Negative Reactions to Loud Sounds -- Alison Bergeron
Editor's Note: This was the runner-up in the Holiday Fiction Writing Contest.
When he arrives at her door, a lost boy and his dog, winter has just begun cutting itself into pieces and throwing itself from the black expanse of the sky.
“Everyone’s gone.” His first words to her roll from his tongue as gentle and biting as snowfall. “It’s just us.” And so after many moments of tarrying in the shadows cast by the door, she lets him in.
He calls himself Id and she doesn’t give him her name for she can’t remember exactly what it was. It’s been more than years since she’s heard it.
“What do they call you, then?”
“I’m Woodface.” Her head turns and sweeps over clarity as it does so. Halogen burns fall from her cheeks as if she wept a wildfire. The spots on her nose have been lost to glass scars and streaks, yet he doesn’t flinch. It’s nice to know anyone.
“This is Lester.” He gestures to his bright eyed retriever who’s fur falls like copper silk.
“Lester.” She repeats, eyes navigating the labyrinth of Id’s hair. He’s tall and young and trips over himself with the bright eyes and frantic face of a man who’s recently jammed a fork into an electrical socket. She then reminds herself that there’s only enough power for halogen lamps. Not enough to leave a man looking the way he does.
“My best friend.”
Are you not afraid of me? The question burns at the tip of her tongue, but she doesn’t speak, for while he may not be afraid of her, she is very afraid of his answer. Instead she nods and looks down at Lester.
“What do you want?” She asks to fill the silence.
“It’s only the two of us. I want to stay together.” He admits. “I don’t want to be alone for too long. Your brain starts making things up. I don’t want to lose my mind.” She bites her tongue, green eyes flying to the wall. No one sees her. No one stays with her. No one so much as knows her name. She, just like everyone else, has come to know herself as nothing more than a grotesque face. Why hasn’t he run away?
“Fine.” Her tongue speaks without the consent of her brain. Now the words float around the room, tugging the ends of his mouth into a grin. “But you can’t stay for long. I want to be alone.”
“You’re gonna lose your mind.”
Her house has no windows, just like any other in her town. Warm light makes her squint as halogen burns cold on the grey walls day in and day out. While it slyly defines the cracks in her face, the sun is violent, painting her as a china doll that’s had it’s head smacked against the ground. And so when the light comes, she stays inside, for she’s been living in blackouts for far too long.
“Why haven’t you left?” Id asks as Lester lays his head in his lap. Woodface stands on a chair, blinking away the fireworks superimposed on her eyes from staring into fluorescent light.
“I don’t want to.” There’s silence for a moment. Id watches her movements delicately. Lester stands at the foot of her chair as if he could catch her should she fall. Woodface pulls her hair back, deep red flyaways buzzing at her cheeks.
“You’re not supposed to touch the bulbs. They can blow up.” He warns her.
She turns her eyes to him and the topographical map of her skin begs him to study her face, a monument to her pain.
“Believe me.” She breathes. “I know.”
Winter comes on fast, an infectious disease, and soon they’ve begun to forget that spring ever existed. She whiles away the hours as she has been for years, gutting the volumes no one wants to read with a carving knife and making her own twisted vision of art.
“You know the war is over, right?” Id asks her on a night where she mourns the loss of another lightbulb. “You can leave.”
“I know.”
“Everyone else is gone.”
“I know.”
“How long were you alone?”
“A long time.”
“You’re gonna lose your mind.”
“Everyone who left already lost theirs.”
“You’re gonna start seeing things. Your brain wants to save itself I think. ” No reply. “You could leave too. Some part of you must want to. Deep, deep down.” Woodface shakes her head, looking down at the book in her hands. Her grip tightens around her carving knife.
“A face like this belongs in a blackout.” His head shakes again.
“You’re gonna lose your mind.”
