A Thousand Several Tongues

The screech. Dark. Rain shattering glass. Broken. Mirror—falling shards—chest heavy—hard. Thud. Blue eyes.

Dead.

Two past midnight, and Anya sat bolt upright, her body a mass of sweat and fear.

Outside, the town was much like any other, white picket fences and perfectly manicured rose bushes, in keeping with the overall image, of course. There were to be no deviations. Egg-washed stone houses. Laundry formation, regimented on the Sunday washing line. No, there were no variants in Perturbia Falls. Everything was as it had always been. Aesthetically pleasing. Ordered. A little boring, some might say.

Of course, perfection being a fallacy, such outward appearances rarely reveal the truth. To do so would break the façade. And what good would that do to anyone? No, better to turn a blind eye. Or not see at all.

Anya hid behind the veneered walls of her townhouse, often looking out onto the green as the inhabitants gathered for festivities. A torture. She had once been a vibrant part of the community—enthusiastically welly-wanging at the summer fete, volunteering for the Christmas decoration committee, and on the odd occasion, despite a distinct lack of vocal ability, partaking in the karaoke night at The Dog and Duck. She had been part of the town. And it part of her.

Overnight her life had come to a juddering halt.

As her mood became darker and her desire to open the door to anyone diminished, her friends had gradually tapered off. Like a candle flame that had reached the bottom of the wick, they had been dampened, and she was relieved for it. She didn’t deserve them. It was better this way.

By day, she would go to work as need dictated. In the evenings, she would languish alone; reading occasionally for distraction, drinking a little more than too much. She would go to bed hoping that the numbing tinge of vodka would allow her some respite. But there was no escape. The monster would unfurl from beneath the bed, bringing with it all that she had hoped to escape. A constant, sardonic voice, breaking her down into jagged splinters of herself.

It had been an accident.

After another restless night, Anya awoke shaken and broken by the reptilian hands of truth. She screamed into the passivity of night.

“What do you want from me?”

“You know what I want,” its voice sharp and malevolent as its taloned hand reached out to needle into her skin, “You’re nothing now,” it would taunt, its words cobra venom, infiltrating her mind. Spitting into her lifeblood.

Anya couldn’t shake it. The monster. All day, she felt its presence behind her in her shadow and within her as blood thickening. Staring at her from her blinking computer screen. Eyes red with fury and disgust. She couldn’t think. Daren’t think.

She tried to drown it out with more drink, but the alcohol only served to heighten the voice; incessant whispers spiralling into the high-pitched scream of rubber scraping across tarmac. Sleep, when it came, was a living incubus. She hadn’t slept in months. Not properly. She was exhausted.

Losing her job was a relief.

“You don’t belong here anymore,” it would hiss. “You can’t hide from what you’ve done.”

In her self-imposed prison, she knew the monster was right. She knew what she had to do. As she had always known.

Her hand trembled as she picked up the phone.

“I, I, I was the one driving. Drinking. She came. Came out of… out of nowhere. I killed her.”

She dropped the phone, falling to her knees as the weight of her monster evaporated and she awaited her fate.