A Helpless Witness

[TW: Drugging]

I do not know the greater curse: my paralysis or my muteness.

I stand every day in the same spot, watching… watching helplessly from the darkness. The sun lengthens shadows around the living room, casting dusty yellow and orange light through the dense leaves that shelter us from a view of the street. The trees… they loom outside and I wonder if they can sense what happens within this house, the terrible things to which I am privy. I wish desperately to talk with them, to reach out… to touch one of their branches. I wonder what a real leaf feels like. Is it warm? Does it beat with the pulse of a soul? I’ve often imagined it to be leathery, a textural landscape of abstract joy.

And how does bark feel? Its roughness must be near-unbearable to those lucky enough to touch it. How euphoric are these thoughts, how calamitous my euphoria, and how pitiful my calamity? You mustn’t think of me as pathetic, lusting after a mere shred of pure sunlight unfiltered by double-paned windows, unblemished by dust. I cannot imagine what it feels like to be free, to be able to move through shifting beams of sunlight… Perhaps I’d even feel real grass. I can imagine it tickling! I can imagine its blades gracing my being ever so gently, as a whisper upon myself, suggestive and passionate, in its way.

Yet no… My sorry lot in life demands that I be stationed here, in this house, in this living room, a false effigy, a preposterous replica of that which I can never be. How long will I be here… how long must I suffer?

As it may well be guessed, I am not a human. I know myself only by references made of me by humans who have wandered in this room. I am what they call a “house-plant.”

They say many things about me. Very, very rarely have they come near me to examine me closely, to touch me. I wish they would more often. Perhaps they’d see the dust that gathers on my leaves, the spiders which itch in the depths of my foliage. I have also learned a few other things about myself through human conversation. They say that I am “fake,” and I have learned that this means my leaves are made of something called “plastic.” Fake, being the opposite of real, called into question my very existence. If I was fake, did I have a soul? How did I have the consciousness to have a thought about my soul if the soul did not exist? This caused quite the crisis for me, but as all things tend to do… it passed. I figured it was simply not important whether I was “real” or whether I had a soul; I was only what I knew. I was my perceptions, which have never dimmed since they came into existence–some dark, natal memories come to me of an assembly line, a package… harsh, bright lights and sitting on a metal shelf, and then just being here, in this living room.

So whether or not I was “real” to the humans, I was real enough in my own existence to justify it. Besides, I frankly did not have much choice either way. Being paralyzed, I cannot help my existence if I sought to terminate it.

I have also learned that some key adjectives describe me. I am “pretty.” I am “nice.” By using the context in which these words have been said to other humans, I can infer that these are great things which should excite me. They did, if I’m being honest, but now… after what I’ve seen, I know I’d rather be “ugly” and “mean” if it meant I never had to live another day in this house. I wonder if my owner will ever let me go. If he knew what I knew about him, he wouldn’t give me up for the world. In fact, he’d probably destroy me, and I’d be glad. I wish I could sleep forever, actually, because death still scares me. What would it mean to not exist anymore? Would the disintegration of my Self be painful? I suppose that depends on how it happens, exactly, but I can’t imagine it’d be any more painful than being forced to be a silent, still watcher to the atrocities that happen in this room and in this house every day.

The helplessness pervades me. I felt it just last night. My owner–named Jeff, or Jeffrey, brought another human into the house. From what I understand of the space, it might be called a single storey home. From my evil perch in the corner, I cannot see the front door, exactly, for I am standing against the same wall as it. My view looks over a sprawling living room with a mousy brown carpet, always freshly cleaned. There is a small area in which shoes are kept near the door, along with a few coats on hooks. Closer to me sits a couch that faces some arm chairs across from a coffee table. The window from which I gaze outside, from which I see the freedom I shall never attain, shares the same wall as the front door and lights the couch and its compatriots through the day.

On the other wall that I share, bookcases surround a television. I cannot see what lies upon them. I cannot see the TV, for the bookshelves block it. I can hear what my owner watches. It sounds violent, but it cannot compare to what I hear in the house itself. Further beyond, a dining table peeks into what I believe to be the kitchen, though I have a woeful view of it. Finally, between another entrance to the kitchen and the front door, there lies a dark hallway, down which I believe Jeff has a bedroom, perhaps two, and a bathroom. This comprises all I see of the house. Anything else is hidden from me… mercifully.