Blizzards sets upon them like a slow plague and soon they’ve begun to forget that spring ever existed. Id leaves Lester with her to pass the time. Woodface enjoys the company, for somehow she finds herself able to relate to someone who doesn’t speak. He lays his head in her lap while she carves up her books and radiates warmth even though the house has gone icy. He doesn’t know beauty. He doesn’t know ugliness. She never says it out loud, but she considers Lester to be her best friend too.
Id comes home with his hands full of light bulbs and gets to work fixing the suns in her ceiling while she guts another book with one hand and strokes Lester’s head with another.
“Why do you do that?” Id asks. “To the books.” Woodface shrugs.
“What else are they going to get used for?”
“Maybe...reading?”
“Can’t do that.” She says.
“You’re gonna run out of books eventually.” His voice is endearing somehow.
“I know. I might.”
“And then you’ll lose your mind.” She looks down at Lester and a ‘But maybe not’ hangs from her lips.
There comes a morning when he asks her to go outside with him. She says she doesn’t go out in the sun and naturally he predicts the loss of her mind once again. Woodface agrees to a compromise.
In the days after power was cut to their town and it rained bombs more often than water, she had gone out in the sun. It was then, though, that she still possessed her face. Now, she goes out into the snow under the light of the moon at Id’s request.
The fresh air is dizzying, yet exhilarating. She watches with a grin as Lester buries his head in the snowbanks and tackles Id to the ground. Soon he turns to her, eyes sunny. She takes his face in her hands and joins in the laugher. It’s the first time Woodface has breathed in years.
The days slip by and something sweet finds itself in their hands. He brings her lightbulbs so that her house is never dark and she carves his image into her books next to trees and houses and the sun so that he knows he and Lester have become a part of her world. They spend their midnights either out under the snowfall or under the lamps, dancing as if they had music.
Whenever he brings up the idea of leaving this desolate place behind, she sews up her mouth and hums of ugliness while he repeats himself again.
“You’re gonna lose your mind.”
There comes a day when he throws the door open with reckless abandon, carrying with him the lifeless form of his lifelong friend. Her heart turns to wood to match her face.
“What happened?” Her tongue panics. “What happened to him?” He’s ice cold, wearing the blizzard that’s raging outside on his fur. Id’s eyes run like the sink.
“He got out last night. The snow buried him.”
“Is he…?” She can’t bring herself to say the word that she’s feared since the lights first went out.
“No!” Id shakes his head out, laying Lester across the floor. “He’s still breathing! I can hear his heart!”
They wrap him in Woodface’s blankets and wait for hours with hollow eyes. There’s no one here to help them. This town is only useful when the skies are red.
The night is long and no one dances.
“If Lester lives…” Id begins, breath like an earthquake. “We’re leaving this place.” Woodface’s eyes grow wide.
“You can’t leave.”
“If Lester lives, we’re leaving.” He repeats.
“I’m staying.” She decides. He turns to her with those electric blue eyes.
“Then you’ve lost your mind.”
His words corrode somewhere between Woodface’s eyes. The thought of isolation freezes at her fingertips and claws at her skin as if it needs more reason to be feared. She’s had a taste of the light. To go back to being a lonely monster is to kiss death.
The lights in her house are burning out one by one and no one bothers to replace them.
Lester survives the night. He survives for quite a few consecutive nights. Soon he’s not only surviving, but he’s living, breathing, and walking on weak legs. Woodface’s mouth tastes bitter day in and day out. His strength leaves the door for Is unlocked. He could walk out any second.
She runs out of books just as he predicted.
On that morning, the sun slips under the door and Lester rushes to catch it, stumbling over raw muscles. She holds her carving knife close as if it will bring the books back. Naturally, it doesn’t.
Id is still asleep and there’s no one to take Lester out into the fresh air. For a moment Woodface chatters with the ghosts of the room, praying that they’ll keep this burden a secret. She stands, shaking off her possible hallucinations and opens the door, allowing sunlight to flood the cracks of her skin as the winter air washes over her. She wades out into the snow with Lester at her side, forgetting that she still has her knife in her grip.
