Shaded (A Story for my Fiction Class)

It was a quiet dream, not like usual. Usually dreams made her jolt up at night and scream at night and kick whatever else was in the bed. The cerulean paint chips clung to the ceiling high above her head, about ten feet. It was the drip drip dripping of the rain, of the tiny droplets of water, that finally put her to sleep. The window bars were tinging with the rain drops. The dropping of the rain into buckets in the hallways. Her lips hurt, they were dry, chapped, sore from licking them over and over and over.
The cerulean paint chips fell with the rain, some fell into the buckets, some fell onto her lips. They stuck to her lips as she tossed and turned and rolled in her sleep. She may have swallowed one. That may have been what was keeping her dreams quiet. She didn’t fight the chips anymore. She couldn’t speak with her mouth full so she couldn’t scream with her mouth full of paint chips.
She was floating slowly down the river, slowly floating with no raft beneath her. No boat supported her, just her scarlet locks and pasty gauze dress floated around her, encompassing her. She saw a boat to her left, some kind of writing was written on the side, it said something. But she couldn’t read it. The petals in her hands became flowers—beautiful golden, emerald, crimson flora, sprouting from nowhere. She had seen these flowers before. Seen them in her room, next to her mirror, her cracked mirror, and she had once held these same flowers in the cerulean room.
He was coming, he was coming to get her out of the river, no longer a quiet dream, the chips cracked in her throat, her gasp cracked in the air, she choked and spattered the chips all around her springless mattress. The river had been so calm, the river had been so refreshing, the river had let her escape, she regained consciousness on the river. He was shaking her, drying her? Shaking her awake. Shoving something else down her throat, more chips, more river matching chips. Pills he called them, her pills. A perfect color.
They matched his pants, the pills, the paint chips, the river. They were the same color. She knew this man, she knew him every night, but she forgot she knew him every day. He told her to forget him so she did, but she didn’t really. He just wasn’t there during the day. She knew to cry now when he came in, when he woke her up, it all started with the chips with the pills. Then something larger, something a bit softer, it hurt more, made her choke more. It wasn’t blue. She wished it was blue, she wished everything attached to this man was blue, just like she was blue by the time the pallid shade dripped, dropped, shot into her throat, washing down the pills, the chips, whatever else had found itself in there.
The sun came up, it was sunny. A shift change, she could hear it right outside her door at the nurses’ station. “Yeah, she thrashes around pretty good every night when she gets her pills, don’t worry about it, she’s just crazy.”
“Sir, are you going to fix that mirror in the room? It could be dangerous to have it in there. She could really hurt herself.”
“Oh, I’ll get around to it. It’s not like she is ever out of bed. She can’t get to it unless she gets the hell up.”
“Sir, the reports say you don’t allow anyone else in her room at night, is that right?”
“Hell no, she’s crazy. I don’t subject my staff to issues like her, even if she can’t talk who wants to be around a nutcase like the thrasher?”
“Well, they’re all crazy, really.”
I’m Not Crazy! She was screaming in her head. Was it making noise, though? Could anyone hear her? Here comes the man with the white pants, maybe he would listen. The room was getting less blurry, surely she could tell this man what was happening. She wasn’t supposed to be here. This wasn’t right. She hadn’t done anything wrong, had she? She had been hurt! She had tried to tell them about the horrible man before she came here. She couldn’t find the right words. Here he comes. She would stand up and tell him she wanted to go home. Maybe, at least he could fix her ceiling. He had food, though, oh, she just wanted something to eat. She reached out to take the tray from him. What was happening? He wouldn’t give her the food! He was pinching her nose and breaking her jaw open. More blue, that’s all there was now. Lucidity was gone. Reality was slipping away, out of her grasp. Damn those white pants, too! Damn those blue pills. What was ringing? What God awful phone was ringing in this God awful place? It was screaming! It was screaming at her head like she screamed for help inside it.
She was turning now, turning over in her bed, twisting the sheets into long ropes, twisting them with her feet, twisting them with her arms, twisting them together with her nightgown. Her colorless nightgown was so light when she slept it might not always be there. But it was there now, wringing her legs together, tying them in knots as much as the sheets were in knots, as much as her stomach was in knots. It was so bright.
