Siobhan Nolan (ars_memoriae) wrote in savingthegames, @ 2014-08-19 12:59:00 |
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Entry tags: | !plot: rewritten, narrative, siobhan nolan |
Who: Siobhan | Featuring Sam cameo
What: When a migraine isn’t just a migraine.
When: August 19 into the 20th
Where: AU New Waverly
Warnings: None/mild language
Status: Complete/Narrative
The nice thing about Siobhan Shepard’s profession was that she got to work from home most of the time, able to do art all day to her heart’s content while still taking care of the kids. She had her perfect, cozy little niche in the basement outfitted with a massive desk, billboards, and cabinets filled half with her art supplies and half with toys, topped off with a play area safe for little wee ones, especially those little ones still prone to sticking things in her mouth. She could even send her panels to her editor through email after scanning them into the computer or hold sessions for edits over Skype. But, strangely, as August wore on, Siobhan’s output had taken a plunge. She couldn’t entirely be blamed for it; the summer just begged to be spent on doing other things, like spending time with her husband and children, and watching their family grow closer. Her fingers continued to be stained with ink, so it wasn’t a lack of effort, per se, that was causing her to slack. She just started to have trouble concentrating on her original story as her daydreams turned over idea after idea for new characters to write about: a young man with immense physical strength, a woman who could turn into a ghost and possess people, among others. The sudden change in inspiration was obvious to her: she was thinking up potential superheroes. She didn’t know what their characters would be like or in what kind of story they would all fit yet, but every time she set out to draw, nothing but these fascinating people would flow out from her pen. A look back through her previous comics didn’t seem to help get her back on track, either. The story of her beloved young girl protagonist, Dana, and her journey through the fantastic worlds of the Tuatha Dé Danann alongside her loyal friends felt less interesting to Siobhan by the day, as though it was more like a tale she came up with a long time ago as a child instead of a successful project of several years. All this was why she’d been called in this day for an emergency meeting with her editor, Erika Mullen, at her office downtown. Well, Erika didn’t call it an emergency, just a sort of general check-in, but in truth it was about as annoying as being called in to the principal’s office. “This just isn’t like you,” her editor groused about thirty minutes into their discussion, when it was clear that Siobhan had yet to come up with new progress. Her head started to pound, which she attributed grumpily to the woman’s nagging voice. She was glad she hadn’t tried to bring in her kids today. Her little boy especially thought the office was a blast. “You’ve always made these deadlines before. Tell me what is going on with you.” “Oh, please. This always happens around this time of year.” Siobhan raised her hand to make a dismissive wave, but the gesture stuttered to a stop and she couldn’t quite complete the motion. An odd feeling overcame her and she almost lost her train of thought. She frowned, but recovered. “I always bounce back in September. Anyway, Daniel will be starting school soon and…” “…And?” Siobhan blinked. Then she closed her eyes tightly and opened them again. “Is something wrong?” “No. It’s just a headache. But, uh.” She finally tried rubbing at her eyes, but the eerily blurry dot that started to form directly in her vision wouldn’t go away. Her left hand, meanwhile, started to feel as though she’d shoved it into a sewing box stuffed with pins and needles. She tried to shake the feeling off, but the sensation only strengthened as it crept up her arm. “It’s – I’m seeing spots. And my arm suddenly feels weird.” “Oh. Do you think you’re getting a migraine?” Erika asked, concern suddenly masking the earlier annoyance in her eyes. “My daughter-in-law gets those a lot.” “Yeah?” Well, shit. That meant things were about to get a lot worse then, weren’t they? “Have you ever had a migraine before?” Had she? No, never. No, wait. Yes. Siobhan had gone through this before. When? The blind-spot was getting bigger. Auras made her perception ripple. And somehow, the lights had gotten brighter. And brighter. ~*~ Her editor kindly drove her home and informed her husband Samuel of what happened. Or so Siobhan assumed. She hadn’t paid too much attention to the specifics. Mostly she was focused on not moving much and on keeping her lunch down as wave after wave of nausea bore down on her stomach. Her headache had ripped open the floodgates to an untapped dimension of pain. Which she thought she had known before, considering she’d gone through childbirth twice. But apparently not. Everything felt off and everything was too loud and too bright. Questions directed at her were returned with a look of utter befuddlement. They packed her off into the bedroom, making sure the drapes were down, and as much light and noise as possible were either extinguished or muffled. Lunch was lost in the toilet after all. The clean-up, at least, had been bearable, no more terrible than those long-ago episodes of pregnancy morning sickness. But finally, she was left alone, curled up in a ball on her side of the bed. She imagined her brain was made of this flimsy net of threads and wires braced by the cage that was her skull, and the pain was an entrapped animal caught in the net as it tried with all of its strength to claw and shred its way out through serrated teeth and jagged nails. But encased as it was in the confines of her head, there was no such thing as a way out. And worse, every sort of stimulus from light to noise to touch just made it more agitated and pissed off, which made it fight even harder to escape. There was no way to reason with this creature, no way to soothe the throes of its agony or put it out of its misery. All she could do was to crawl into the cage with it, deep down into the achingly familiar dark. ~*~ Someone came in the room to check on her later that night. She looked through the slits of her eyes, afraid to do anything to make the pain worse. A man cast in shadows. He sat at the edge of the bed and asked her something in a kind, deep voice. She understood he was concerned, but her tongue was dry and heavy, and she was at a lost on how to answer. So she said simply, “Hurts.” An image triggered in the back of her mind. Fireworks. Why did he make her think of fireworks? Noise. It’s just too much noise. Siobhan shut her eyes. God, he was right about that. She felt him replace the dried cloth on her forehead with a fresh, dampened one, just cool enough on her skin to be soothing. She opened her eyes again, just a little. She desperately wanted to express her gratitude, but she just had no energy. Where had she heard that before? I don’t have a way to thank you. I’m sorry. Eventually, she fell asleep. ~*~ The pain, at last, faded. Maybe it found a way out of the cage after all. When Siobhan Nolan woke up at the next morning, she wondered why the laughter of her neighbor’s children sounded like it came from just inside her hallway. Then she wondered why her bed felt so much larger and softer than she was used to. And then she remembered. |