STACY | PART 02 | PARTITIONED
A Serliased Story by Jen Ives
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Stacy thought her dreams were black before, but this was something else. There was a depth to this one, previously unfamiliar - a darkness that filled every open orifice about her.
In the dream, Stacy fell upwards. She felt she was a jellyfish, caught on a fisherman's line, heading steadily towards the surface for the first ever time. There was trepidation in her, because she had a feeling that whoever was at the end of that rod wouldn’t be thrilled with what they’d caught. Stacy often tried to remember her dreams after she awoke, but they’d always slither off in those first five to ten seconds of consciousness. This time though, she was forgetting the dream while she was in it. The whir of the rod’s spool screamed around her, its pitch getting higher and higher. Her ears burned. Her brain crackled. Then, thankfully, the volume faded down.
The hospital room faded in slowly, and Stacy found herself alone. The thin strip curtains were undone, and as people walked past her window - businessmen on their lunch breaks, a well dressed woman with a pomeranian dog in her arms, the occasional builder - they looked in at her. Stacy sat herself up and glanced around the room. Her clothes were on a chair in the corner, as was her bag. There was a television, and as the remote was in reach she tried to turn it on - but nothing happened. She checked the remote’s batteries, and sure enough they were in there. When she pressed the ‘on’ button, the little red light at the top of the remote flashed, but there seemed to be no connection with the television at all. She didn’t actually care… it wasn’t like there was anything on that she actually wanted to watch, she just liked pressing the button and seeing the little red light at the end of it flash on and off. This was enough for her - she was more than entertained.
Stacy felt like she could see herself from outside of herself. Not literally, obviously. She couldn’t physically see herself from across the other side of the room, pressing the remote’s standby button over and over, but there was a part of her, mentally, that could see that what she was doing was silly. The only thing was, that part of her - it didn’t particularly care either. It reckoned that Stacy must just have residual anesthetic in her system, and that she’d snap out of it in an hour or so. What’s more, both parts of Stacy were aware of one another, and yet - completely in agreement that pressing the button on the remote to make the little red light flash on and off was the best thing to be doing right now.
On. Off. On. Off. On. Off. On. Off. On. Off.
There was a knock at the door, followed shortly by two men entering. One introduced himself as her surgeon, and the other needed no introduction at all - she recognised him as the nurse from his eyes. Even though this was Stacy’s first time seeing his complete face, unobscured by the mask, all his features made perfect sense in relation to those eyes. Both men were relieved to see that Stacy remembered something.
Gently taking the remote from Stacy, the surgeon switched on the television and, without asking her what she wanted to watch, put on a baking programme for her to enjoy. Which she did.
Stacy felt a deep relief having not had to make the decision herself.
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