[extract] - preliminary title of 'Bubble Boy' - about 1,000 words
Paul
He stared out through the - colour what colour was it ? - enclosing him.
The click click echoed around the corridor. The doctor felt as though he was
walking through a suburban dream forever held in the grip of a lazy Sunday
afternoon. The rooms were the toy store box houses, immaculate green lawns,
perfect brilliant white picket fences, preserved under a never changing,
never ending, cloudless, clean pale blue - pastel ? - sky. Not a cloud in
sight. No white. No grey. No black. There was the odd sound. The drone of a
lawnmower, the whistling of the father / husband, the background of a
television program, turned up to fill the monotony of an endless day of
going nowhere. The clank clash of dishes, pots, pans, sliding around in the
stainless steel soap sudded bubbled sink. Mother / wife washing up after
another under appreciated guzzled lunch. Fresh yellow rubber on her hands,
matching the lemon smell / colour of the washing up liquid. Screams of
children calling from the street. Balls being kicked, thud thud of foot on
plastic, dreaming of being a superstar sportsman when grown-up. Dreams
clashing with reality. Reality dripping, drip drip, into young minds,
dreaming laying away in bed at night wondering what the next day will bring,
silent wishes, never wanting to grow up, furtive hand movement under bed
clothes, morning brings parents nightmares of children growing up. Stained
first evidence.
The corridor was quiet.
The rooms occupants were quiet.
Only the doctor could hear his imagined noises. Thoughts of his own
childhood welling up inside of him as he pokes his head into the rooms.
Peeking inside a house. A facade. Examining the contents. Checking his
clipboard. Nodding / shaking his head. Turning to speak to the nurse at his
side. The nurse enters the room and checks a pulse, listens to a heartbeat,
turns a dial, changes a drip, looks at the occupant. She walks back, click
click of high heeled shoes, and whispers to the doctor. He shakes / nods his
head, the movement in time with his own breathing. The routine / dance of
work continues to the end of the corridor, cul-de-sac, ending in a blank
wall. No exit. No fire escape. To leave you have to re-trace the same steps
as yesterday. Two trails, one entering, one exiting.
The final room.
The boy felt / heard something - someone ? - enter the - where was he ? -
world.
Shadows played around him.
Click click. Click. Click.
Sounds heard, fading, near, far, loud, soft, quiet. He formed these words
with his lips. Knew the words, how they felt, how they seemed to him.
Meanings eluded him. He reached a hand out, brushed a shadow. Smooth. Soft.
Adjectives which he was sure he knew the meaning of.
Murmers. Voices. Mumbling. No words, just a feeling of words. Words within
his world. his. world. He saw no one. no one saw him. Sight. Site. He'd
heard these words before. Two words. Two distinct meanings. Lost to him.
Mind grappling for a hold on what he knew he knew. A voice had told him
that. He closed his eyes. He could still feel, tactile, touch, taste, sight,
sound, smell, the shadow(s). He opened his eyes. No difference. The - what
was that colour ? - changed, only he would notice. Five senses. how many did
he use. how many did he have ? Was there a sixth, seventh, eighth. Numbers.
Numbers were real, he could see the numbers. his mind sorted the numbers.
Added. Subtracted. Divided. Multiplied. The voice had told him about
numbers.
2 + 2 = 4
That was true. That was truth.
2 + 2 = 5
That was false. That was a lie.
Numbers were tangible and finite.
his touch was intangible. Played with the mind. refused to be controlled.
Click.
Sound through the 'barrier' - was that the right word ?
morning; the - can't think of an adjective, did have one, will remember -
voice said.
The boy nodded his head. Is it ?
how are we feeling; dispassionate - was that an adjective ?
The boy nodded. Could they see him ?
better today, yes; same voice, different voice. All voices melded into one.
One mold to suit all.
The boy didn't do anything. He was good at that.
No more voice.
Click. click. Click click.
Away. Gone. Beyond.
"Yes." the boy said.
The doctor and the nurse stood in the doorway. Their eyes were looking at
the obscured bed. How long had he been here ? He was here when the doctor
first started. He was here when the nurse had joined. Both replacements for
people who'd gone onto better jobs. Gone from the floor to management.
Stepped up onto the ladder and remained there. Bored with helping people.
Money being the motivation to continue. Money to love. To survive. To buy
the objects they thought they wanted. Needed. Worked for. Television. Video.
