Freaks

13 • lazarus

❝what's in a name?❞
ｗｉｌｌｉａｍ ｓｈａｋｅｓｐｅａｒｅ

___

   ＳＯＭＥＯＮＥ is screaming, and it isn't me.

"Somebody, help her!" they say, "She's going to drown!"

...Cass?

Suddenly, the water around me stills. I feel myself being lifted out, floating in a body of water. Mere moments later, the feeling stops and I begin to drop back down. This time, however, I am caught between a pair of arms gripping me firmly to their owner's chest.

I can faintly hear my name being called. Over and over again. By different voices, in different volumes, in different tones.

"Emma!" they say desperately. "Wake up!"

"Emma! Can you hear us?" they clamour anxiously. "Help is on the way." But 'help' is not able to stop the voices from fading away.

"Emma!"

Nor does it stop their panders from muffling. Nor the niggling feeling of déjà vu that gnaws at my subconscious mind.

"Emma!"

But then, even that stops. And all that is left is darkness, and quiet.

"Emma?"

❧

   The first time I was called 'Emma', I despised the name.

It was a week after joining the daycare at my parents' workplace and the only person I had talked to was the lady at the front desk who gave us juice boxes and toy games and checked on how we were doing every half hour.

The other half of 'us' (aka the little boy who was sat alone at the round table) did just that— sat alone. Despite my best efforts, he refused to speak a word to me all week. I was told he was shy. I always felt he just didn't like me. Otherwise he would've told me his name at least, right?

As the hours turned into days and the days into weeks, I progressively became obsessed with find out what his name was.

At first, the lady at the front desk wouldn't tell me. She believed I must have been too shy and often tried to convince me to ask myself. Nothing I said could convince her this was not the case. The whole thing seemed futile.

But then one day, my luck finally changed.

I was usually first to leave the nursery— if there was anything my parents were good at, it was keeping to a strict schedule. That day, they were running late— and the reason behind this quickly becomes apparent when I notice Mom and Dad sauntering along side another couple, laughing at whatever joke amuses people in their occupation.

The female of the couple momentarily broke away from the conversation to address us young folk who were still stuck in the daycare centre. The woman was young, blonde, fair, and spoke with a certain accented fondness when she uttered the magic words:

"C'mon, Nico, we can go home now."

My eyes lit up like a pair of firecrackers as I watched the little boy rise (with more vigour and enthusiasm than he had expressed in all the time we'd known each other), take her hand and follow her out the room.