The door hissed shut; the blitz of multi-coloured screens were locked out. Her feet squeaked as she came closer and beamed with light. Her hands were long and firm, all shiny and carefully manicured. I trembled as they jumped closer and tried not to twitch or leap away in fright. She beamed a smile that razed my eyelids apart and blew my pupils into a speedy bulge. My breath came in puffs; my hands twinkled with sweat. Gracefully, the way they serve expensive wine at over-cooked prices, she held out the package and laid it carefully on the desk. I realised she wasn’t really looking at me as she slid away. Only the swish of her cloth remained, and the faint whiff of a perfume I couldn’t name, a lubricant I never used. It had taken so long for the order to be processed, for them to find a sample.
The book sat patiently, like an animal in need of a pat, a kind word, the tapping of a firm finger in search of attention but promising to wag sternly if not obeyed. I stared for a moment, as it lay silently, motionless on the shiny hard plastic table they found for the occasion. I glanced up at banks of screens flickering or waiting impassibly to be ignited. One caught my thoughts and began to shimmer but I quelled its urge with a snap of my fingers.
My hand ached as it hovered, my wrists tight and stern like an old suit that no longer fit. I knew what to do. I let my fingertips scratch practice from the theory I’d visualised, what had been sewn into my head.
Gently, like a kitten in search of its mother’s teat, I let my fingers slip down the spine, crawl over the edges and slip gently into the groove that separated the hard cover from gooey insides. I was a surgeon carefully slipping in the knife, testing, probing, unsure of how extensive the damage or how rewarding the incision would be. I breathed with relief as I saw a flash of colour and shapes take shape into gaudy pictures. Animals, tame and soft, pranced in the woods. A child-like teddy bear was poised to run and catch their tales. Underneath the pictures came the hard part, the crude shapes of rigid stalks, curly forms, straight lines and bent angles. I let my finger touch the shapes, coloured brightly to match the pictures that stirred them into motion. One by one, I identified the letters and let them taste my tongue, the bittersweet sensation of cold ice cream on a hot day or stinging liquor before bed.
Each sound scratched my tongue, knocked against the edges of my teeth, whistled in the depths of my throat like rocket engines priming for take-off. Gently I released my lips and heard the first sound drop, then slither along the silvery surface of the table before plopping to the ground with a dry sob.
My lips cracked, my tongue scratched the roof of my mouth. Dryness clung to my teeth like food waiting to be cleaned. I swallowed slowly, forcing myself to remain calm, to eke out another sound and seek its resemblance in the signs strung out before me, squiggles crumbling into words then painfully stretching into what I knew to be sentences. I identified full stops and capitals. I forced myself to remember the hours of training in my room, the tantalising sense of achievement as the strange, still shapes danced and gained life until they whirled in a dazzling array of sounds that spoke in my head with the vibrancy of thoughts suddenly leaping with the need to be expressed.
My index finger found a new role. Holding it carefully to avoid jabbing or swiping, I managed to move it gently from shape to shape, letter to letter, then speed up as the words formed images in my mind. I opened my mouth again and dared let a sound out. It rasped against the chilled air. I felt my cheeks blush, my eyes water with the effort. I scanned the room. It was bare, silent screens flickering, shiny surfaces winking in encouragement. My lips pursued. A crack formed, the cave opened, a blast of sounds spluttered into the open, a hibernating bear awakening in the night.
Time froze in anticipation as my mouth twisted and taunted, crowded and minted, licked and praised each sound to life, a fresh organism as a squiggle on the page boomed from within my cheeks and exploded in a blast that shook the atoms of the shiny desk tops until quantum mechanics were visible as they shifted with anxiety. I could see a shadow approach, reproach. I turned a page gently and practiced one more time before the fingers on my shoulder refrained further pleasure and brought me back to life and lifted the book gently from my fingers.
“Would you like another appointment?” the voice asked, gently persuasive, quiet condolence warped around steely decision.
I gazed into the sightless eyes and pleaded guilty. “I would.”
The date spun from infinity and was swiped into my diary. I breathed a sigh of relief as the machine wheeled me out.
Blinded by sizzling banks of screens in full motion, I gulped for air as the city grasped my breath. My tracker kicked in and forced my body to follow its guidance and seek a path towards the destination I must have plugged in before I lost my way, found a new stimulus and learned how to read the signs that might, just, maybe, possibly, offer an alternative route. I felt my lips move and heard letters form words that were slowly turning into screams of excitement. The city fell silent as I listened to nothing but my own voice, the ability to read signs clearly.
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