
“She moved! DOCTOR! QUICK! SHE MOVED HER FINGER!!!’
Oh my god! I know that voice. It isn’t my own. I only ever knew my voice before. But I know this voice. But where from? Did I dream her? Did I make her in my mind?
“What? That’s impossible. Not at this stage.”
What? No. I’m here! Who’s speaking to me? Where are you?
“She did it again!”
I want to know now. The pain is a little less. Or maybe i've just got used to it. But I want to know that voice. How do I know that voice? My world is only me so how can there be another?
“Oh my God. NURSE. Get 10M of morphine NOW”
OW. That hurt. But I can feel more. I’m starting to feel like i'm inside something. A body. I can feel my limbs, and my face. I can't move any of it though. Apart from that finger. Which I’m moving now. More and more. Over and over. I think this is the end of my world. Or maybe it’s the start of something. The end of nothing and the start of something.
Chapter 2
That was six months ago now. I guess you could call it waking up. But it was more than that. For me it was like being born. I still don’t remember anything from before. They tell me about myself, my life, my past over and over trying to make my mind remember. But it doesn’t work. Nothing does. *click click*
I walked my first step 4 months ago and I can still remember it. I’d been lying in bed so long I had to build new muscles, learn to walk again. It’s been like being born in a fully grown body. But learning to walk again… it was so difficult. The pain shot through my legs every time I tried to move without the roll along wheel they give some technical name to try and make you think you don’t look like a 5 year old kid playing. But one time I just saw Charlotte outside the window smiling at me and before I knew it I was stumbling towards her. Sounds like a movie cliché but hey… movies get their stories from somewhere.
Charlotte has been my best friend ever since I woke up that day. She was the voice I heard and the voice I hear now every time I try to do something that’s hard or painful. I’m waiting for her to visit me now. Just sitting here like I do every day. *click click click*
I smile as I think of last Saturday. We went out shopping and I spent a lot of my money on small things that Charlotte found boring but I’d never seen before. My favourite is this pen. Its pink, and you click the top to make the nib come in and out. I’d never seen that before. Not that I remember anyway. They only have biros in the hospital. Now I always carry my pen. The sound helps. I don’t know why, it just does.
*click* I wish Charlotte would come. She’s so beautiful. She’s everything I want to be. She never stops smiling and she always talks to me about everything. They tell me she’s my sister - that we had lived together for 5 years in London before it all went into nothing. I wish I could remember her before that. All I remember is voices. Sometimes they speak when I’m just sitting and looking… I don’t speak back – I’m not crazy. But I hear them saying things. *click click click click click*. They keep asking me to see; but I can see now… cant I?
Charlotte!
‘Hey hun! You’re looking fabulous as normal! My god you haven’t still got that pen have you?’ Charlotte smiles as she talks. I don’t think she ever stops smiling. Then again if I was her I wouldn’t stop smiling. She’s not trapped in these buildings surrounded by people who can’t string two words together to me and who won’t look me in the eye.
‘I like my pen!’ *click click* ‘How are you?’
‘I’m not too bad thanks. A bit tired. I’ve had to come here straight from my lecture so I’m a bit flustered but never mind. Listen, I just talked to your doctor and he says that in a month you can come back home with me and I can be with you all the time!’
Oh my god. Finally! I can go home! Charlotte’s taken me there quite a few times. It’s full of pictures of me. A younger looking me. A less confused looking me. I’m always with someone who I don’t know though. Charlotte is the only one who comes to visit me so I don’t know who they are. Two people are nearly always in the photos of both me and Charlotte. They’re older and I think they’re a couple. I have suspicions they’re my parents. I asked who they were once and Charlotte just said ‘no one you need to know about’ and went off in a huff. So I don’t ask. I don’t want to lose Charlotte so I try and be nice and make her happy any time I can.
I wonder what living with her will be like. Maybe I can go out with her and meet more people. I could go to lectures like her and learn things. Or I could watch any TV I…
‘Hello! Anyone home? You’ve been in you own little world for the past minute! Are you sure you’re ok?’
‘Huh? Oh…um…Yeah.’ I smile. ‘I’m just thinking about moving in with you.’
I can’t wait till I can move out of this place and just be properly free. I’ll be able to look at so many things! Everything is amazing to me. I had so long with just my thoughts that everything I see makes me wonder and think more. Sometimes I think too much but I think its ok since it seems a lot of people I’ve met here don’t think at all. They just do. They don’t think.
Chapter 3
Why won’t she talk to me? Where is she? All I did was ask her if we can go see our parents. But she left the house after shouting at me to leave her alone and go back where I belong. That was ages ago now. And i’m just sitting here crying and rocking back and forth. What if she's left me alone forever? This is worse than before. At least I didn’t know there was anyone else to abandon me. I thought it was just me. Now I worry and panic. I want to know why she hates me talking about it like that. Why she says those things whenever I bring it up.
I’m going to find out. Charlotte always says that if I want to find things out, I should go to the library.
I grab the coat charlotte bought me last week and run out of the house. I lock it quickly and start the walk to the library. As I walk people stare like they normally do. I put my head down and carry on. I have no pride left to hurt. I didn’t even know I was ‘different’ until a doctor said it would never heal and I asked ‘what won’t heal?’. I mean I woke up in a hospital full of injured people. That’s all I knew! I had always thought Charlotte was just lucky to be so perfect. I didn’t know she was ‘normal’. I pass a car and catch a look at myself in the window. There I am. Claire. Age 23. My hair is short, cropped. I’ve kept it that way since they did check up operations in my head to make sure I was ‘all there’ as the doctor put it. I have a large red scar down my cheek from my eye to my mouth. Apparently it is from where they remade my face. My entire cheek wasn’t there they say. It got burnt off in the car crash.
