Everyone knew she was smart. They all knew she wasn't slow, and that there should be nothing wrong with her, no reason she shouldn't be at the top of her class. All her teachers, her parents, most of her fellow students knew she had been at the top, for the five years she'd at high school, until now, Year 12.
They also knew she was happy, and confident, preparing to go to university and study biology, or physics, or metaphysics or philosophy or languages, or anything she wanted to, because she knew she could. She was not unattractive, not unpopular, so she had no discernable reason to start drifting off into daydreams in class, and become suddenly depressed and listless. In classes where she had been previously attentive and fascinated, she would now stare into the distance, seeing nothing - at least, nothing anyone else could see - not even answering to her name for minutes on end. It hadn't been that long to start with, but it was definitely getting worse.

It was the first day back from the Easter break, and Mr. Taylor was giving his biology class a refresher lecture.
"Now, I trust we all remember the different kinds of RNA. What does mRNA do?" he asked, writing on the blackboard. "Karen?" Silence. He turned around as small noises swept over the class, a sigh here, a stifled titter there, a derisive snort somewhere else. Karen was staring at him with a blank look on her face. She knows this, he thought, before realising she'd gone off again. She didn't see him, and couldn't hear him, that was for sure. He shrugged internally and asked another student. "David, you seem to be enjoying yourself. Maybe you could enlighten us as to the function of mRNA?"
Behind Karen's eyes, her soul was gripped with terror. She had barely enough time to think Oh God, not again, not now, before it began again, she and apparently God both helpless to stop it.
She could feel pressure at her wrists, and across her knees and chest. She could also feel the rough column of wood behind her, her arms tied behind it. Next the smells came, woody smells, unwashed people smells her or fear, and smoke. Then she became aware of sounds, a mob of people, laughing and sneering, triumphant yet also fearful.
Of course they're afraid, she found herself thinking, otherwise they'd never be doing this.
She heard crackling, a torch burning, and finally the crown swam into focus before her. A priest, in grubby brown robes and wearing a crucifix, stood before her and read from a scroll.
"Kara of Briarwood, you have stood accused of heresy and of practising witchcraft, and consorting with unholy spirits. Under the eyes of our Lord God and the Church, you have been tried and found guilty. Have you any wish to you any wish to repent and plead for your soul's salvation before your tainted flesh is purified by fire?"
Kara gave a snort. "That be a judgement, then? Ye toss me in the village pond to pronounce me guilty or nay? Hah! That were not a judging by God, it were judgement by the fishes! Do ye holy men pray to the fishes now, to accept their judgement as law?" The priest, purple with fury, clubbed her across the face with his staff.
"Heresy!" he cried to the rabble, several of whom had chuckled at her scathing retort. "Still she dares to mock out Lord God and His Church! She is heretic, and a witch besides. No doubt she's mad as well. Too dangerous a woman to leave alive!"
"Burn her!" the mob cried, eager for a morning's entertainment. Mothers had brought their children to witness the spectacle.
"Ye call me a witch for healing a few injured animals, yet you let the fish declare me guilty and believe it! Hypocrites!"
"You did not heal those poor animals, you drank their blood and raised their unquiet spirits!" the priest shrieked, warming to his diatribe.
"A vampire am I now? Why not leave me and let the sunlight set me afire? Any one of you could see those creatures were alive, ye be blind fools, every one of ye!"
"That wolf were dead as dead, five arrows in it, and I couldn't see it a-breathin'," a scruffy man muttered. He'd been hunting in the Briarwood with his lord, chasing a deer, but a wolf had chosen the same quarry. As much in blood lust as in self-defence, he and four others had shot it down. They rode by to see if it was dead - it lay unmoving, blood pooling under its body, five arrow shafts sticking out of its apparently lifeless form. The pelt was not worth taking with so many holes, and keen to get on the deer's trail, the hunt had moved on.
Kara had been sitting in an oak tree gathering green acorns, and had witnessed the whole scene, unobserved. As soon as the last horse had crashed through the clearing and gone, she climbed down and crept up to the wolf, cautiously as must always be with wolves. It was unusually dark of colour, almost black, and a she-wolf. She looked at the arrows, and noticed that they were quivering, the only indicator of life in the inert form. Kara looked into the wolf's eyes, and saw need, and trust in them. She set to work, making a litter to carry the wolf, and sealed her fate.
"Tell us all what you saw, good man, 3 weeks afterward?" said the priest, who was really starting to enjoy himself. Let us have a second trial, he thought, so the whole village can see her proved guilty.
"It were her, at night with that very same wolf, raised from the dead it were, or I'm damned!"
