The Secret Voices

The Secret Voices

    Greta wasn’t sure what to do next.  Her lungs were on fire and she felt as if she had a large rock chained around her neck.  There were other things wrong, but she was afraid to look.  Fearfully she glanced around, desperation changing her beautiful face into a mask of anguish.  She breathed a ragged sigh of relief as she noted that there was no one following her.  She had to sit down.  Just for a moment.  Even if all the hosts of hell were after her she just had to sit down. But she couldn’t.
Taking note of her bearings, she saw that she was now about four miles north of where this whole mess had started.  Good.  Only half a block to go and she would be able to rest.  She found herself mouthing the words “oh please, oh please, oh please” in agonized whispers that came out of her like the fervent prayer of a dying man.  Each step was becoming a frantic fight to keep moving.  To stop here would be the end of her, and that thought kept her moving.

    She crossed Bailey and stumbled over the curb on the other side of the street as she closed the remaining distance to the destination she had struggled to reach.  It wasn’t the ideal place to go, but it would get her off the street and she could sit down.  Perhaps there she would be able to formulate some kind of thought to explain all of this.  Explain what just couldn’t be true.  Explain what had happened to her and why she hadn’t seen it coming.

    As she stood in front of the red brick house with the yellow door it all came back in a jumbled mass of images and thoughts.  She wanted to tilt her head back and howl in torment, but she was frozen with fear.  What if they knew?  What if they were expecting her to come here? Her legs wobbled under her as a wave of nausea and physical pain washed over her.

    Then she heard the sirens.  She was trapped!  How could this have happened?  She whipped her head around and stared back at the way she had come.  She only had moments now, moments until they reached a place where they could see her.  The screeching of the sirens disturbed her though, made it hard to think.  What should she do?  She turned towards the house and walked up to the door.  Her trembling hand just couldn’t grasp the knob.  What if they knew? What if they knew?
It had all started with a thought.  Not her thought.  Oh no.  But that thought was persistent, and she found herself listening to it again and again.  Then it was joined by another, and another.  Whispering.  Like they had a secret. How these voices were coming into her head she did not know, but they were coming from outside of herself and they were not pleasant.  It always happened at her job, and more and more these thoughts intruded into her brain with their planning and scheming and violence.  She began to be very afraid, and took some time off of work to get away from them.  But when she went back to her job the voices were there, a plethora of them now that got inside her head and twisted her brain into knots of horror at what they were thinking.
   
    And then they had heard her.  It wasn’t as if they spoke directly to her, but they began discussing among themselves “the outsider”.  She knew they had detected her somehow, even though she had never made herself known to them.  She began looking at people differently.  Could her fellow workers be involved?  Where were these thoughts coming from, and why could she hear them?  Was anyone else listening?  Were they as scared as she was?  Was she going crazy?  Then the secret voices mentioned the building where she worked and she knew they knew who she was.  She ran.  And felt them following her.

    Now she was at the yellow door, the sirens screaming as they closed in on her.  She hesitated again, and to her amazement the sirens went right by her.  Four black R.V’s sped by in a rush to somewhere, but not here.  Not here!  She turned back to the yellow door, her hand shaking now in relief as she opened it and stepped into her house.

    They were waiting.