I walk on, ignoring the stares from people. One woman passes me staring and then sees me looking at her. She smiles sympathetically but I know what she’s thinking. ‘My god I’d hate to look like that.’ And no doubt she’s now thinking about what to cook for dinner tonight. See. No one thinks about anything important. No one’s actually happy. Even Charlotte. I see that now. I'm a burden to her. Then again who wouldn’t see me as a burden? She’s my only friend. She’s the only one who will look me in the eye, smile, and mean it. And what am I to her? Some scarred sister who won’t leave her alone about things she doesn’t want to talk about.
I’m at the library now.
‘Microfilm please’
The librarian looks up ‘OH…umm…uhhh’ she stares at my face. ‘urmmmm downstairs and the door on the left. Do you know how to use it?’
‘Are there instructions down there?’
‘Well…yes but I thought you might…’
‘Then ill figure it out.’
I leave. I can’t blame people like that. People here think that if something is wrong with you, EVERYTHING is wrong with you. They don’t do it on purpose. It’s just a given here. It’s a way of life.
I’m at the microfilm now but suddenly I don’t know why. What am I looking for? I know what happened. A car crash, I got hurt bad. But something tells me that’s where I should start. OK. January 17th….. 2000 and….one.
“Local government ban…’ nope
“13 year old school girl goes missing” nope. I’m going to be a while.
It’s been one hour and a half. I hope Charlotte hasn’t gone home and found i’ve gone out without her. She might get madder. I just wish I… wait. What was that one?
“Car crash kills two, maims one in frantic escape from maniac’
Oh my god. It sound like something from a cheesy horror movie. But I remember. Oh god. I can see it all happening. My eyes are closed but I can see. Just like he said I would.
I was at my parents’ house visiting. They’re the ones in the pictures. I was sitting on my old bed and reading my book – 1984. Oh god, I even remember what chapter. My parents had gone out to buy some food for dinner that night and I was all alone. I heard someone coming up the stairs, I shouted for them to turn on the landing light. I thought it was Charlotte. But it wasn’t. It was a man. Old. Grey. Grey in every way. His skin, his hair, his teeth. All grey. No colour left at all, no shred of anything real. Just grey. He walked in and I recognise him. I’ve seen him before but I don’t know where. I can see it all happening as if its now.
He’s coming closer now. I’m shouting at him, telling him to go away, asking him what he wants. He grabs me and shoves me down. And then I know. He’s the man in the street. The man in the street I pass every day to work but I never look at. He sits on the bench leering at everyone going past as if they’ve stolen his life, his mind, his colour. I see it now. So does he.
‘So you finally look eh? You finally see. You don’t just ignore me like everyone else and carry on thinking whatever you want to. How your life is going. What you’ll be doing this afternoon. You finally see.’
I’m crying now. I don’t understand.
“What don’t you understand? I see you everyday. I see a lot of people everyday. But do you notice? Does anyone notice? No. I’m ‘noted’, I’m ‘categorised’, but I’m never seen. Well now its time for you to see what I can do to you. Now its time for you to realise I’m not just some paper cut out on a park bench.” I’m sobbing, I feel sick and my throat is hurting. I can hardly breathe now. I don’t know what I’ve done. Of course I see him! I’ve walked past him knowing here’s there everyday! Why me? How did he know I’d be here?
I can remember it all now. I sobbed and sobbed. Begged and begged. But he hit me and he used me. It seemed to go on and on. He never left. He just kept asking me if I ‘saw’. Then a car door slammed. He stopped hitting me and so I hit him. I ran. Ran as fast I could. Out of the house to my parents. I screamed at them to get in the car. They stopped. They looked at me in shock. They didn’t understand. Then the man came out. And they saw. They saw the bruises on me, they saw the blood. They got in and we drove. He chased us down the drive but we drove faster. My dad floored the pedal, going faster and faster. It was raining. And then corner that he went round everyday. The corner he knew about. This time he didn’t see it. This time he didn’t turn. This time was the last time.
No. No it can’t be. *click* Charlotte said I was driving. She said I just missed a sign saying there was a sharp corner. I always saw her talking to doctors before they started telling me what happened but I always thought she was just checking up on me. But she wasn’t. She was telling them that she’d tell me what happened... Maybe she was trying to protect me? Stop me from remembering? No.
She misses them too much. She knows it’s not my fault. *click* She doesn’t blame me. But she misses them too much to talk about it. She can’t let me know they died. Otherwise she has to accept it for herself. She knows they died. But she cannot see. She can’t see that they’re gone. That they wouldn’t want her lying.
I went past that man every day. I knew he was there but I never saw him. He was right. We look. We ‘note down’, we ‘catalogue’ people and events. But we never see them for what they are. We don’t care. It’s like that here - always. People look at me and see that I’m ‘wrong’. See that something has happened. But I’m nothing to them. Not me. My scar is. They’ll remember that. But not me. *click click* This isn’t a world of something. This is a world of nothing. So many people don’t know I exist, so many people don’t listen, so many people don’t see. Well I don’t want to be nothing. I want to be something again. I can’t stand it anymore. I can’t be nothing. I have to be something. And for that this world has to end. And My world has to begin …again.
*click*
The End
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