Lester jumps and plays his games with the ground as usual, eyes begging her to join. She suffers a change of heart and allows herself to collapse on her back, ice gnawing on her arms and neck. Lester jumps on her, licking her face jovially even though he’s weak.
Woodface laughs for a moment, taking his face in her hands.
“You can’t leave.” She whispers. “You can’t leave.”
A poisonous thought crosses her mind. Her eyes dart over to where her knife lays in the snow and back to the dog’s face between her hands. We can both be Woodface and you can stay here.
She sits up suddenly. We can both be Woodface. Lester can’t sense what’s wrong. He doesn’t know beauty. He doesn’t know ugliness. You can stay here.
She grabs her knife, the snow swallowing up her hands and spitting them out twice as deadly. She holds Lester still and goes to strike, vowing to never let herself be alone again.
But her hand freezes just like the trees have, shaking with fear or cold. Lester stares back with big eyes. I am Woodface. Alone.
The knife falls to the ground. There are no more books. She has no need for it any longer.
“Lester…” She cries. “I’ve lost my mind.”
Id opens the door and Lester goes running to him happily as if he and Woodface have just discovered a new game. Id smiles at her as she wipes her eyes, frame backlit by the one lightbulb they’ve got left. She trudges towards him, dragging snow across her calves and lets herself in, closing the door behind them.
Id lifts her up and holds her as if her body is fleeting.
The last lamp burns out. Their house is the last piece to the blackout jigsaw of this town.
“I’ll go.” Woodface concedes. “We can leave.”
The room is swept of their things.
She doesn’t know how to live without the blackout. She doesn’t know how to live without halogen lamps and cut up books, but knows she has to learn on account of saving her mind. She says she can’t picture herself back in the cities that haven’t been reduced to ash. She can’t see herself where the light is. Id tells her again and again. You need to. You need to.
They walk along the road until they reach the place where the land is flat and the taxis just barely reach. She’s bundled up against the bitter winter, though Id does all he can to keep her from covering the expanse of her face. He stops traffic with his hand as Lester laps at their heels, still a survivor.
A yellow cab stops before them and he opens the door for her. Her breath picks up as she turns to him, eyes desperate.
“Why didn’t you ever run away from me?”
“No choice. You’re beautiful.” He tells her. “And if you don’t see it, you’ve lost your mind.” He stops traffic with his hand as Lester nuzzles his leg and hops into the cab after Woodface is eased in. She gets a look at the driver’s eyes in the mirror, feeling as if her stomach will soon be resting on her tongue.
Id begins to close the door but she stops him with her forearm.
“Why aren’t you getting in?”
“Your brain wants to save itself.” He says with a bittersweet smile.
“What?” She asks, voice desperate. “You can't leave me alone.”
“What did I tell you?” He laughs. “You’re gonna start seeing things. You’re gonna lose your mind.”
“Where are you going?” Woodface cries. “We’ve got to stay together!”
“It’s always just the two of us.” She blinks once and he’s gone. No amount of blinks brings him back. He was never there.
Something like a realization goes tearing through her chest.
“Ma’am, who are you talking to?” The driver asks. Woodface’s lungs hollow out as she looks into his mirror-eyes. It’s been years since she’s made eye contact with anyone. Lester has his head in her lap and it’s clear. It’s just the two of them.
“Myself. I’ve just been talking to myself.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Away from the blackout.” She quips. “Anywhere but here.”
They begin to move in the opposite direction of everything she knows.
“You lived in the shelter town? For this long?” The driver lets out a breathy laugh. “That seems impossible.” Woodface turns her eyes to the window.
“Don’t think about it too much. You’ll lose your mind.”
She falls asleep in the back of the cab, a lost girl and her dog, as snow swallows them up again. Her lightless town dies in the night, a lonely monster.
