A black, E white
Jul. 31st, 2005 07:53 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
jezzabe.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
femgenficathonTitle: "A black, E white"
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jezzabe
Pairing: Gen. (being as it is a gen ficathon and all...)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: If i did own them, book six would have my name on it. Since it doesn't, i can only assume i don't.
Prompt: #24. When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?--Kathleen Norris Not that i used it...
Summary: She envies the roof its simplicity of purpose.
Feedback: For this one i would adore it. You will be smothered in sticky kisses.
A/N: This clocks in at 1,467 words. And it nearly killed me writing it. I had all the ideas, but getting it down was really difficult, I'm not sure why. Thanks to the fantasticspessartine for the beta. And the finding of the poem for the title.
The title is from the poem 'Vowels' by Rimbaud
The girl with no name is lying in her hospital bed, staring at the smooth, white roof. She envies the roof its simplicity of purpose. It has been painted with even brush strokes, horizontal straight lines crossing and recrossing across the length of the room. Running her eyes across the ceiling, she begins the old game of counting the brush strokes. Six groups of six brush strokes, each stroke with six lines. She counts, her mouth moving silently as she recommits the patterns of the ceiling to her memory. Staring at the ceiling she dissolves, trying to be like the paint. Trying to stay smooth and unreadable.
She looks around the bland room, eyes moving listlessly in their sockets. There is nothing sharp in her room and the window is nailed shut. “Just to remove temptation,” she was told on her first day here. She can’t remember anything before the first day. Time after time she tries, and try after try, she comes up with the same image. A smooth, sheer white wall in her mind.
She doesn’t know how many days she has been here. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…days, weeks, months. She doesn’t care anymore. Days slip and merge together, only standing out because dinner is a different colour of muck, or because a nurse smiled at her. She prefers it when there is nothing to distinguish a day. That way, she can forget it, and it is one less day she has spent here.
Other people in here have visitors. The girl with no name has never had a visitor, and she doesn’t really want one. Sometimes (when she is alone in her room, which is rare), she will play at having a visitor.
“Hello! How are you?” she will ask the empty chair, positioned on an angle facing her at her side. Pausing, she will tilt her head, as though listening to an answer.
“Oh, that’s good. How is Mum?” she will continue. This is normally as far as she will get before collapsing into silent laughter. Doubled over, she will clutch her stomach and laugh until tears fall from her eyes. The nurses will shake their heads and mutter to one another before sticking a needle into her arm. Then, for a while at least, there is nothing but blackness for the girl with no name.
She likes the difference of blackness. Within the black, there are swirls of colours spinning and twirling across her vision. When she has nothing better to do, which is most of the time, she will squeeze her eyes tightly shut, and watch the interplay of light dance behind her eyelids. It is something that is always different in the monotony of her routine.
Three times a week, the psychiatrist will come and see her. He thinks she has temporary amnesia. She heard him tell the nurse once when she was pretending to be asleep. He said she had subconsciously blocked out a tragic, or perhaps damaging, event. Her brain's way of protecting her. The girl with no name thinks this is silly. She would never do that to herself. The only reason that she can’t remember anything before the hospital is because there is nothing before the hospital.
She and he will play the name game every now and then. This is the only time the girl will pay attention to what he is saying. She longs for a name, longs to belong to the group of patients who are referred to fondly by nicknames given to them by the nurses.
There is a blackboard outside her room, and written on it in fading white chalk are seven words, starkly bleak in their simplicity. “Here lives the girl with no name.” This is how she has begun to think of herself; she does not belong in this world of named objects, cannot belong and remain nameless.
They sit there, her and the psychiatrist, facing each other. Him, with his suit and loosened tie, legs crossed at the ankle, leaning back in his chair as he reads from his clipboard. The girl sits cross legged in her chair, her long hair falling around her bowed head, concealing her face from his sharp eyed view.
“Lavender?” he will ask tiredly, drooping eyelids betraying his lack of sleep. She will think for a moment.
“Are you Lavender?” she asks herself, running the name through her mind, savouring the three syllables and eight letters that make up the name. It doesn’t fit. Sadly, she shakes her head, rejecting another chance at a life. He picks up his pen, and with a firm, decisive stroke draws a line through another lost soul.
“Lily?” he tries, and she thinks. So the cycle begins again.
Life goes on in this pattern for days, weeks, months. The girl with no name breaths and exists in the barren whiteness, and it may never have changed but for one thing. One day, she is in the shower when she hears a screaming coming from down the hall. The nurse who is with her to make sure she does not harm herself, throws caution to the wind and races off down the hall, pausing only to lock her charge in the bathroom.
The girl with no name steps out of the still running shower, and makes her way over to the sink. Here is the only thing that is not white in the entire hospital. Over the sink, against the wall, is a sheet of shiny black plastic. She has always wondered what it has been covering, and now she has an opportunity to find out.
