Story: My Worst Terror
Written for broadcast.
Narrator is a woman in her twenties.
Distant sirens coming slowly closer. Standing in my nightgown, I look out from my third floor window onto the moon-shadowed street. I feel a sharp pinch on the skin of my ankle. My worst fears coming true.
I'm a phlebotomist, filling vials of blood all day at the hospital. I don't like putting the needle into the arms of people who are afraid, especially kids, but the blood itself doesn't bother me.
However, some things do freak me out: like the idea of being restrained, or having to work with the mentally ill. And there is one more fear that plagues me, my deepest terror, but I can't bear to mention it.
At the hospital, patients are sometimes restrained in the ER for their own good. It's terrible to watch them pull and thrash at the leather cuffs. Perhaps I have a bit of claustrophobia, I don't know, but this horrifies me.
Maybe this phobia is also the reason the insane freak me out, because the mentally ill are also trapped in a way, inside their own heads. However, the truth is there's something else about these poor people that gives me the creeps. There's a psyche ward at the hospital, I avoid it when I can. But when I'm forced to work on a patient there, I sometimes get this weird, and I guess irrational, feeling that the insane are gifted with this power to see through people. It's like, with the structure of their own mental house now shattered, little tendrils of their mind become free to reach into the heads of others. They might not fully process what they find, but they know things.
So yesterday I was sent up there to draw blood. Most of the patients are harmless and free to move around the ward. A few are restrained. But it was a new arrival that ruined my day...and, I fear, a lot more than that.
The new patient was a convict sent here for a type of chemo they don't do up at the penitentiary. He was doing a stretch for arson and manslaughter. The guy was frail and in his eighties. They had him restrained arm and leg. From one of those bony arms I had to take some blood.
"Had a feeling I'd get one of the pretty girls," he said.
I said nothing, determined to just get it over with.
"Shy girl, good, I like that. Talk just gets in the way of communication."
This fella was so skinny and pale you could see blue veins everywhere. But I misfired with my shaking hands. Blood trickled on his arm. Now I had to find another spot. He never winced, nor did his creepy smile break. I took the antiseptic and cleaned it.
"You know I can't harm you," he said. "Nothin but ninety pounds of cancer-wracked meat."
I tried to hurry.
"You're afraid of me. Understandable, yes, understandable."
I put a band-aid on the wound.
"I know I'm repulsive, a monster, so let's talk about you."
Heart racing, I moved to the other arm, trying to avoid his penetrating eyes.
"The thought of being all bound up like this terrifies you, doesn't it?"
My eyes went to his, it couldn't be helped.
"And nutcases too, don't they?"
It was true! He could see into my mind!
"No, I'm not in your head. Merely very observant. I saw the way you hurried your cart down the aisle, the way you avoided looking at any of us who are restrained."
I searched for a vein, trying to find one that seemed like it might stay still.
"But that's not your biggest fear, is it?"
I plunged the needle into the vein, not caring that it was sloppy and making a mess. Blood poured into the vial but also down his arm. If he felt pain he never let on.
"You'll undo my restraints now..." he commanded.
My disbelieving eyes again went to his.
"...you'll release me because of your fear."
I removed the vial, and screwed in another.
"Do you understand? I know your deepest terror. I know it."
He nodded toward my neck. As I had bent to work on him, my shirt had shifted, partially exposing the skin on my shoulder. Revealing the old scars.
I closed the top of my shirt with one hand, finished filling the blood, removed the needle, then bandaged the arm.
But I was careless in my haste, let my hand get too close to his. Despite the restraints, he grabbed onto me. His strength was surprising. Why couldn't I pull away? Was he in fact in my head?
"I want you to understand something. I never harm those that help me. Never. But if you don't help me...I know your worst terror."
I broke away. I had no intention of freeing this whack job.
But as I hurried away with my cart, an awful thought seized me: what about the next girl? What if he got to her?
I drove home with the feeling that he was still in my head. I told myself he never had been, that he had merely seen my behavior, seen my scars. When I was a toddler, my mom had been driving, me in the child seat in back. The accident had left her unconscious. The flames had ignited under the hood. I probably screamed for my mama, though I don't remember. But I remember knowing I had to get out. I beat at the seat that held me and pulled at the straps as the dashboard started to melt, and the fumes locked my lungs, and my mother's hair ignited.
Someone pulled me free just in time. Not my mom, she didn't make it. I spent several years traveling to the Shriners Burn Hospital where they grafted and picked and cleaned.
Tonight, still shaken, it was a long time before I fell asleep.
Not long enough.
I awoke at a sound in my apartment. A door closing.
Maybe he was in my head, maybe I was in his, but I just knew, I knew!
I jumped out of bed to run...but didn't get far. Handcuffs had been placed on an ankle, chained to the radiator.
The chain had just enough length to allow me to walk to the window.
My apartment is silent.
I watch the street below, see a figure moving along. A skinny, bent little figure. Without turning to me, he holds up his hand, a little wave. Then he slips down a side street.
My eye is drawn to something black snaking into the sky a couple blocks down. Orange flickers in the windows. The orange brightens quickly, a roaring fire. In a flash it becomes visible in other windows.
And now you probably know my worst fear, and it waits for me below, perhaps smoldering in the basement. I watch the quiet streets wishing you, anyone, could hold my hand.
In the far distance, sirens wail. Are there people in there?! What about the families in my building?!
Silently, the fire engulfs the three story home. The sirens are not close enough, they will be too late.
I watch.
He wants me to watch.
He wants me to feel.
He wants me to know I'm next.