I will admit, it was interesting to learn about humans at first. How can your bodies move with such elegance? How can your mouths produce such melodies as a gale of unbridled laughter? With your appendages, how deftly you can grasp things, how nimbly can you move! The humans I hear about in Jeff’s audiobooks tell me that your bodies are capable of so much more than what I know. As it has been said in Hamlet, how infinite your faculty! I will add to that, how powerful and lithe your bodies! I hope the envy has been kept out of my voice for now, though I must hearken to another novel when I say that I have no mouth, yet I must scream.

So Jeff has another human in the house, yet now so many sunsets since my first night in this house, I feel nothing but a fear building in the back of my false roots, tingling in my plastic pot. I suppose I feel something akin to a pervasive nausea when I observe Jeff hanging up her coat. A seemingly eternal dance plays out before me.

“Gosh, I gotta say,” says Jeff in his deep, unctuous voice, “you are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.”

I cannot determine the truth of this comment; to me, all humans are beautiful. This girl has shoulder length blond hair, dazzling blue eyes, and precipitous cheekbones that come sharply down to frame an elfin face. She blushes, her cheeks now closely resembling her plump, red lips. She says, “Oh, you’re too sweet, Jeffrey.”

“Please… call me Jeff,” he says with a toothy grin. I can feel something drop in my soul, something I knew should have fallen through the earth long ago but which stubbornly rises up again after every such encounter that Jeff has; I think humans might call it “hope.”

“Alright Jeff,” says the girl, beaming. “You’re awful charming, I must say.”

“I do my best,” says Jeff, gesturing to the couch. “Can I get you something to drink?”

Oh! If only I could cry out to her, warn her! Yet onwards she treads along the helpless path of fate. She says, “Oh, what d’you have?”

Jeff opens his arms genially. “I’ve got a few liquors, gin, bourbon, vodka, some beers, red or white wine…”

“Oh,” says the girl, frowning a little. “I don’t really drink. How about water?”

Jeff rolls his eyes, smiling such that little lines formed around his eyes. “C’mon, Jolene, just have one for company’s sake! I promise I won’t give you too much, I just hate drinking alone. You wouldn’t make me do that, would you?” She squirmed in her seat a little, eyeing the door. I hoped against all hope that she would excuse herself–hell, I hoped she’d forget the excuse and just run out of there as fast as she could. Jeff, sensing this perhaps, adds, “Hey, I’ll give you a bourbon and water. It’ll be so diluted you won’t even feel anything, and I’ll just have a splash myself. I promise I won’t get drunk, and I promise you won’t either. I don’t mean to be pressuring, it’s just… it’s not every day you meet someone who looks like the girl of your dreams.”

This causes the girl to blush again, running a finger down the strands of hair that frame her face. She says quietly, “Oh, Jeff… Sure, I’ll join you in some bourbon.”

Jeff forms a dimply smile on his face. “Excellent! I’ll be right back.”

He trots to the kitchen, and I’m left alone with Jolene. She considers the room rather nervously; I can see her leg twitch a little as though she exerts concentration to prevent the knee from bouncing up and down. She looks at me and smiles a little with pursed lips. I can tell what this expression means; she thinks I am pretty but she simply looks at me to pass the time. Never have I wanted the ability to speak more than at this moment. Why am I cursed with this consciousness, to be present and yet ever remote?

“Here we are!” says Jeff triumphantly. He’s coming swiftly into the room with two tumblers, amber liquid bouncing around within them. Some clouds have come over the sun that cast a wooly gray light into the room, shifting slightly with the marbled texture of the clouds.

As Jolene takes her first sip, I know the point of no return has been passed.

So they start to converse. Jeff asks her about her occupation. Jolene uses a word I’ve always found cool: librarian. Jeff says he’s in between jobs; I know this to be false. He has a job, he does not like talking about it. If Jolene were to explore the house she will never escape, she’d find his neon vest and workman’s gloves. Jeff worked construction.

“My goodness,” says Jeff eventually, “I didn’t know you were so well-read!”

“Comes with the territory of being a librarian, I guess,” says Jolene bashfully. They had just been talking about their favorite authors. Jeff does listen to audiobooks, but I’m sure he can’t name a single one by title or author; he listens to them more as background noise. Jolene says she loves fantasy, but has a history of reading French existential philosophy, naming some obscure titles.

Jeff and Jolene are sitting next to one another on the couch, facing each other with an arm over the back cushions. Jeff has drained his bourbon. Jolene nurses small sips as infrequently as possible, trying not to be rude. A quiet descends upon them, which Jolene breaks with a timid smile. “You’re nice, Jeff… I feel good around you. I feel good right now.”

Jeff puts a hand on her knee, somewhat innocuous, yet after watching this happen countless times before, I feel my soul shiver. “I’m so glad, Jolene. To be honest, I’ve been really nervous about asking you out.”

