“Locked & Cranked”: Gossip

November 21, 2009 at 3:36 am (locked & cranked, nanowrimo, writing) (fiction, locked & cranked, nanowrimo, works in progress)

I’m starting to piece things together in order, even though I’m still not posting them that way! I’m at the halfway point now, with only NINE DAYS LEFT, and I’m trying not to go into a blind panic. But the good news is that, since I’ve found an order and therefore a pattern of how this will all be laid out, it’s coming a bit more easily. I’m gonna go rest my hands and shoulders now; I leave you with the most recent 2,000 words from the “mouth” of our ever-so-charmless narrator. She’s a lot more fun to write than Ivy’s diary entries. Can you tell?? Hah.

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I was laying on my stomach, absentmindedly attempting to flatten that one goddamn spring that had been digging into me, right through the cheap mattress the Phoenix people try to pass off as “beds,” when I heard some chatter getting closer to my door than I was comfortable hearing. For one thing, there was a rule about laying facedown on one’s bed, and I’d already seen what sort of privileges got taken away from people who ignored that particular regulation. If the Nazis behind the plexiglass at the nurses’ station thought they’d catch me doing something that meant I couldn’t whip the schizo floor’s asses at euchre every Friday night, they were sorely mistaken.

Not to say I actually cared about the rules. I just didn’t get caught. Not me.

The other possibility, and one that seemed more likely as the voices came nearer, was that it was a gaggle of patients, the ones who had free run of the corridors until bedtime. There weren’t many of those around these days. I glanced at the giant clock that was screwed rather precariously into the wall above the desk in my room, saw that it was only 6:24 p.m., and sighed. Still too early to dig into the stash. Three more checks until lights out, and damned if those nurses weren’t given to shining a fucking flashlight into your eyes if they suspected you were dabbling in extra-curricular pharmaceutical use. Stupid, really. What did they think would happen to pupils when suddenly exposed to a MagLite? I’d gotten tired of wondering where these bitches had gotten their diplomas, but the prospect of missing out on euchre once again won out over the temptation of asking. After all, it wasn’t money I stood to win from the schizos. And bed checks or not, my stash was looking a bit skimpy at the moment.

“You actually believe that?” I heard one of the voices say. I recognized the pitch right away. Nails on a chalkboard. Tracey Truth. I sat up a bit, despite knowing that I wasn’t about to get busted for breaking an arbitrary and as yet completely nonsensical-to-me rule. I wanted to hear this. Tracey lived life as though every day was her own personal episode of The X-Files. I kept meaning to jot down those lines – you know, the sort that prisoners use to mark off the days they’ve been caged – to keep track of how many times in a 24 hour period she used the word “believe.”

The door to my room was open only slightly, and I was, mercifully, alone for the time being. I had to make sure I was in a good enough position to eavesdrop without making it look as though I was welcoming company.

The second voice became clearer now. “Well, yeah,” Gully replied. Had I already known who was talking, I’d have ben able to write out their conversation like a script that had been played to death and back again. I didn’t call Alicia “Gully” for nothing. She continued, and I realized that the pair of them had stopped right outside. Perfect. “I mean, she’s so open and honest, right? Like, who else would have the guts to read their diary on Group days?”

“Oh, please!” Truth groaned. I could just barely make out her eyes rolling in that supremely annoying way she had. I shifted to prop myself up on one elbow. Now that I knew what – or, more accurately, who – they were discussing, I was more interested than before.

“What?” Gully simpered. I’d never known anyone who could actually simper in one syllable before Gully, but there it was. “I mean, like, she’s baring her soul!”

“She’s a fucking drama queen,” Truth shot back. “And if you don’t think we’re getting the sanitized version of every little thing, you need to up your meds or something. She could be making all that shit up, for all we know!”

Gully sighed, and I could see her hands twisting together nervously. She was so Truth’s bitch. I had that pegged from Day One.

“But, like, what would she… I mean, how does she benefit from telling us this way how she got here? Everyone else just, like, goes in and sits and says, ‘I had to come here because I was…’ You know. Whatever.”