Any second now.
Narrator is a woman in her twenties.
Distant sirens coming slowly closer. Standing in my nightgown, I look out from my third floor window onto the moon-shadowed street. I feel a sharp pinch on the skin of my ankle. My worst fears coming true.
I'm a phlebotomist, filling vials of blood all day at the hospital. I don't like putting the needle into the arms of people who are afraid, especially kids, but the blood itself doesn't bother me.
However, some things do freak me out: like the idea of being restrained, or having to work with the mentally ill. And there is one more fear that plagues me, my deepest terror, but I can't bear to mention it.
At the hospital, patients are sometimes restrained in the ER for their own good. It's terrible to watch them pull and thrash at the leather cuffs. Perhaps I have a bit of claustrophobia, I don't know, but this horrifies me.
Maybe this phobia is also the reason the insane freak me out, because the mentally ill are also trapped in a way, inside their own heads. However, the truth is there's something else about these poor people that gives me the creeps. There's a psyche ward at the hospital, I avoid it when I can. But when I'm forced to work on a patient there, I sometimes get this weird, and I guess irrational, feeling that the insane are gifted with this power to see through people. It's like, with the structure of their own mental house now shattered, little tendrils of their mind become free to reach into the heads of others. They might not fully process what they find, but they know things.
So yesterday I was sent up there to draw blood. Most of the patients are harmless and free to move around the ward. A few are restrained. But it was a new arrival that ruined my day...and, I fear, a lot more than that.
The new patient was a convict sent here for a type of chemo they don't do up at the penitentiary. He was doing a stretch for arson and manslaughter. The guy was frail and in his eighties. They had him restrained arm and leg. From one of those bony arms I had to take some blood.
"Had a feeling I'd get one of the pretty girls," he said.
I said nothing, determined to just get it over with.
"Shy girl, good, I like that. Talk just gets in the way of communication."
This fella was so skinny and pale you could see blue veins everywhere. But I misfired with my shaking hands. Blood trickled on his arm. Now I had to find another spot. He never winced, nor did his creepy smile break. I took the antiseptic and cleaned it.
"You know I can't harm you," he said. "Nothin but ninety pounds of cancer-wracked meat."
I tried to hurry.
"You're afraid of me. Understandable, yes, understandable."
I put a band-aid on the wound.
"I know I'm repulsive, a monster, so let's talk about you."
Heart racing, I moved to the other arm, trying to avoid his penetrating eyes.
"The thought of being all bound up like this terrifies you, doesn't it?"
My eyes went to his, it couldn't be helped.
"And nutcases too, don't they?"
It was true! He could see into my mind!
"No, I'm not in your head. Merely very observant. I saw the way you hurried your cart down the aisle, the way you avoided looking at any of us who are restrained."
I searched for a vein, trying to find one that seemed like it might stay still.
"But that's not your biggest fear, is it?"
I plunged the needle into the vein, not caring that it was sloppy and making a mess. Blood poured into the vial but also down his arm. If he felt pain he never let on.
"You'll undo my restraints now..." he commanded.
My disbelieving eyes again went to his.
"...you'll release me because of your fear."
I removed the vial, and screwed in another.
"Do you understand? I know your deepest terror. I know it."
He nodded toward my neck. As I had bent to work on him, my shirt had shifted, partially exposing the skin on my shoulder. Revealing the old scars.
I closed the top of my shirt with one hand, finished filling the blood, removed the needle, then bandaged the arm.
But I was careless in my haste, let my hand get too close to his. Despite the restraints, he grabbed onto me. His strength was surprising. Why couldn't I pull away? Was he in fact in my head?
"I want you to understand something. I never harm those that help me. Never. But if you don't help me...I know your worst terror."
I broke away. I had no intention of freeing this whack job.
But as I hurried away with my cart, an awful thought seized me: what about the next girl? What if he got to her?
I drove home with the feeling that he was still in my head. I told myself he never had been, that he had merely seen my behavior, seen my scars. When I was a toddler, my mom had been driving, me in the child seat in back. The accident had left her unconscious. The flames had ignited under the hood. I probably screamed for my mama, though I don't remember. But I remember knowing I had to get out. I beat at the seat that held me and pulled at the straps as the dashboard started to melt, and the fumes locked my lungs, and my mother's hair ignited.
Someone pulled me free just in time. Not my mom, she didn't make it. I spent several years traveling to the Shriners Burn Hospital where they grafted and picked and cleaned.
Tonight, still shaken, it was a long time before I fell asleep.
Not long enough.
I awoke at a sound in my apartment. A door closing.
Maybe he was in my head, maybe I was in his, but I just knew, I knew!
I jumped out of bed to run...but didn't get far. Handcuffs had been placed on an ankle, chained to the radiator.
The chain had just enough length to allow me to walk to the window.
My apartment is silent.
I watch the street below, see a figure moving along. A skinny, bent little figure. Without turning to me, he holds up his hand, a little wave. Then he slips down a side street.
My eye is drawn to something black snaking into the sky a couple blocks down. Orange flickers in the windows. The orange brightens quickly, a roaring fire. In a flash it becomes visible in other windows.
And now you probably know my worst fear, and it waits for me below, perhaps smoldering in the basement. I watch the quiet streets wishing you, anyone, could hold my hand.
In the far distance, sirens wail. Are there people in there?! What about the families in my building?!
Silently, the fire engulfs the three story home. The sirens are not close enough, they will be too late.
I watch.
He wants me to watch.
He wants me to feel.
He wants me to know I'm next.
Any second now.
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