Otherworldly Sights: A Short Story Collection

A small happiness

Harsh, bright lights illuminated the hospital room, highlighting everything in a stark white - the walls a great emptiness, the floor laid with pearly tiles, the bedsheets a crisp, neat white - with the face of the being that slept there, so pale a shade of lemon-lime that it almost matched the snowy hair with which it was framed, being the only colour in the room.

The being had chosen a human, whose form it was still fashionable to take these days, for that- day? week? possibly month? The hospital lacked windows, and even if it did have, they would still have some difficulty measuring the old-fashioned Earth time from the view.

They liked the female human form more than the male, so they had taken that as well, enjoying the feeling of their body gently smoothing into curves. There was also something so gracefully artistic about the word she, they'd thought, and had decided to take those pronouns even though there was nobody there to call them- her- that.

She surfaced, now, from a dizzying nightmare, still subconsciously gripped by it but pulling on her cool, outside expression for the facial scanner.

She tucked in her thin systex hospital bracelet and looked at her monitor. The graph was jagged like a mountain range; she looked at the spot where she was now, and it held a steady reading. Good.

Inside, she wasn't steady, of course, still tossing and turning between what they called depression and anxiety. But outwardly, she had to portray a blank face, for the scanner, for the monitor, for all the machines constantly checking on her, monitoring her health.

Truthfully, she just didn't want to take the Pill again.

She picked up the blank tablet lying beside the bed. As she watched, text began to slowly scroll down the screen. Reading will clear my head, she thought.

But as she read, she couldn't stop the familiar, penetrating sense of wrongness that spilled through her like ink on fabric. It was frustration, and anger, and sadness, that merged to create this. The worst feeling she could think of, and the reason she was in here.

She looked down, and saw that her bracelet had come untucked again, and the frustration broke the dam wall and the feelings flooded out, and she let out a sob, a wailing cry quite unlike her, and the monitor would see, and crying was strictly a human characteristic, but she could feel what they called tears running down her cheeks, and she didn't care any more.

Beside the bed, a panel slid aside and a shiny red button with a white block exclamation mark rose out. They'd redesigned the button, but she knew what it did from the last time she had pushed it, had pushed it and taken the Pill it offered, and fallen out cold for a long time with no nightmares but no pleasantries either, and had woken up cold and lonely again.

But she didn't care.

She pushed the button, and something new happened: a hatch in the side wall opened to let a small black shadow slip in. She blankly watched it slink to the bed, tears drying on her face as it leapt on with a purr.

A cat. She'd seen one, once, at an interplanetary home for lost animals. It was a beautiful thing, graceful in movement, and she felt its tiny soft paws on her legs as it gently came up to her and rubbed its face onto her arms. She scratched its head and smiled at it.

And this small happiness was a greater help than the Pill would ever be.

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A/N:

Isn't this so cute? I really enjoyed writing it, and I hope you enjoyed reading it- and if you did, vote!

My heart goes out to those of us who are survivors, who push on through depression and anxiety, and also to those who have lost a loved one to them. You have the strength to be happy again, and you deserve to be.

See you, well, next time (I'll change it when I update next),

Tori 🏥