“That’s my point,” Truth said, her voise rising just a fraction. I had half a mind to tell her to hush, because the Nazis would come and drag them both away if it looked like there was anything more compelling than tea-time talk happening here, and then how would I hear this pathetic attempt to dissect The Enigmatic Ivy?

“What is?”

“That we all just tell it like it is, but she has to haul her stupid books in and read to us like we’re in third grade. Come on. She’s probably a pathological liar and has to keep things written down so she doesn’t lose track of what she’s told people. She’s not stupid.”

“Well, no, of course she isn’t,” said Gully in her comparative whisper.

“Although I guess she can’t be a rocket scientist if she landed in here. She got caught, somehow.”

“Not necessarily…”

Truth laughed, the sound of a dog being jerked back on its leash just as it tries to bark. “You don’t think anyone wold put themselves here on purpose, do you? This isn’t Promises, in case you hadn’t noticed.” I saw her gesture to the ceiling, and I knew she was calling attention to the stains creeping around the edges of every styrofoam panel. “She. Got. Caught.”

“Caught doing what, though?” Gully asked, sounding more anxious than even her twisty hands would let on. I perked up a bit more. I always wondered what people said about The Ivy Story when they thought they were out of earshot.

“Think about what everyone else here has done. There isn’t one of us who hasn’t got a rap sheet for something. Not on this floor, anyway. The Cuckoo’s Nest is pretty self-explanatory, but us? We’re completely inorganic fuck-ups!”

Gully didn’t say anything for a moment, and I wondered if I might be about to hear some grand revelation, either about her – not that I cared, but kicks were getting harder to find – or about what she thought was written on the last page of the last black-and-white composition notebook.

“Um…what does that mean?” she asked.

Unbelieveable.

I tried to slap a hand over my mouth before the guffaw escaped, but either sound would’ve tipped them off, and that was it. Through the gap between the door and the wall, I saw both of their heads swivel toward me, two pairs of eyes widening as they realized they’d been overheard. I thought the level of alarm in their expressions, especially Gully’s, was more than a bit overblown, considering neither of them had said antything of consequence whatsoever, but either way, I’d just screwed myself out of hearing anything more.

Truth slid her hand along the door and pushed it open, about halfway now, but didn’t step into the room. She glanced around nervously, and I thought about asking who she was looking for, just to be a smartass, but I didn’t. I just leaned back on my elbow a bit further, the very picture of mellow, and smirked at her.

“Oh… Uh…sorry,” Truth offered. It was pretty lame, coming from her. I’d have expected her to be a bit more brash, accusing me of deliberately listening in, even though I’d been there the whole time and it was their choice to pick their location for chitchat.

I sat up rather suddenly, and the sound of the spring jumping up against the mattress once more ricocheted off the paint-peeled walls. Gully actually jumped, though I couldn’t tell for sure if it was the noise that did it or if it was me. Both options struck me as funny, and I let myself laugh. That definitely creeped Gully out, and Truth didn’t look altogether comfortable either.

“We didn’t disturb you or…anything…did we?” Truth asked. Gully looked as though she was trying to shrink enough to be completely obscured by the taller woman.

“Nah,” I said. I felt my face twist into a sweet smile. “I wasn’t doing much. Don’t mind me.” With a gracious wave of my hand, I motioned for them to carry on as they were. Truth shot a look over her shoulder at Gully, who was the only thing preventing her from backing out of my line of sight.

“Okay…” She stepped back and elbowed Gully, the way you’d dig into a horse to give it direction. “Sorry, again, anyway.”

“No worries,” my singsong voice said, but they’d already vanished before I could finish even that short a sentence. I heard them scuffling away, and I just shook my head and smirked again. Nutjobs. And to think they hadn’t even invited me into their little pow-wow.

“I’m telling you…” I heard Truth hissing at Gully as they neared the end of the hall, but whatever else she said was swallowed up into the labyrinth of corridors. I glanced over at the stack of composition books on the desk, each one labeled with a flowery little flourish and the words “IVY” and the start and end dates of the volume on the spine. As I closed my eyes and laid back onto the bed, hearing the springs groan in protest, I wasn’t even remotely tempted to pick up the last one and flip to the end.

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