"Fear not, good people, it is the witch as is damned, not you!" The mob was getting restless, and mutterings of "burn the witch!" were getting louder. Without further ado, the priest took a burning torch from a guard, raised his hands to the sky and called upon his God.
"Oh Lord God, have mercy on this woman's soul, as we burn her evil body and send her immortal soul to you for judgement!" With that, he thrust the torch into the dry kindling that lay packed around the larger sticks and logs that surrounded the stake Kara was tied to. Despite her scorn, she was properly afraid of dying, especially by so painful a means as this.
The flames leaped higher, and she felt their heat on her legs…
"… quite inventive, David, but you seem a little confused with tRNA," Karen heard Mr. Taylor tell another student. She blinked, quietly drew a deep breath, and surreptitiously wiped her sweating hands on her uniform. Thank God it hadn't gone any longer, she thought.
Her friends noticed these small movements and smiled at her in what they hoped was a casual yet supportive way. She glanced at the clock, she'd only gone off for a few minutes; it had felt like much longer. She tried to pay attention to the lesson, even though it was only a review. Maybe if she kept her mind occupied, it wouldn't drift off again.
Karen didn't know what they were, dreams, hallucinations, an over-active imagination (although she only had a passing interest in medieval history), whatever. Whatever they were, she felt everything on the inside, but nothing ever showed on the outside, not even to an expression on her face. She never screamed as she came out of them (or went in), even when she felt her skin blister and char, her hair burn and her body twist and writhe in the flames.
A witch-burning, she thought. She had briefly entertained the notion that the witch (or alleged witch) was either a previous incarnation of herself (hah!) or an ancestor, many generations removed. There was enough paranoia back then for it to be possible at least. But that did not explain why she, Karen, in this day and age was reliving the experience.
It seemed more likely that she was simply losing her mind. She shivered at the thought, and as always tried to convince herself that as long as she could reason like that, she was not insane. But if she did convince herself she was perfectly sane, would that make her vulnerable to insanity? Insane people always maintained they were sane, after all. Or so she'd heard. It wasn't a topic she could research without the librarian at least suspecting Karen of insanity. But wouldn't admitting or even hypothesising insanity be insane of itself?
If nothing else, she could drive herself nuts by thinking like this. But there weren't many other options.
She had gone to several doctors, as teachers and family noticed her periods of… vacancy. One psychiatrist hesitantly diagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder, but the prescribed treatment had little to no effect. She had actually started telling another doctor about what she saw and felt when she was "away", and she saw him scribbling "intense hallucinations" and "heavy medication, hospitalisation?" on his notepad, nodding sympathetically all the while. They must teach false sympathy in a medical degree, she had thought cynically at the time. She was given sleeping pills which knocked her out for a solid 10 hours a night, and more pills to "correct any chemical imbalances", that left her in either a zombie-like state, or so hyperactive that her grades dropped even further, except in Phys. Ed. Fortunately they were doing track 'n' field at the time.
She had even had a CAT scan recently, and was to go to the hospital this afternoon to discuss the results with the latest doctor.

The school day finally ended, with no further mishaps. The thing about these attacks (she decided that was a good name for them, it didn't make them her fault) was even when she wasn't having one, she was preoccupied by them and still had trouble concentrating on anything else. Either fear of another one, or circular thought trying to find a reason for them filled her mind unless she made a conscious effort.
The young doctor ushered she and her parents into his office and sat them all down. He was quite cute, but his face carried an expression she had seen before. His smile said he had thought he could solve this mystery, and had failed. It said the results were almost normal, but had some tiny inconsequential anomaly that he didn't understand, and normally wouldn't have meant anything. It said there was nothing wrong with her, but he didn't know how to say that he thought Karen was losing her mind. She sighed. "What's the news, doc?" she asked with as good a humour as she could manage. "Am I nuts or what?"
Her mother shot her a sympathetic look that would have bounced off her fathers' reproving one had she not absorbed both. She watched the smile melt off the doctor's face. He handed out copies of the scan.
"This shows normal activity, a normal brain. Except for some potentials in this area," he pointed to a bit of brain towards the back and side, "where the senses are processed. This may indicate a possibility of hallucinations, but Karen hasn't said anything about that to me." His tone suggested that he suspected her of having them.
"Don't talk about me like I'm not here," she snapped. Cute, but far too up himself.
"I'm sorry," he said insincerely. For some reason Karen lost her temper completely.
"Bullshit!" An instant later her parents said "Karen!" in unison, but she bulled on. "You useless quack, I knew you couldn't find out what's wrong! I bet you knew too, but we paid however much to get my lousy brain photographed, and for what? Nothing! I'm still nuts and you're richer than you were before, ye avaricious scum of toad-spawn!" Karen snapped her gaping mouth shut. Had that last come out in a thick rural English accent? Ye gods, that had come straight out of her… attacks. Her legs gave way and she fell back into the chair - she hadn't realised she'd risen.