This might be a dream too, this room was so bright, there were glints of multihued light bouncing around her head. Up and down it was bouncing around her and her eyes tracked the glints and she was dizzy. And now the cerulean paint chips and the cerulean pills and pallid liquid were done sloshing around in her stomach and up they came. She felt them stick in her throat a bit, one more time, as they exited her body.
She lay in her wet bedclothes, now a pale, acidic yellow. She lay on the mattress spitteling digested tablets, gargling absorbed and mushy paint chips in the back of her throat. Choking, she was choking again, footsteps, usually it was the other way around, footsteps, tiptoes, then choking and the fear. The fear of the dripping liquid that came every night from the man in cerulean pants. Oh God, there, here it is, the phallic hardness slipping down her throat soon it would wash everything back down her throat. But she could breathe this time. She could see things this time. It wasn’t blue. It didn’t shove anything besides itself down her throat, and she could breathe!
She should have thrown it all up a long time ago. The tube came out. S l o w l y the tube came out of her throat. She could see this was not the same kind of tube she had been subjected to before. This tube came in the daytime, and this tube saved her, didn’t choke her. Who was on the other side of this? Someone who would help her. Someone who wasn’t here to hurt her. Someone she could trust.
“Help.” It was a quiet gesture but the woman in green heard her. Just the one word, but it got her changed and got her bread.
The sapphire trimmed stars peeked out behind the willows outside her room. She hadn’t had pills since the bright time. And there was a voice. It was down the hall, she could hear the man. The shifts changing again. She was awake this time. Reality was so much different than her dreams. They must be. But then, why did this man sound so familiar to her? The green nurse was talking to the blue man.
“She said a word today, you know”
“Oh?” The man spoke softly and carefully.
“Yeah, won’t be long before she starts telling us what really went wrong with her. Well on her way to recovery she is. That guy ought to be hung for raping her and putting her in this state!”
“Isn’t that delightful,” there was a strain in the man’s voice. Was he her doctor?
She settled down into her clean bedclothes on her old mattress, ready to face whatever dreams may come.
“Well goodnight sir.” The green woman was leaving? She couldn’t just leave now.
“Yes, goodnight Margene.”
Footsteps now. Tiptoeing footsteps. And she was afraid. This is just as she remembered and this was no dream. There were no chips in her mouth, she could keep it closed on her own. There was no dripping to distract her. There were no pills to keep her quiet. Tip tip tip toeing outside. It was the man in blue.
“So Perdita, I hear you speak now. How unfortunate for you and your family.”
“Help!” She screamed this time. She screamed at the top of her lungs. “HELP! Help…” Her request died off as her air supply was suddenly gone. Her hands were being wrapped. Her feet were being twisted together. The cotton of the bedclothes and the cotton of the man’s pants were chaffing against her skin. Her mouth was full again. No pills, no paint chips, but a long, narrow tube. Warmer than the one earlier today. This one cut off her breathing. This tube turned her blue, a cold blue.
She turned her eyes one last time to the broken mirror. Confused, lost, unbreathing, she lay still.
The morning nurse came in to do her rounds and as she walked past the typically silent room there was a drip, drip, dripping. The green woman walked in. The drip, drip, dripping of the ruby liqueur splattered onto the linoleum. The bed sheets tangled from the bars on the window to around her neck. A piece of broken mirror in her wrist. The nervous nurse hurried to tell the off-duty doctor.
“Oh, how unfortunate for her and her family.”
“Yes, sir. But there is mirror in her wrist!”
“Must not have been quick enough for her.”
“But sir, you said just yesterday she didn’t move out of her bed.”
“From one extreme to the other I suppose.”
“I very much doubt that, Sir.”
But now she was floating. Down the river she was floating, arms folded across her chest, under the balconies and under the willows, she floated in her fair, linen gown, previously unnoticed. Previously lost. Her dream was the only reality she needed. The cause of her broken screams no longer weaved its crippling pattern into her eternal tapestry.