Woodface and Lester survive this winter and one day abandon survival for the sensation of being alive. She loses her mind daily, but it always returns in due time.
When he arrives at her door, a lost boy and his dog, winter has just begun cutting itself into pieces and throwing itself from the black expanse of the sky.
“Everyone’s gone.” His first words to her roll from his tongue as gentle and biting as snowfall. “It’s just us.” And so after many moments of tarrying in the shadows cast by the door, she lets him in.
He calls himself Id and she doesn’t give him her name for she can’t remember exactly what it was. It’s been more than years since she’s heard it.
“What do they call you, then?”
“I’m Woodface.” Her head turns and sweeps over clarity as it does so. Halogen burns fall from her cheeks as if she wept a wildfire. The spots on her nose have been lost to glass scars and streaks, yet he doesn’t flinch. It’s nice to know anyone.
“This is Lester.” He gestures to his bright eyed retriever who’s fur falls like copper silk.
“Lester.” She repeats, eyes navigating the labyrinth of Id’s hair. He’s tall and young and trips over himself with the bright eyes and frantic face of a man who’s recently jammed a fork into an electrical socket. She then reminds herself that there’s only enough power for halogen lamps. Not enough to leave a man looking the way he does.
“My best friend.”
Are you not afraid of me? The question burns at the tip of her tongue, but she doesn’t speak, for while he may not be afraid of her, she is very afraid of his answer. Instead she nods and looks down at Lester.
“What do you want?” She asks to fill the silence.
“It’s only the two of us. I want to stay together.” He admits. “I don’t want to be alone for too long. Your brain starts making things up. I don’t want to lose my mind.” She bites her tongue, green eyes flying to the wall. No one sees her. No one stays with her. No one so much as knows her name. She, just like everyone else, has come to know herself as nothing more than a grotesque face. Why hasn’t he run away?
“Fine.” Her tongue speaks without the consent of her brain. Now the words float around the room, tugging the ends of his mouth into a grin. “But you can’t stay for long. I want to be alone.”
“You’re gonna lose your mind.”
Her house has no windows, just like any other in her town. Warm light makes her squint as halogen burns cold on the grey walls day in and day out. While it slyly defines the cracks in her face, the sun is violent, painting her as a china doll that’s had it’s head smacked against the ground. And so when the light comes, she stays inside, for she’s been living in blackouts for far too long.
“Why haven’t you left?” Id asks as Lester lays his head in his lap. Woodface stands on a chair, blinking away the fireworks superimposed on her eyes from staring into fluorescent light.
“I don’t want to.” There’s silence for a moment. Id watches her movements delicately. Lester stands at the foot of her chair as if he could catch her should she fall. Woodface pulls her hair back, deep red flyaways buzzing at her cheeks.
“You’re not supposed to touch the bulbs. They can blow up.” He warns her.
She turns her eyes to him and the topographical map of her skin begs him to study her face, a monument to her pain.
“Believe me.” She breathes. “I know.”
Winter comes on fast, an infectious disease, and soon they’ve begun to forget that spring ever existed. She whiles away the hours as she has been for years, gutting the volumes no one wants to read with a carving knife and making her own twisted vision of art.
“You know the war is over, right?” Id asks her on a night where she mourns the loss of another lightbulb. “You can leave.”
“I know.”
“Everyone else is gone.”
“I know.”
“How long were you alone?”
“A long time.”
“You’re gonna lose your mind.”
“Everyone who left already lost theirs.”
“You’re gonna start seeing things. Your brain wants to save itself I think. ” No reply. “You could leave too. Some part of you must want to. Deep, deep down.” Woodface shakes her head, looking down at the book in her hands. Her grip tightens around her carving knife.
“A face like this belongs in a blackout.” His head shakes again.
“You’re gonna lose your mind.”