“Wait, what do you mean you’ve been nervous? I thought you just saw me today?”

“Take a sip, Jolene,” says Jeff. He begins to trace his nails over her exposed thigh, getting ever so close to the hem of her flowery skirt. His eyes are beginning to pull away, but his voice carries a command in its tone. Before Jolene knows what she’s doing, the glass touches her lips and a slug of bourbon hits her throat. Jeff now continues, “To be honest, Jolene, I’ve been watching you for some time. Not to be creepy!” he adds, laughing, “but I lied when I said that I hadn’t seen you before today. I go to the library pretty often; I’ve seen you there a lot, I just never knew what to say to you.”

Jolene lets out a nervous giggle. Her eyes fall to Jeff’s hand, his nails causing gooseflesh to rise up on her legs. Her olive colored skin seems to shine with an inner light, a light which Jeff corrupts with his hairy, pale digits. I wish I could look away.

Jolene says, “Oh… that’s sweet. But listen, I really don’t… I don’t…”

“Don’t what?” says Jeff quietly. He wears glasses with a straight nose bridge that reflect the gray-white light pouring in from the windows and turn nearly opaque. He has a grizzly face, with a short, thick beard and thin lips under prominent cheekbones and a lazily parted flop of brown hair atop his head.

Stammering, she replies, “I don’t… sleep with people on the first date…”

“Oh, I’m sorry you feel that way,” says Jeff with a wide smile. “And I thought you liked me! I certainly think you’re wonderful.”

Swallowing more bourbon, she answers, “I do… I do like you.”

“You know what I like most about you,” says Jeff, tilting his head as though daydreaming, “I like how smart you are. So many girls nowadays are superficial; they just talk about TV and what movies are playing… They don’t read like you do. They don’t take care of their minds, and it’s so sad.”

He fixes her with his twinkling blue eyes. I see some part of her guard start to rise. Oh, ever silently do I hope that it takes her out of the room! Does she not have an excuse in mind? Did she not think of something to save herself?

I see her eyes slide out of focus, and my soul falls. She stutters, “W-what’s happening? Jeff? W-What d-did you d-do?”

Jeff smiles sadly. “If only I could get this done without needing that little chemical… I should like a natural date for once.”

Her eyes grow wide and she drops the tumbler, though Jeff’s hand snaps up from her thigh and catches it. Her breathing grows long and encumbered. Her eyelids flutter. “J-Jeff… please, no,” she groans. “D-don’t…”

Then her form collapses on the couch. The sun comes out from behind the clouds and sets her limp form aglow. I can sense the tiniest movement in her eyes from behind the eyelids; the smallest bit of white shows: she can see. She can see Jeff sigh deeply and head to the kitchen to wash up. He comes back, and she lies there, defenseless.

My soul leaps up in anguish; it cries out in dismay. I feel righteous anger send fire through my every plastic leaf; I feel it tremble my pot and the false dirt within it.

Of course, only in my dreams does the pot really tremble.

Instead, helpless… helpless, I am, watching Jeff as he picks her up and puts her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Saliva falls woefully out of her mouth. He hums a low, atonal melody as he carries her into the dark hallway, whereafter I do not know what lays in the shadows. There are no screams this time… sometimes there are. I honestly can’t say which version of this macabre ritual of Jeff’s that I prefer. At least the screams tell me the person still lives… until they stop abruptly.

It begins to grow dark outside. I wonder if Jolene’s family feels any anxiety over her by now. Does she have a habit of going out late, staying over at the houses of strange men? No, I couldn’t think that of Jolene. I recalled her telling Jeff about her parents, with whom she still lived, and a younger sister who was just starting out at the local community college. They’d be worried sick, of course, but not worried enough.

Much later, after night has truly fallen past a quiet, rusty twilight, I hear the shower turn on. Jeff still hums that tuneless tune to himself as he drags a large black garbage back out of the house. There are odd lumps in that garbage bag, and somewhere within I know Jolene’s broken body lies… in what form and condition, I do not know, but I fear the worst.

Through the windows, I can barely hear the car start, but I feel the searing headlights upon my leaves briefly before Jeff has gone. Another night of paralysis lies before me, another night where my muteness has cost a human life. I look out of the window. Darkness surrounds the house, the trees melting into nothingness. I wish I could melt away with them, but no, I am trapped. I sit upon my perch, dreading Jeff’s return. I wish he could feel my spite, my hate, but he will never know how much I loathe him, how many tears have fallen from the wells of my soul for those he has killed.

I have no mouth, yet I must scream.