Widescreen. DVD. Bigger picture. Better quality. Cinema in your living room.
Not a mere movie anymore but an experience. Clearer. High quality. Defined.
Resolution to the nth pixel. Don't just watch it, be a part of it, feel it,
experience it. Surround sound. Surround life. Friday was the new staying in.
Twisted to fit. Engineered for life. Going out was the new square. Hip.
Cool. Trendy, all in vivid mulit-coloured, multi-faceted, needing the eyes
of a fly to take it all in. Breathe the new entertainment. Feel the heat.
Experience the pleasure. Forget the life. Nothing needed to survive. All the
same tribe. All feeling, speaking, thinking the same. Nothing different
allowed. All pleasure controlled, fed through a tube, unknowns grasping for
a chance to see themselves in the world. If it wasn't real who knew. Only
the manufactured was real. This cigarette was real. Try to take it from the
girl. Backed off. Away.
Nurse: Sad
Doctor nodded.
Nurse: No life.
Doctor nodded.
Nurse. Sad.
Doctor nodded.
Smell of smoke.
Smoking wasn't banned, just discouraged. Doctor looked down the corridor.
His nostrils flared, the smell seeping into them, the hairs twinging at the
smell. Memories of a teenager smoking out of his bedroom window. A race
memory tugging at his addiction cells. He hadn't smoked for years. Wasn't
going to start now. He turned back, looked down at the nurse. She looked up
at him.
"Might start a fire." She said. He nodded. Click. click. Click click. They
walked slowly back down the corridor. Peeking behind the chintz and lace
curtains of the surburban rooms, trying to find the errant child smoking out
of his / her bedroom window.
Cheers,
Paul
--
http://www25.brinkster.com/dazzle
In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas ... a
cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have
already been thoroughly surveyed.
--William S. Burroughs
Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think about what you
shall write.
--William Cobbett
A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call
what he writes fiction.
--William Faulkner
Alaric
what colour was it ? - enclosing him.
Dash or something between colour and what.
Suggest, "The rooms were <the - why the> toy store box houses <with>
immaculate green lawns, perfect brilliant white picket fences, preserved
under a never changing, never ending, cloudless, clean pale blue - <pastel -
why pale blue and pastel?> <why the ?> - sky."
> No white. No grey. No black.
Not needed. You've already said there are no clouds.
> There was the odd sound.
The? Do you mean an? Or as follows, a number of?
Not going through this, Paul. It'll take too long. I see what you're aiming
for. Way too much in my opinion. This could be done better in a couple of
paragraphs, and again there's a lot of carelessness in the structure. Not my
thing. Sorry. Might appeal to more patient folks.
____________________________________________
Just for interest:
1971 - David Joseph Vetter, US boy, patient - Born at Houston, Texas by
Caesarian section in a delivery room at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital that
had been scrubbed down five times. David's parents had already had one son
of the same name, born in 1970 with severe combined immune deficiency
syndrome (SCIDS), a genetic failure of the immune system, who had lived only
six months before an infection took his life. David was immediately placed
in an isolation incubator, where he was fed, changed, and touched only
through gloves built into the clear walls. A test for SCIDS was run, the
results doomed David to life in a bubble with noisy blowers to keep the
bubble inflated with sterile air. The holy water for his baptism, like
everything else to enter the bubble, was sterilized. By 1974 the first
bubble at the Vetter home was built, and he was able to spend up to three
weeks at a time there, returning to his bubble at Texas Children's Hospital.
An meeting was held in early 1975 to discuss, for the first time, the ethics
of the case. He had tutors, and participated in elementary school by
telephone, but was troubled with nightmares about germs. In 1977 NASA built
a special isolation suit for him, and despite press coverage when he used it
the first time it terrified him and was only used six more times, a larger
suit built later was never used. David laughed at the technical errors in
"The Boy in the Plastic Bubble," a TV movie starring John Travolta. Research
continued on SCIDS (and AIDS) treatment, and an attempt was made on 21
October 1983 to transplant treated bone marrow cells from his older sister,
and early signs were hopeful. By early February he suffered diarrhea, fever,
and vomiting severe enough that he was transferred from the bubble to
intensive care. The marrow had included the Epstein-Barr virus, which causes
mononucleosis in most but triggered massive cancer in David's system. During
his 15 days in ICU he touched people for the first time, his mother was able
to kiss him once before he died on 22 February 1984.
http://www.twistedhistory.com/issues/september/0921.html