Blizzards sets upon them like a slow plague and soon they’ve begun to forget that spring ever existed. Id leaves Lester with her to pass the time. Woodface enjoys the company, for somehow she finds herself able to relate to someone who doesn’t speak. He lays his head in her lap while she carves up her books and radiates warmth even though the house has gone icy. He doesn’t know beauty. He doesn’t know ugliness. She never says it out loud, but she considers Lester to be her best friend too.
Id comes home with his hands full of light bulbs and gets to work fixing the suns in her ceiling while she guts another book with one hand and strokes Lester’s head with another.
“Why do you do that?” Id asks. “To the books.” Woodface shrugs.
“What else are they going to get used for?”
“Maybe...reading?”
“Can’t do that.” She says.
“You’re gonna run out of books eventually.” His voice is endearing somehow.
“I know. I might.”
“And then you’ll lose your mind.” She looks down at Lester and a ‘But maybe not’ hangs from her lips.
There comes a morning when he asks her to go outside with him. She says she doesn’t go out in the sun and naturally he predicts the loss of her mind once again. Woodface agrees to a compromise.
In the days after power was cut to their town and it rained bombs more often than water, she had gone out in the sun. It was then, though, that she still possessed her face. Now, she goes out into the snow under the light of the moon at Id’s request.
The fresh air is dizzying, yet exhilarating. She watches with a grin as Lester buries his head in the snowbanks and tackles Id to the ground. Soon he turns to her, eyes sunny. She takes his face in her hands and joins in the laugher. It’s the first time Woodface has breathed in years.
The days slip by and something sweet finds itself in their hands. He brings her lightbulbs so that her house is never dark and she carves his image into her books next to trees and houses and the sun so that he knows he and Lester have become a part of her world. They spend their midnights either out under the snowfall or under the lamps, dancing as if they had music.
Whenever he brings up the idea of leaving this desolate place behind, she sews up her mouth and hums of ugliness while he repeats himself again.
“You’re gonna lose your mind.”
There comes a day when he throws the door open with reckless abandon, carrying with him the lifeless form of his lifelong friend. Her heart turns to wood to match her face.
“What happened?” Her tongue panics. “What happened to him?” He’s ice cold, wearing the blizzard that’s raging outside on his fur. Id’s eyes run like the sink.
“He got out last night. The snow buried him.”
“Is he…?” She can’t bring herself to say the word that she’s feared since the lights first went out.
“No!” Id shakes his head out, laying Lester across the floor. “He’s still breathing! I can hear his heart!”
They wrap him in Woodface’s blankets and wait for hours with hollow eyes. There’s no one here to help them. This town is only useful when the skies are red.
The night is long and no one dances.
“If Lester lives…” Id begins, breath like an earthquake. “We’re leaving this place.” Woodface’s eyes grow wide.
“You can’t leave.”
“If Lester lives, we’re leaving.” He repeats.
“I’m staying.” She decides. He turns to her with those electric blue eyes.
“Then you’ve lost your mind.”
His words corrode somewhere between Woodface’s eyes. The thought of isolation freezes at her fingertips and claws at her skin as if it needs more reason to be feared. She’s had a taste of the light. To go back to being a lonely monster is to kiss death.
The lights in her house are burning out one by one and no one bothers to replace them.
Lester survives the night. He survives for quite a few consecutive nights. Soon he’s not only surviving, but he’s living, breathing, and walking on weak legs. Woodface’s mouth tastes bitter day in and day out. His strength leaves the door for Is unlocked. He could walk out any second.
She runs out of books just as he predicted.
On that morning, the sun slips under the door and Lester rushes to catch it, stumbling over raw muscles. She holds her carving knife close as if it will bring the books back. Naturally, it doesn’t.
Id is still asleep and there’s no one to take Lester out into the fresh air. For a moment Woodface chatters with the ghosts of the room, praying that they’ll keep this burden a secret. She stands, shaking off her possible hallucinations and opens the door, allowing sunlight to flood the cracks of her skin as the winter air washes over her. She wades out into the snow with Lester at her side, forgetting that she still has her knife in her grip.
