Paul & Gertrude

Chapter 3

A sharp pain behind Gertrude's left eye notifies that she has secured a position in the platform of consciousness. An unstable position, one would say. The girl looks like someone who has risen from the realms of the lifeless.

And that was no further from the truth. 

Normally, Gertrude Tongbang was an averagely unremarkable girl travelling through her glorious puberscent years. Unlike her peers, Gertrude did not give a damn about the way she looked, dressed, her social status or the way another good-looking young person of the opposite sex standing nearby was looking at her. She spent all her time reading and occasionally would travel to the cinema to see a new superhero thriller film. Gertrude Tongbang was a Marvel fan and a Star Wars devotee.

The local middle school Gertrude spent her time at does not morally regulate a dress code for either students or teachers. Sure, there was a dress code all right, but the students ignored it and paraded into the educational facility in colorful branded clothing of GAP, DKNY, H&M and TopShop. Gertrude bought the uniform and wore it all in one piece: the skirt, the blouse with the ruffles, the thigh-high socks and the tie. Nobody made fun of her; simply because she wasn't well-known enough for them to pay her the majestic benefit of their worthy attention. Gertrude didn't care. She spent her days in the school library reading the paperbacks of Agatha Christie in the plush velvety armchairs until the sound of the bell signalled that it was time for class.

*****

Pain shot out of her face and neck in different dimensions. She lay on the small, rigid hospital bed, quivering.

Continuous, unforgiving, pulsatile pain circulated in her veins, engraved in the deep folds of strikingly green, fatigued, unhealthy skin. The whole upper region of her body was strung ablaze with pain yet she did not have the immediate cure for it nor did she have the energy to register for assistance. She felt utterly helpless, useless. She wanted to cry, to shed tears in an order to comfort her wavering soul, but the tension of her facial muscles during the migraine prevented her from doing so.

Feeling extreme emotion in moments of monstrous, debilitating pain made her drop in and out of consciousness. She was conscious enough to register every time she was falling in of consciousness, falling out of consciousness. Her whole body radiated an unmeasureable amount of limitless heat from the pain and from the experience of extreme frustration, the defenseless paralyzation. 

The feeling could be compared to the feeling of drowning in a vat of boiling saltwater. Gertrude was choking repeatedly, her airway was clogged by the vast amount of insidious salty water. Insuffient demand for oxygen made her splutter and wheeze heavily. The experience of stinging; a little burning sensation in the throat that made her tongue fill up all the corners of her mouth. Her head was dangerously throbbing, dragging her entire body down under the surface of the hot, saltish waves. All the sounds slur together until all she can hear is an undefeatable whirlwind of buzzes from all directions. Her heart is beating uncontrollably fast, fuming and racing: it feels as if it is going to pop out of her chest cavity and burst onto the linoleum floor nearby in a pool of blood, jelly-like gore.

Pain is making her limbs unable to move, completely defenseless against the cruel disposition of the surroundings. She is too weak, too frail, too tired to fight. She finally heaves a finally breath of utter exhaustion and falls into a slumber - the consolation prize that her body gives her for being the loser of the combat battle.

Whilst lying there, she hears an old, croaky male voice at the back of her head whispering slightly to her. In the beginning, the words are not distinguishable; un-uniformed words placed in random, undescribeable order of tone of voice.

Finally, the origin of the sound travels to an approximate radius where she can hear quite clear the words: 

"It's high time I take over. "

Assuming it was a directive, not a statement of speech, she lets go and it takes control of her body.

HaTolam