Her eyes glazed over and she stared at nothing.
She felt her skin char and blacken under the flames that shimmered in the air about her, had become her whole world. There was nothing now but fire, even the pain had reached a point when nothing remained but numbness. She was not even aware of the wailing scream that propelled itself from her throat.
The ropes binding her burned away, and with their support gone, she pitched forward into the burning timbers, her rags charred. Mercifully she struck her head so hard that she saw stars among the flames and then only blackness.

Karen's parents gaped as their daughter loosed a tirade borne of disappointment, anger and frustration at the doctor. Her mother knew the source of the outburst, even if Karen didn't. She groaned inwardly as she saw the too-familiar blankness on her daughter's face. Her father brought a hand to his forehead. "Not now," he muttered.
Dr. Williams blinked. His retort died on his tongue as his patient entered a catatonic state. He glanced at the parents. "Is she… having an attack?" He barely waited for Mrs. Fields' nod before taking out a stethoscope, thermometer and little pen-light, and examining Karen. He hadn't had a chance like this before. "If only we could have got a scan when she was like this…" He flashed the light in one eye then the other, frowning. "No reaction, hmm." He put a tongue-depressor on Karen's tongue, followed by the thermometer. "A but warm. Pity I didn't check before. Has she been ill?" Mrs. Fields shook her head, and her husband spoke.
"What are you doing? She might need help…"
"I'm taking advantage of a rare opportunity. Besides, you tell me she always comes out of these by herself." He took her pulse and listened to her breathing. "Good lord, her pulse is racing. Breathing slightly irregular. Hmm." He grabbed a blood-pressure cuff and inflated it around Karen's upper arm. "Blood pressure's a bit high too. Not at all typical of catatonia. I'd say she was under a deal of stress, if I couldn't see her." He let the parents absorb that, then decided to pronounce his difficult opinion. "I'm afraid we'll have to at least consider a… psychological difficulty. Not physical." Judging by recent events, she wasn't entirely stable, and this may well be a convenient escape mechanism. Blame/consequence avoidance.
"She's already been sent to shrinks," Mr. Fields said with some distaste.
Karen came back with as gasp. All heads turned, the doctor's eyes calculating. He also looked like he hoped she hadn't heard something he'd just said. "No more doctors," she said. They obviously weren't helping at all.
"I'd like to refer you to a colleague of mine in neuropsychology…"
"Are you deaf? No!"
"Now Karen, if this one can help…"
"No, Mum. They don't know what's going on inside my head. I don't want to waste any more of our time and your money. I can go mad without help." This time she meant it.
After the Fields' left, Dr. Williams wrote a letter, to a colleague of his.

Months went by, and things proceeded pretty much as they always had, minus the doctors. Karen barely kept abreast of schoolwork, barely kept any sort of social life. She had conducted a genealogical search, but failed to find any ancestors that had been burned as witches, but that was hardly surprising. Firstly, surnames were not in common usage back then, and secondly, most people would deny being related to a witch on their deathbeds.
Chillingly, the attacks seemed to be getting worse since she stopped seeing doctors. It was almost as if she had been fighting the attacks somehow, even if only by not giving in; now that she had essentially accepted her fate and stopped seeking help, she had in part despaired of recovery, and her… condition was malevolently advancing. A ludicrous thought, but one more theory to dance around with the others.
One day, she got a letter. It looked important, a typed envelope with a window, the symbol of something in the corner, and a British postmark. Karen looked at the symbol again, it belonged to a research agency. Frowning suspiciously, she tore it open.
As she read, her eyebrows climbed almost into her hair, then plummeted back down to form a black scowl. At the end, she didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or swear.
Her father saw her then, with a very odd, confused expression on her face. "Hon, is something wrong?"
"That slimy goat of a doctor told his 'colleague' about me," Karen growled. "He's inviting me to be part of a 'study' into 'behavioural disorders'. Hah!"
"What? Show me that," Dean Fields said, taking the neatly typed letter. "Isn't that breaking that Hippocratic Oath of theirs? Disclosing confidential patient information?" "Of course you're not, this sounds dodgy, even without considering the rest of it. Why 'behavioural'?"
"Cos they think I'm doing it to escape. Maybe I am, though I don't know why I would escape from this to that."
Dean gave his daughter a fierce hug. "I know that's not true. Don't you talk like that, and don't give up. We love you," he said tightly. Karen was surprised - she knew how much her parents loved her, but Dad was the type to say it aloud. Doubt remained in her though, - it was illogical to discard any explanation, particularly the one the 'experts' seemed to favour. Illogical? Now she was turning into a pointy-eared angsty alien.