Lester jumps and plays his games with the ground as usual, eyes begging her to join. She suffers a change of heart and allows herself to collapse on her back, ice gnawing on her arms and neck. Lester jumps on her, licking her face jovially even though he’s weak.
Woodface laughs for a moment, taking his face in her hands.
“You can’t leave.” She whispers. “You can’t leave.”
A poisonous thought crosses her mind. Her eyes dart over to where her knife lays in the snow and back to the dog’s face between her hands. We can both be Woodface and you can stay here.
She sits up suddenly. We can both be Woodface. Lester can’t sense what’s wrong. He doesn’t know beauty. He doesn’t know ugliness. You can stay here.
She grabs her knife, the snow swallowing up her hands and spitting them out twice as deadly. She holds Lester still and goes to strike, vowing to never let herself be alone again.
But her hand freezes just like the trees have, shaking with fear or cold. Lester stares back with big eyes. I am Woodface. Alone.
The knife falls to the ground. There are no more books. She has no need for it any longer.
“Lester…” She cries. “I’ve lost my mind.”
Id opens the door and Lester goes running to him happily as if he and Woodface have just discovered a new game. Id smiles at her as she wipes her eyes, frame backlit by the one lightbulb they’ve got left. She trudges towards him, dragging snow across her calves and lets herself in, closing the door behind them.
Id lifts her up and holds her as if her body is fleeting.
The last lamp burns out. Their house is the last piece to the blackout jigsaw of this town.
“I’ll go.” Woodface concedes. “We can leave.”
The room is swept of their things.
She doesn’t know how to live without the blackout. She doesn’t know how to live without halogen lamps and cut up books, but knows she has to learn on account of saving her mind. She says she can’t picture herself back in the cities that haven’t been reduced to ash. She can’t see herself where the light is. Id tells her again and again. You need to. You need to.
They walk along the road until they reach the place where the land is flat and the taxis just barely reach. She’s bundled up against the bitter winter, though Id does all he can to keep her from covering the expanse of her face. He stops traffic with his hand as Lester laps at their heels, still a survivor.
A yellow cab stops before them and he opens the door for her. Her breath picks up as she turns to him, eyes desperate.
“Why didn’t you ever run away from me?”
“No choice. You’re beautiful.” He tells her. “And if you don’t see it, you’ve lost your mind.” He stops traffic with his hand as Lester nuzzles his leg and hops into the cab after Woodface is eased in. She gets a look at the driver’s eyes in the mirror, feeling as if her stomach will soon be resting on her tongue.
Id begins to close the door but she stops him with her forearm.
“Why aren’t you getting in?”
“Your brain wants to save itself.” He says with a bittersweet smile.
“What?” She asks, voice desperate. “You can't leave me alone.”
“What did I tell you?” He laughs. “You’re gonna start seeing things. You’re gonna lose your mind.”
“Where are you going?” Woodface cries. “We’ve got to stay together!”
“It’s always just the two of us.” She blinks once and he’s gone. No amount of blinks brings him back. He was never there.
Something like a realization goes tearing through her chest.
“Ma’am, who are you talking to?” The driver asks. Woodface’s lungs hollow out as she looks into his mirror-eyes. It’s been years since she’s made eye contact with anyone. Lester has his head in her lap and it’s clear. It’s just the two of them.
“Myself. I’ve just been talking to myself.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Away from the blackout.” She quips. “Anywhere but here.”
They begin to move in the opposite direction of everything she knows.
“You lived in the shelter town? For this long?” The driver lets out a breathy laugh. “That seems impossible.” Woodface turns her eyes to the window.
“Don’t think about it too much. You’ll lose your mind.”
She falls asleep in the back of the cab, a lost girl and her dog, as snow swallows them up again. Her lightless town dies in the night, a lonely monster.
Woodface and Lester survive this winter and one day abandon survival for the sensation of being alive. She loses her mind daily, but it always returns in due time.