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Amber Poe v 2.0
[19 weeks? Really? It's not that there hasn't been work; just... haven't... posted anything. But I'm starting a sincere effort to get back to this story (I know, I know), starting with the thorough re-write it deserves.]
Amber Poe.
“For the third time, I don't know.”
My words echoed across the telephone line, crackling out of an emergency call center headset into the harried ears of an overworked woman who didn't believe me. Having received all the warnings about how it was illegal to impersonate an actual emergency call, I stood finally at this impasse with this stranger; how could she believe a story that I didn't have to tell, anyway? I felt the stoniness of my own silence bearing down on me. My knuckled whitened on the telephone. This is what 911 is for!
“Ma'am, are you in danger?”
“Not that I'm aware of. I don't know.”
“And you can't tell me your name. Is there someone who you can call to come get you?”
“I know nothing. I don't know where I am, I don't know... who I am. I don't have anybody.”
Those words, having to verbally express that you are unaware of your own identity, seem such a common thing to expel from one's self. No complicated vocabulary, no elaborate conceptual suspension of disbelief – and yet, my throat choked around them like fingers of muscle that refused, animally, to believe the statement true.
“I'm sorry, ma'am,” she wasn't; her voice thumped on my ear in hollow insincerity, “but if you're not in a situation where you need emergency services I have to advise you to transport yourself to a hospital where you can get the proper care.”
I simply hung up, imagining the disembodied call-center voice relieved in the somewhere-building, passing my teeth-gritted desperation as a hoax before ringing through the next domestic violence call. My mind registered that emergency services was stretched to absolute maximum capacity; it became more and more difficult to blame her as the minutes went on, no matter how much I wanted to. I assessed my surroundings for the second time.
A tidy studio apartment with windows that met at the corner of the room circled me like a well-architected bubble of wood and glass. A narrow bed stood in one corner, made, and two empty glasses occupied a table next to the kitchenette in the company of a small vase of cut flowers. The flower smell mingled with the faint odor of tangy alcohol that filmed the glasses. As I shifted my weight, my hip pressed the edge of the simple desk on my left. I set my hand down next to the telephone and met a folded piece of paper I had not taken note of before.
Reluctantly, I opened it, unable to keep from wondering whose business I'd be disturbing.
'Take the back stairs out (take the left hall instead of the right one)'.
The letters capered hastily across the page, written by an unsteady hand just above a more cramped but equally panicky afterthought: 'don't forget your shoes and coat'.
My heart sped up suddenly, as if reacting to a thought that moved over and through me more quickly than my consciousness could catch. Crushing the note tightly into my palm, I strode for the door, and departed without bothering to tie the shoes the disembodied author had admonished me not to forget. I took the left hall, short of breath and barely able to keep from breaking into a run.
Amber Poe.
“For the third time, I don't know.”
My words echoed across the telephone line, crackling out of an emergency call center headset into the harried ears of an overworked woman who didn't believe me. Having received all the warnings about how it was illegal to impersonate an actual emergency call, I stood finally at this impasse with this stranger; how could she believe a story that I didn't have to tell, anyway? I felt the stoniness of my own silence bearing down on me. My knuckled whitened on the telephone. This is what 911 is for!
“Ma'am, are you in danger?”
“Not that I'm aware of. I don't know.”
“And you can't tell me your name. Is there someone who you can call to come get you?”
“I know nothing. I don't know where I am, I don't know... who I am. I don't have anybody.”
Those words, having to verbally express that you are unaware of your own identity, seem such a common thing to expel from one's self. No complicated vocabulary, no elaborate conceptual suspension of disbelief – and yet, my throat choked around them like fingers of muscle that refused, animally, to believe the statement true.
“I'm sorry, ma'am,” she wasn't; her voice thumped on my ear in hollow insincerity, “but if you're not in a situation where you need emergency services I have to advise you to transport yourself to a hospital where you can get the proper care.”
I simply hung up, imagining the disembodied call-center voice relieved in the somewhere-building, passing my teeth-gritted desperation as a hoax before ringing through the next domestic violence call. My mind registered that emergency services was stretched to absolute maximum capacity; it became more and more difficult to blame her as the minutes went on, no matter how much I wanted to. I assessed my surroundings for the second time.
A tidy studio apartment with windows that met at the corner of the room circled me like a well-architected bubble of wood and glass. A narrow bed stood in one corner, made, and two empty glasses occupied a table next to the kitchenette in the company of a small vase of cut flowers. The flower smell mingled with the faint odor of tangy alcohol that filmed the glasses. As I shifted my weight, my hip pressed the edge of the simple desk on my left. I set my hand down next to the telephone and met a folded piece of paper I had not taken note of before.
Reluctantly, I opened it, unable to keep from wondering whose business I'd be disturbing.
'Take the back stairs out (take the left hall instead of the right one)'.
The letters capered hastily across the page, written by an unsteady hand just above a more cramped but equally panicky afterthought: 'don't forget your shoes and coat'.
My heart sped up suddenly, as if reacting to a thought that moved over and through me more quickly than my consciousness could catch. Crushing the note tightly into my palm, I strode for the door, and departed without bothering to tie the shoes the disembodied author had admonished me not to forget. I took the left hall, short of breath and barely able to keep from breaking into a run.