Looking around nervously, she lays her palms flat against the plastic. Shutting her eyes, she grasps fistfuls of the slippery sheet and pulls, yanking down and away from the wall. The plastic tears satisfactorily, coming away from the wall and into her hands easily.
Opening her hands, she can feel the plastic fall to the floor and pool around her feet. Raising her head, she slowly opens her eyes. Staring back at her is the reflection of a girl with no name. Her long hair is sodden, and falls limply around her face. She has skin that looks pasty, though she feels that if there was some time spent outside in the sun instead of being stuck inside all the time, the skin would glow with health. There are a few freckles standing out from the skin. Leaning forwards, she tries to count them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…what comes after seven?
Raising her eyes, the girl with no name looks into deep solid blue, surrounded by a ring of darker blue. Exhaling, she knows her name is on the tip of her tongue. If she stretches a little more, if she runs a little faster, she can get there.
The door opens, and she can vaguely hear the nurse fussing at her. The girl ignores her as she ignores the others that are brought in by the buzzer that has been pushed in her anxiety to get closer to the mirror.
As they lead her down the hall to her room, as they place her on her bed and pull out the needle, as they stroke her brow and try to calm her down, the girl is thinking. She is as smooth and bland as paint on the outside, but her mind is racing. It is overturning stones, it is trying to get a grip on the wall, searching for something, anything. She will find it. Then the darkness hits in a wave, blocking out everything she was reaching for.
They are sitting, the girl and the psychiatrist, in their usual positions. Something is different about today; they are sitting outside on the lawn, in the sun. He somehow managed to convince her nurse that fresh air would do her good, and the girl thinks she could care about him for that.
They are playing the name game again, mainly because she begged him and he is in a good mood.
“Penelope?” he asks, playing with a grass stem.
No. A shake of the head.
“Millicent?” he tries again, rolling the stem into a ball that he flicks away.
No. A more definite head shake.
“Pansy?” he guesses, picking up a leaf.
No. A screwed up nose and a shake of the head.
“Ginny?” he comments, looking down at his fingers.
The girl freezes, looking down at the deep green of the grass.
She is crying, but her Mum is beside her waving and smiling.
“Don’t, Ginny, we’ll send you loads of owls,”
“We’ll send you a Hogwarts toilet seat.”
“George!”
Looking up, Ginny smiles. She rises unsteadily to her feet, tips her face up to the sun and steps into the coloured spectrum of life.
Author:
jezzabePairing: Gen. (being as it is a gen ficathon and all...)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: If i did own them, book six would have my name on it. Since it doesn't, i can only assume i don't.
Prompt: #24. When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?--Kathleen Norris Not that i used it...
Summary: She envies the roof its simplicity of purpose.
Feedback: For this one i would adore it. You will be smothered in sticky kisses.
A/N: This clocks in at 1,467 words. And it nearly killed me writing it. I had all the ideas, but getting it down was really difficult, I'm not sure why. Thanks to the fantastic
spessartine for the beta. And the finding of the poem for the title.The title is from the poem 'Vowels' by Rimbaud
The girl with no name is lying in her hospital bed, staring at the smooth, white roof. She envies the roof its simplicity of purpose. It has been painted with even brush strokes, horizontal straight lines crossing and recrossing across the length of the room. Running her eyes across the ceiling, she begins the old game of counting the brush strokes. Six groups of six brush strokes, each stroke with six lines. She counts, her mouth moving silently as she recommits the patterns of the ceiling to her memory. Staring at the ceiling she dissolves, trying to be like the paint. Trying to stay smooth and unreadable.
She looks around the bland room, eyes moving listlessly in their sockets. There is nothing sharp in her room and the window is nailed shut. “Just to remove temptation,” she was told on her first day here. She can’t remember anything before the first day. Time after time she tries, and try after try, she comes up with the same image. A smooth, sheer white wall in her mind.
She doesn’t know how many days she has been here. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…days, weeks, months. She doesn’t care anymore. Days slip and merge together, only standing out because dinner is a different colour of muck, or because a nurse smiled at her. She prefers it when there is nothing to distinguish a day. That way, she can forget it, and it is one less day she has spent here.
Other people in here have visitors. The girl with no name has never had a visitor, and she doesn’t really want one. Sometimes (when she is alone in her room, which is rare), she will play at having a visitor.
“Hello! How are you?” she will ask the empty chair, positioned on an angle facing her at her side. Pausing, she will tilt her head, as though listening to an answer.
“Oh, that’s good. How is Mum?” she will continue. This is normally as far as she will get before collapsing into silent laughter. Doubled over, she will clutch her stomach and laugh until tears fall from her eyes. The nurses will shake their heads and mutter to one another before sticking a needle into her arm. Then, for a while at least, there is nothing but blackness for the girl with no name.
