compulsion

Mogget challenged me to write a gothic horror story in the tradition of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, ie, disturbing but not at all gory or anything. I hope this will suffice Mogg as a reponse to your most inventive challenge! I thought a while about it and tried the idea in different ways before deciding to do this.





Compulsion



I think that I am going to make toast.

But maybe I shouldn’t. If I have a whole piece of toast now (but I want two!), then maybe I’ll have a habit of overeating later... But how good it would be to sit by the fire with toast –

if I didn’t think about the flames. No, no, NO, don’t go there. It’s so strange. You know, it’s like I have to quickly build a barricade to stop these scrambling, itchy thoughts – so annoying – how they tumble on each other and short-circuit here and there, getting more confused, more tangled… until my consciousness is hemmed in by the criss-cross threads and I can focus only on the small area before me…

It is not an illusion!

I am going to make toast, then. No use worrying about completely, entirely foolish things. It was thoroughly absurd of me even to question it.

I put the bread in the toaster. Two pieces, why not? Then I open the refrigerator and see the butter. It sits on one of those shelves in the door, the one labeled “dairy”; the refrigerator came like that; how nice that is. But I can’t pick up the stick of butter, unopened. Not today.

Some days, I can take out the butter without thinking about anything. But sometimes, days, I can’t lift the package from the refrigerator, because the blue dot on the label might be a sign of something bad. Those days when I remember the dot, before I lifted the butter, I would have to think three times of the mountain-path in back of Maria’s lodge, and then tap once (or twice, depending) on the shelf. Sometimes I do it but sometimes I am just too tired.

I don’t feel like rousing my mind to that short-circuit focus point to do it today; I can go without butter.

So I make my toast dry. It’s not quite as good but – I must not think. I can’t sit by the fire today. But I remember such a nice time by someone else’s fire – hold that thought and do not think of the flames. STOP!

This toast is quite good (even without the butter – no! don’t think about it, will you?!). I am careful not to drop any crumbs. NO – don’t drop crumbs, you can’t! If crumbs are on your shirt above the waist, because the kitchen cupboard did not fully close, it might mean something awful… I can’t say, don’t make me say!

Maybe I could have put some peanut butter on the toast. Maybe I will. But my mind feels so cold right now. I think there’s a draft. Maybe I’ll get up and get a sweater. But I can’t make myself move just yet. I feel detached sort of, maybe more like numb, not really… I can’t keep a thought… Every wandering notion fades off into dull drone. I think I might be getting a headache.

Should I make tea? It would be good, jasmine tea… I look at the clock. Darn it! It is 1:02, and I can’t make tea before 1:30, especially since I thought about the color of the tea-leaves wrong…

I take the last crunchy bite. No more toast. This is very sad- NO! Do NOT think about impermanence!

Honestly, sometimes I feel like hitting myself with something right over the head, I annoy myself so much. It hurts, the thoughts that freeze me so many times every day, but I can’t stir myself to move.

Oh no… no… no! There is a crumb on my collar. How?! I was so careful! This can’t be. I have to do something. I jump up and whimper and flay at the collar. Don’t let it drop! Where can it go? Think it away… on a spaceship… but then it’ll be in space, still there… think it disappears… but where does it go? Does it have to go somewhere? No, no, no! It’s gone – but – DON’T think about it!

Oh – I was wrong. The crumb didn’t mean that. Now that I’ve retraced my time and redone it – I could exert my mind for this and get stuck – it was fine. It’s fine.