Writer’s Challenge, October 2007: Atmospheric

ATMOSPHERIC
copyright OCT 2007
The challenge this time was to write a story by describing the atmosphere. In this case, I thought about one of the creepiest movies I had ever seen, and did my variation on an epilogue.
Still working out formatting issues. Sorry.

Two steps into the facility and I felt my body shiver under the all-powerful, all-pervasive scent of astringent and delousing powder. The low, bitter taste crawled up the back of my tongue, clung to the back of my throat, and coated my teeth. I could feel it seep methodically into each layer of my skin.
The Correction’s Officer at my side was young and brusque, and politely noted the points of interest -- the stiff blue polyester of his slacks making swish-swipe noises with every step. We walked down aisle upon aisle of doors -- all solid but for a wire-screened window at eye-level, and a locked panel with a small shelf near the bottom. Halogen green flickered above me; straining my eyes in the odd light and making me feel as though I was a fly under an assembly line of bug zappers.
Sound did not know its place here. The C.O.’s voice seemed to fade under the weight of the lights and bars, while the random hoots and howls and curses from the further cells seemed to leap out from behind me with smirking surprise.
Door after door, lights and shadows, I found that I had begun to fall into step with the C.O. The structured subservience of the place was oppressive, automatic. Fighting it was not an option. I watched the tiles as I walked…noted the two red lines that marked my path on either side of my feet. I took perverse pleasure in the echoes of my feet on the tiles, concentrating on them, concentrating on the pounding in my ears. I imagined suddenly that every faceless steel door in the place had burst open, purging themselves of their cargo…and that all of the anonymous unwanted began to waltz wildly about …spinning madly in their simple, cotton shrouds.
Madness was here. Neither friend, nor foe, just a part of the natural décor. It oozed in with the taste of delousing powder. It held onto your bones and demanded attention, making your eyes widen with every rare flash of color and unexpected sound, leaving you damp and raw and cold to the touch… a living, seeping wall.

We walked on, leaving the gray-green walls, encountering newer walls that may have once been a pleasant yellow, now faded to a tobacco brown. The polyester guard pushed a glaring red button on an intercom. A buzzer sounded, and with a methodical clank and a swift hiss of hydraulics, one gate closed behind us, and another opened in our path.
We walked past a small television that fretted between staticy channels, agitated, as though it knew of its own imprisonment behind a sheet of thick, bolted Plexiglas. We passed the table and chairs in the holding room, the sullen sculptures of an unimaginative artist. Even the furniture here was shackled and caught.
I walked up to the door, watching my feet, hearing the sounds of my shoes between the red lines, dreading the door ahead. The polyester guard had to reach out, the brief tap on my shoulder a waking reminder that said, “Stop here. Go no farther.”
I could not stop shivering as the massive door eased open to reveal a four by eight cubicle. The stainless steel walls seemed to swallow the furnishings whole -- here, a chair protruded from the wall…there, a combination sink and leaky, lidless toilet…and just over there, was the jutting prow of a bed. A thin lump of a mattress covered with faded Strawberry Shortcake sheets finished the décor.

She sat on the pink sheets, all blonde curls and dimples. She was coloring intently with a black crayon, and I could just glimpse the remains of a bunny’s form under the dark wax. Morning light from the single narrow window pooled around her, casting a sharp, crimson glow on her hair and Shirley Temple-skin. In my head, I seemed to hear an old voice whispering: “Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.”
She appeared to be on fire…an effect heightened by the reflected red glint in her eyes.

“I’ve missed you, Mommy.” she chirped brightly. “I think about you all of the time. You… and Daddy.” The pause was slight, but deliberate, the cunning poison of her four-year old smile too old, too wrong for those sweet pouting lips. “Why doesn’t he come to see me anymore?”
I pause, and swallow. My voice, when it comes, does not betray me. I match her, lilt for lilt. “Daddy is still…sick…We think he’ll be home soon. We hope so anyway.”
She smiles, all slow and evil. Stop it! I told myself. She is a child. She is ONLY a child! Yet, I feel my terror growing. The light in the room makes her perfect white baby teeth seem sharper, narrower. She smiles again…and I do not doubt for a moment that she knows everything I am thinking…and is delighting in it.
“They let me make a present for you in workshop.” She said. She held out a newspaper wrapped bundle. I dutifully accept her gift and clumsily unwrap it to discover a stuffed paper doll, dressed to look like me, down to a paper doll dress that had been colored purple to match the sweater I usually wore to these visits. She had obviously spent a great deal of effort in its creation, with yellow yarn for its hair and special attention taken to match the color of my eyes.
“It’s lovely, Lily.” I was being honest, but for some reason, the doll only increased my mounting sense of unease.
“Oh, I hoped you’d like it. I thought of you the whole time I that I made it.”
I smiled, and continued to talk of silly, nothing things, with her, all the while, trying to mark time in my mind.
Finally, the ordeal was over. The C.O. signaled that I could leave. I barely kept myself from bolting right there, but managed, with admirable constraint to bend down and ruffle her hair. I hugged her, shutting my eyes and praying as I always did that this was all just a nightmare, and I would wake up soon.
“I’ll come home someday, Mommy.” she whispered into my sweater. I forced my brightest and most sincere smile.
“That will be nice, Lily.” I began to leave before my distress became more obvious.
“Mommy!” the voice was demanding, petulant. “Don’t forget your present. I worked so hard on it.” Again, she told me. “I thought of you the whole time I made it.”
She watched me take the doll again, her eyes direct and unwavering, as the doorway to my personal hell finally slammed shut, and I could hear her laughing… a child’s high, musical laugh at the most delightful thing in the whole wide world…a sound, that from her lips seemed twisted and wrong. It was more animal than child.

Each step to the egress lifted me. I ran, barely noticing the C.O.’s attempts to keep up with me. Freedom came with the outside doors. The weight fell from my neck and I continued to run, hurling myself into the car, sobbing, breathing heavily, unseeing.
Slowly, I came to myself, and I realized belatedly that I had crumpled the stuffed doll in my flight. I unclenched my hands, and the purple-crayoned dress fell off and onto the floor. I could feel the terror bite into me again.
The doll had five, carefully torn lines down its torso. Lily had just as carefully edged each of the lines with a garish red crayon. The stuffing, red and white yarn, had been purposefully through each tear. In my head, I could hear her voice once more.
“Mommy, I thought of you when I made it.”