She likes the difference of blackness. Within the black, there are swirls of colours spinning and twirling across her vision. When she has nothing better to do, which is most of the time, she will squeeze her eyes tightly shut, and watch the interplay of light dance behind her eyelids. It is something that is always different in the monotony of her routine.
Three times a week, the psychiatrist will come and see her. He thinks she has temporary amnesia. She heard him tell the nurse once when she was pretending to be asleep. He said she had subconsciously blocked out a tragic, or perhaps damaging, event. Her brain's way of protecting her. The girl with no name thinks this is silly. She would never do that to herself. The only reason that she can’t remember anything before the hospital is because there is nothing before the hospital.
She and he will play the name game every now and then. This is the only time the girl will pay attention to what he is saying. She longs for a name, longs to belong to the group of patients who are referred to fondly by nicknames given to them by the nurses.
There is a blackboard outside her room, and written on it in fading white chalk are seven words, starkly bleak in their simplicity. “Here lives the girl with no name.” This is how she has begun to think of herself; she does not belong in this world of named objects, cannot belong and remain nameless.
They sit there, her and the psychiatrist, facing each other. Him, with his suit and loosened tie, legs crossed at the ankle, leaning back in his chair as he reads from his clipboard. The girl sits cross legged in her chair, her long hair falling around her bowed head, concealing her face from his sharp eyed view.
“Lavender?” he will ask tiredly, drooping eyelids betraying his lack of sleep. She will think for a moment.
“Are you Lavender?” she asks herself, running the name through her mind, savouring the three syllables and eight letters that make up the name. It doesn’t fit. Sadly, she shakes her head, rejecting another chance at a life. He picks up his pen, and with a firm, decisive stroke draws a line through another lost soul.
“Lily?” he tries, and she thinks. So the cycle begins again.
Life goes on in this pattern for days, weeks, months. The girl with no name breaths and exists in the barren whiteness, and it may never have changed but for one thing. One day, she is in the shower when she hears a screaming coming from down the hall. The nurse who is with her to make sure she does not harm herself, throws caution to the wind and races off down the hall, pausing only to lock her charge in the bathroom.
The girl with no name steps out of the still running shower, and makes her way over to the sink. Here is the only thing that is not white in the entire hospital. Over the sink, against the wall, is a sheet of shiny black plastic. She has always wondered what it has been covering, and now she has an opportunity to find out.
Looking around nervously, she lays her palms flat against the plastic. Shutting her eyes, she grasps fistfuls of the slippery sheet and pulls, yanking down and away from the wall. The plastic tears satisfactorily, coming away from the wall and into her hands easily.
Opening her hands, she can feel the plastic fall to the floor and pool around her feet. Raising her head, she slowly opens her eyes. Staring back at her is the reflection of a girl with no name. Her long hair is sodden, and falls limply around her face. She has skin that looks pasty, though she feels that if there was some time spent outside in the sun instead of being stuck inside all the time, the skin would glow with health. There are a few freckles standing out from the skin. Leaning forwards, she tries to count them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…what comes after seven?
Raising her eyes, the girl with no name looks into deep solid blue, surrounded by a ring of darker blue. Exhaling, she knows her name is on the tip of her tongue. If she stretches a little more, if she runs a little faster, she can get there.
The door opens, and she can vaguely hear the nurse fussing at her. The girl ignores her as she ignores the others that are brought in by the buzzer that has been pushed in her anxiety to get closer to the mirror.
As they lead her down the hall to her room, as they place her on her bed and pull out the needle, as they stroke her brow and try to calm her down, the girl is thinking. She is as smooth and bland as paint on the outside, but her mind is racing. It is overturning stones, it is trying to get a grip on the wall, searching for something, anything. She will find it. Then the darkness hits in a wave, blocking out everything she was reaching for.
They are sitting, the girl and the psychiatrist, in their usual positions. Something is different about today; they are sitting outside on the lawn, in the sun. He somehow managed to convince her nurse that fresh air would do her good, and the girl thinks she could care about him for that.
They are playing the name game again, mainly because she begged him and he is in a good mood.
“Penelope?” he asks, playing with a grass stem.
No. A shake of the head.
“Millicent?” he tries again, rolling the stem into a ball that he flicks away.
No. A more definite head shake.
“Pansy?” he guesses, picking up a leaf.
No. A screwed up nose and a shake of the head.
“Ginny?” he comments, looking down at his fingers.
The girl freezes, looking down at the deep green of the grass.
She is crying, but her Mum is beside her waving and smiling.
“Don’t, Ginny, we’ll send you loads of owls,”
“We’ll send you a Hogwarts toilet seat.”
“George!”
Looking up, Ginny smiles. She rises unsteadily to her feet, tips her face up to the sun and steps into the coloured spectrum of life.
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