Subject: [OTL]: [TCP] Cage of Flesh - 1 of 1, [G but very depressing] Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 15:15:13 -0700 From: Tomato Soup Cage of Flesh by Tomato Posted to OTL in April of 2000 The Universe is Marvel's, please don't sue. I don't have anything. The TCP is Ms Kielle and Mr Foster's, I think. The story is Tomato's and feedback would be very nice, please, but no flames, okay? Tomatoes burn easily! ::smile:: I am still writing "what happened during the power outage time and the six month gap." I thought I would try a TCP since K-Nice did, and I was thinking about what would happen to somebody who wasn't a superhero or just plain glad to lose their mutant powers? Cage of Flesh by Tomato Inside, where no one could see, Jeri Talbot raged, shaking her fists at the cruelty of a world like this. Inside, where no one could hear, Jeri screamed, but no one heard her plaintive cries. Inside the head of Jeri Talbot, Jeri Talbot was alone. All alone. Trapped. Outside, where the world looked on her with pity, Jeri Talbot lay in a double bed covered in ridiculous pink lace. On the walls around her were posters of ponies and bands and stuff girls who were sixteen years old should like. Stuff Jeri had liked once, before she was trapped. Beside her, unheard by Jeri's deaf ears, the steady beeping of her heart monitor, and the rhythmic whoosh-in and whoosh-out of the respirator that breathed for her. Around her, the only things that moved were her machines and the dancing motes of dust in the beams of sunlight that slanted in through the pink blinds of her bedroom window. Outside, she knew her friends were playing, unaware that anything in their world had changed. But in Jeri Talbot's world -- everything had changed. Everything. She had been born with opticoacoustic nerve atrophy. Her hearing had disappeared by the time she was five. The doctors had told her after she'd learned Sign that her eyesight would not last much past her tenth birthday. So far, though, she'd proven them wrong. But that was all she'd proven them wrong about. Gradually, her body had wasted away to nothing, no matter what the doctors tried. Her legs grew weaker. By her tenth birthday, she was in braces. By her twelfth, her legs simply weren't strong enough anymore hold her up. Her arms wouldn't obey her. Her hands shook. And finally, she became unable to do -- anything -- except lie in her bed and stare at the room around her. She'd received the best surprise any kid in her position could have on her fifteenth birthday, though. The doctors had noticed increases in her brainwaves from her CAT scans, and the other brain monitor devices that made sure she wasn't heading toward the dementia that so often accompanied her condition. One afternoon in April, after a gloomy and uninterrupted two weeks of torrential rain, Jeri Talbot found her miracle. It started out like a daydream, a fantasy no different from what any other paralyzed or crippled kid might think of: She dreamed of getting up out of the bed, throwing the wires and tubes away, and walking out under her own power. She had known freedom once, and now her body having betrayed her, she was trapped in the cage of flesh. She wanted so desperately to join the kids she could hear playing outside. The laughter and yelling. They sounded so *alive*! Kids her own age, playing street hockey down the block. And then it had happened. There was this weird peeling, separating sensation, and part of her *did* get up, free of the medical machines, and walk away. She didn't know what to call it, her spirit? Her astral form? Her mother didn't read much to her other than school books. Her mother worked three jobs to pay for Jeri's medical care. She didn't have *time* to read Jeri books for anything other than learning. Jeri watched the TV a lot, but because her eyes were so weak, it took a lot out of her to read the closed captions. That was where she got the idea that it was her "astral form." That was where she got the truth of what she was -- a mutant. Whatever she was, it mattered all of nothing to Jeri. She could FLY in this form. She could run with the wind rushing through her -- and best of all, she could dive into the body of someone healthy and whole and live vicariously through them. She knew what a hip check felt like, and was with Abby Dell when she hit the ground, crying. Jeri felt her determination, and the surge of energy that was like a warm beam of sunlight inside her when she got back up. Upstairs, in her sickroom, the machines went crazy, like Jeri herself was out there. When Jeri jumped away from Abby, though, they settled into a pattern that was much higher than her normal one. The doctors had all been mystified. Jeri, of course, couldn't sign to tell them what had happened, or even how. And she wasn't sure that they wouldn't have dismissed her story as teenaged fantasy anyway. It hadn't mattered. She had her escape hatch from her cage of flesh -- and she used it every chance she got. She had had her first date with Kelly Lindbergh, and felt what a first kiss was like. The rest, she'd left to Kelly out of respect. And above, her body had become better, slowly, the more she lived vicariously. The doctors had been speaking with such hope -- "if this strange pattern keeps up," they had said, "She'll be able to wak again, talk again. It's almost as if the condition were reversing itself!" Jeri's heart leapt at the idea that she might be a whole, well person again by the time she was 18 or 20. And then -- her escape hatch had been taken away. Something had sealed airtight any crevasse through which her spirit form could escape and ride along with a healthy person. The cage of flesh was inescapable once more. The closed captions on the television had said it was all mutants everywhere who were losing their abilities, and that those organizations like the Friends of Humanity who hated them were calling it "some dirty mutie trick to deceive us." Jeri didn't care what it was. She wanted her escape hatch back. But she had no way to ask for it back, and no way to get it back. So, she was trapped again, inside her own head, with only the sound of her thoughts for company. A life sentence with no help of parole -- in the cage of flesh. --end. ===== minestra_di_pomodora@yahoo.com ================[~]================ feeling a little mischievous? we have a soup for that. =================[*]=============== Tomato, tomato, let's call the whole thing off.