I used to think that I was boring. The truth would have been far more complex had I not accepted my gift. I could put people to sleep by just talking to them.
For years, especially throughout my more formative years at school, I just thought I was the most asinine of children; everyone always yawned within minutes of talking to me. I thought I was bright and interesting with lots of things to say, it’s just that no one could stay alert when listening. The yawning and nodding off started within a minute of me talking. No one made the connection, luckily, but I certainly did. I was a sensitive child and was very careful not to talk to many people. It was also lucky that I didn’t really have much to say for myself; I was a loner, even back then.
It wasn’t too pronounced until I hit puberty and then the effect became more intense. No one dared argue with me; and still no one put two and two together. I suppose it’s quite a leap of the imagination to say that I was the source of everyone's lethargy. Soon it became obvious that I didn’t really need to say much at all to have an impact. When I turned 18 I realised that I could work from home and found a job doing telemarketing to start with, but I soon understood that I didn’t have to be within close proximity of people to affect them. I then tried becoming one of the 0800 sex-line models. I made so much money on those calls initially, the company who employed me thought I was an absolute marvel to start with -my calls were the longest they’d ever had, and every minute was a premium rate. The calls were so long because all the women had fallen asleep a few seconds of ringing me!That fell through though when the complaints came in.
I tried talking to the Doctors about my condition but that didn’t get me anywhere either. I could make an appointment via text or email but the moment I tried visiting the Doctor the same thing happened. It didn’t matter how detailed my email was, no one seemed to believe me! I soon gave up trying to talk to people and living like a recluse seemed to suit me.
One day I took one of my regular jaunts up the town to catch up on my weekly shop. I had figured out that I could write my instructions on a small dry-wipe board using a marker and mime to people that I couldn’t speak to them. It was surprising how effective that was; most people were very understanding and even had a go on my whiteboard -the amount of times I lost playing tic-tac-toe was embarrassing.
Then Amelia let me win, but I should have known better. She knew what the whiteboard was for and her need was actually genuine. In some ways our should have been a match in heaven. She was deaf and had been since birth.
She read lips and nothing I said made her feel drowsy or made her pass out, or sick to the stomach… She even encouraged me to speak my mind, especially when we were on our own. Whether her deafness lent her an elusive quality, I’m not sure, but she felt ethereal to me; too good to be true (which, of course, she would be). She had long waterfull hair, blond and translucent in the morning sun. Her eyes were like diamonds on a moonlit night. I could finally wax lyrical; become as literary as I wanted. Her kisses tasted of lychee and her tongue was teasing and gentle.
She was fascinated by my talent, as she called it; and loved to see me practice it on people. She thought it was a gift as well, could be used to distract and dissuade; break up arguments and dissolve tricky situations. Her favorite trick was introducing me to her parents. She delighted in watching me be really polite and obsequious to them only for them to blanch upon falling asleep. They would then apologise profusely to Amelia and promise her the stars on a stick. Amelia would play on their guilt and blame them for all sorts of foulness over the years. This was her chance to get her own back; and I could see no reason why not. I was so topsy over her that I wasn’t thinking straight -passionless sex will do that. Not that I knew the difference. She was purely going through the motions with me; her groans were more out of her inability to vocalise articulately rather than being in the throes of ecstasy.
Nor did I think anything of us visiting her older sister. She pretended that I was deaf initially to get us in the door; and her sister seemed very shocked to see her; especially with me standing next to her. Amelia could sign but chose not to; she used her own whiteboard to deliberately annoy people -which she was doing now. In actuality her speaking voice was pretty damn clear and coherent for someone who had been deaf from birth; she had been tenacious in becoming proficient in it -she just didn’t allow the majority of people know about it. Her parents and sister were among those who were not in the know.
Ten minutes of mounting sororal annoyance Amelia finally said, “My sister is getting het up again,.., why don’t you put her at ease?” So I finally introduced myself to her. The shock and dismay was soon overtaken by the yawns and eventual somnambulism. Amelia clapped her hands in glee and told me to go back to the car and get the engine running.
This was strange but I did as I was told; went outside into the chill morning and into the car to get the engine ticking over. I felt as if I’d just helped rob a bank. Five minutes later Amelia walked out the front door, almost skipping, carrying a plastic bag. She opened the car door and put the bag in the well next to me, slipped in and shut the door, but not before kissing me suggestively on the cheek -slipping a bit of tongue as if tasting me,
We drove home in silence.
I didn’t need to ask what she’d done. I slyly looked into the bag on the way home and noticed jewelry, lots of it . “She stole it from me. It should all have been mine but she was always daddy’s favorite… You should have seen the way they judged you! It’s alright, she’ll never do anything about it -who would believe her?”
It was my turn to keep quiet. What was going on? I wasn’t the brightest of the bunch; a match who had been struck prematurely; but even I was pondering on whether Amelia was using me for some reason. My subconscious must have been leaking for Amelia confronted me once we returned to her flat.
“I know you must think me wicked, but I need that money… For years I’ve wanted to hear… I know it sounds corny but you can’t understand how much I’ve always wanted to… Well, there’s such a thing as a cochlear implant -and no, it’s nothing to do with having an penis enlargement!” I shrugged. “Mommy and daddy never wanted me to have it; they always gave their money to baby sister… but now it's mine.”
