064/2012 The Voice Inside Your Head

Word Count:  350

There was no heaven nor the hot flames of a hell. Mary believed when people died they lived on in your memory. Her older sister Ruth had been raped and murdered when Mary was twelve. Her mother told her only that she was dead. She found out the truth when Ruth told her in a dream where Ruth was forever seventeen.

Ruth told her things all the time. From her room in Mary’s mind, she whispered secrets. She told her about boys and about sex. Mary asked her about things she dare not ask her mother. Ruth was easy to talk to, unless Grandma listened in from her own room above Ruth’s in her head.

In college Mary’s friend Todd died in a car accident. Afterward, he moved in with Ruth. It was fine with Mary because Ruth was a chatterbox and Mary couldn’t keep up with her by herself.

By the time Mary was thirty-two her head was as full as a Chicago convention hotel. Not everyone was talking at once but it was hard to understand all the voices except for her mother’s. She spoke in a harsh disapproving tone that Mary could always pick out from the rest.

When Mary got married she never told her husband about the people she carried around with her every day. She didn’t know how to explain why she avoided making a lot of new friends. She quit her job in the city to work out of the relative solitude of her house. Mary wondered how everyone else seemed to manage their private menageries. She frankly felt hers was driving her crazy but it seemed rather rude to ask.

When Mary was near the end of her days things grew quiet and quieter and nearly stopped. All the people she’d known escaped memory. Her husband was silent. Even her mother’s voice faded away.

Then one summer morning Ruth invited her over. Ruth, who never did go away. Mary had nowhere else she could go. She let out one long last breath, closed her eyes, and disappeared inside her own head.