Short Story: Maggie's Voices

Short Story: Maggie's Voices

The voices tell you so many different things that you do not know whom to believe or not to believe and what is more frustrating is that none of the nurses or quacks believe what you say at all or they pretend to and behind your back come out with their whispers and soft guffaws and even if you had at one time battered your husband to death with a cold iron and strangled your two children that does not mean that the voices are not real or that you imagine it all after all you would know and the voices are quite persistent and demanding especially the young girl who says Don’t stand for their nonsense Maggie don’t let them get one over on you and then she laughs and laughs so much that you have to put your hands over your ears and that is when the nurses come running with their voices and straitjacket and the big nurse with the black hair grabs you and wrestles you to the ground her oniony stinking breath all over your face and her huge hands pinning you to the floor and her thick thighs each side of your body and her lard arse on your stomach pushing the air from you until you are calm and the voices are silent and the jacket is on and you are dragged off to the cooling down cell where they lay you down and lock the door and the coolness of the room enters you touches your skin seeps into your bones and you sense the perspiration dampening your cotton frock and underwear and you look up at the off white ceiling with its one bare bulb not switched on and the only light from a high window which you cannot reach to see out of and over by the door the girl stands her arms folded that grimace on her face her eyes staring at you as if to say There you go again, there you have allowed them to do as they will and then she's silent and just paces the walls around you looking at you now and again with that look of contempt that shake of her head and even if you had smashed your cruel husband’s features to a fine pulp and choked the life from your two girls until the purple tinge came that does not mean that you have to disobey the voices when they speak or disregard their advice or orders especially the orders from the tall thin woman whom you believe sang Brunnhilde in Wagner operas and that Hitler had attended or so she says trying to impress or not and as you lay with your back on the cold floor your eyes following the girl around the cell the oniony smell still in your nose you think you see your two girls walking beside her holding her hands their small eyes dull as stagnant ponds and their lips whispering so soft you cannot hear the words just the buzzing of them and the stinging looks they give you and even if you sit up you cannot wipe your eyes with your knuckles because the jacket embraces you so tight holds you like he did squeezes you like your husband did wanting his sex and in such a dreadful manner and too often but no more now you have pulped his wants from him you have battered his sex to oblivion and that very image that very thought pleases you even if your freedom it was so dearly bought.