Sure enough, after selling the jewelry via a few pawnbrokers she finally had enough to afford the implant. For a couple of weeks the Doctors said that she was doing brilliantly and she pushed for the early activation of it as there was virtually no swelling. I was there when it was switched on and all the arguments had been worth it upon seeing her eyes light up after hearing something for the very first time. To be fair, it wasn’t my voice, obviously, just the doctor counting to ten, but it was the mere fact that it worked. It would take around another three months, probably longer, of speech therapy, listening exercises and auditory mapping of the nerves and fine tuning, It was an intense time to be sure. She became very tenacious, very demanding of me and she was in constant discomfort, which meant that we could no longer share a bed together, I understood… of course I did.
She did occasionally ask for me to speak to her, but only at the end of the day if she was in too much pain, I acted as the perfect anesthetic to her. And I obliged. I knew that I was in a loving relationship and she would have done exactly the same for me.
Three months later her sister got in contact with her again; going so far as to turn up unannounced. She wouldn’t even look me in the eye, she was that mad. There was a huge row; her sister had finally tumbled what had happened and knew that her jewels had become the down payment for Amelia’s operation. She hadn’t told the parents yet but would do unless certain conditions were met….
I could tell that Amelia was threatened by this and there was a very good chance that she could become violent. I had never liked confrontations and did my best to break this one up. There was no point me signing so I found our communal white board and suggested a compromise. Yes, the money had been for the operation but it was only because it was so important to Amelia. Now it had been successful we would do our best to pay it back over time, Amelia agreed to this immediately, which surprised me… And her sister agreed as well and by way of an apology, Amelia suggested that we all go out for a meal the next day.
We were going to take a taxi to the new Chinese that had just opened, and that should have been the first warning bell. We picked her up in the taxi. I was already wearing my seat belt but Amelia helped her sister with hers. Whilst on the dual carriageway we overtook lots of cars, the driver eager to earn Amelia’s tip. Amelia casually asked me to help her with her auditory exercises.I agreed without thinking and she joked with her sister that she had me well-trained.
It wasn’t noticeable at first, I thought the driver was simply nodding his head to the radio, but there was no music on. I was still speaking slowly and methodically so Amelia could hear me and I saw her sister slump and suddenly realised what was happening. I looked back at Amelia and was puzzled to see her relaxed, coveting a smile and a glint in her eye. The driver slumped forward but quickly regained his balance and tried desperately to stay awake. I had stopped speaking but it was too late now, the steering wheel slipped out of his grasp and there was nothing he could. His full weight was on the car horn, like a death knell, as the taxi jack-knifed, slamming into the partition before careening into the oncoming traffic. I couldn’t see what happened next but I was the only one still awake amongst the wreckage.
Both Amelia and I survived; our seat belts had held. We were battered and bruised and in some degree of pain but we were ok. The taxi driver was dead; dead upon impact. Amelia’s sister was crumpled like a pile of rags; her seat belt had failed completely. She too was dead. It was clear that I had been used to effectively murder Amelia’s sister; there could be no doubt about it. However to everyone else we were victims of death by fatigued driving.
We spent hours at the police station; obviously both of us had to go right to the written statement. Amelia explained that her cochlear implants had failed and I just lied my guts out. No one would have believed the truth anyway. It was then that I formulated my plan. I had to get out of the relationship anyway I could.
That night we argued; this time with something more genuine and fraught than most nights. I think Amelia just enjoyed the sound of her own voice too much now. I found it grating and hostile. I asked her when she would allow me access to her beautiful body again, to which she just laughed. I now knew she had been stringing me on for months; she’d gotten exactly what she wanted and would probably dump me before too long.
I took her by surprise and managed to pin her arms behind her back whilst finding her implant. I’d spent so long helping her out with the fine-tuning that I knew exactly how it worked. I turned it on, and turned it up.
“I love you so much, baby.” I said. “You’re mine now.” And with a groan of disgust and defeat her eyes closed.
Yes… I tied her up. Yes, I turned her implant to maximum and when she woke up she was horrified to find herself naked. And so was I. I started whispering as I made love to her. Each time she started to drowse off I’d stop and allow her to gain consciousness again. I kept this up for hours; an hour for each of the stinking months that she kept me strung up and used me; making me accomplice to her crimes; her lies; her degenerate life. This was payback. I did nothing to her that I hadn’t done before but I also knew that I had crossed a line. The deaths could not be pinned on me -the sister and that poor, unfortunate taxi-driver.. But she could easily testify against me now and nothing I said would make any difference. She looked at me and understood exactly what I was going to do.
With the implant still on maximum I started to sing to her. I knew her favorite song in recent months had been ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ by Queen and it was rather apt for it to be used as an eulogy. This would surely puzzle the coroner as there was no real way of determining her death -sleeping sickness, perhaps? I didn’t care. She had enough money in the flat to get a full tank of petrol. The moral line had been firmly crossed now -it was so far behind me that it looked like a dot. There was nothing stopping me from getting what I wanted when I wanted it. A robbery here; a bit of comfort there…. I mean, if you were in my position what would you do?
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