It got worse quickly thereafter. Not many weeks following the letter she was in a PE lesson, waiting her turn at javelin. Sometimes she had a second's warning before an attack, an odd feeling, a whiff of sweat or wood smoke, tingling in her hands. Not this time.
It was bad. The whole sordid scene, every sight, smell, sound and feeling as real as could be. This time Karen was not knocked out before burning to death, and she seemed to twist and scream and write and struggle for that last breath that never came. Struggle to plead her innocence to the flames with no breath behind her voice.
"Healing… not witchery… are ye blind… anyone could see… hypocrites… are blind… don't see…"
She came out of it slowly, and whispered aloud some words from a song she had heard, it had touched her with its truth, as applicable now as seven or eight hundred years ago.
"No one… is blinder than he who will not see," she breathed. The students and teacher had gathered around uncertainly, she had been standing there blankly for over 5 minutes. Ms Phillipson was on the verge of sending a student for the nurse when Karen spoke. A student snickered to his friends.
"Mysterious words from beyond the grave," he said in a spooky voice, nudging his mates for support.
"Cut that out, Eugene," Ms. Phillipson said absently. Using his given name always shut him up.
"She's a dero, spaced out. I bet she's on drugs or something," Eugene's friend said.
"Nah, I reckon she's channelling some dead guy," another put in.
"Pity Bono's not dead," a girl snorted who had recognised the quote.
"Oh, Sara's got a crush on Bono," someone else taunted. "I bet she's into all that witchcraft stuff. What's it called, Wicky or something."
"Wiccan…"
Ms. Phillipson had been watching Karen too intently to notice the banter, watching what looked like a struggle on the girl's face. The second young Barnes mentioned witchcraft, her face snapped into a mask of fury. She whirled on the startled boy, snarling "I'm no witch! Believe ye that fish speak for God? Fool! Blind fool!" Her fist shot out and collided with Barnes' nose, and blood flew as he crumpled.
Karen seemed to shake herself, and took in what she had said and done. It looked like she mouthed her own words, then "Gods… it's true…" With a moan, she ran.
Karen had to get away. From herself if possible, but getting away from everyone else was a good second option. She ran out of the school grounds, ignoring half-hearted pursuit.
Never had 'Kara' stayed with her after an attack. Never. It had to be her, she was using this Kara personality to buffer herself from real life. She must be really fucked up if she escaped from her normal life to a nightmare like that. And the accusations of witchcraft traversing from nightmare to reality… just at the end, she was sure that Karen was burning, not Kara.
She ran into her backyard, and up her old climbing tree with hardly a break in stride. She scrambled to the highest branch that would support her, and wrapped herself around the fork, sobbing. Her legs and hands throbbed and stung, she must have scraped herself climbing.
A glance at her hands made her stop crying, and breathing.
They were burnt. Blisters were forming, and had broken where she actually had scraped herself. Her legs were same, as were her arms. Her backside, back and face were hurting too, she could guess why. However much she knew it was just a psychosomatic reaction, the lines between reality and dream, sanity and madness were blurring.
The wind whipped the eucalypt, but she hung on and let the wind whistle about her. It felt good, she couldn't remember how long it had been since she had just shut her eyes and felt the wind on her skin. A crazed bark of laughter escaped her as she thought the only comforts to her now was a tree and the wind. Madness indeed.

In the space of two weeks, Karen went from having two 15-minute attacks a day to spending up to four hours 'away'. She lost weight rapidly, and got sick. A doctor was needed, consulted, and the prognosis was grim, unless Karen was hospitalised, monitored and drip-fed. Another invitation from Britain had arrived, this time Dr. Evans mentioned that he was going to be in the country, indeed, the city in a few weeks. She burned it, laughing at an irony only she saw.
So Karen was put into hospital. Her health improved, in broad, life-sustaining terms but she grew more depressed. The attacks kept increasing in length and frequency, until she was only lucid for an hour or two each day, and otherwise in an apparently catatonic state. Her friends tried to visit regularly, even if she was 'away' - they had hoped she would still hear them. In a way, she did. In a small part of her mind, she was aware of their voices and occasional touches. She struggled to control her body, keep it still, her face blank, her voice quiet. More than anything, and maybe part of the same process, she tried to deny what she was experiencing and to reach her friends. Nothing ever happened, though.
As exams came, her friends came less and less, then as they dispersed for holidays, not at all. Only her parents kept coming.
When she was aware, the memory of those burns haunted her. She knew about psychosomatic responses, when the mind was so convinced that the body was being burnt (or bruised or cut or anything) for example, that the body produced the appropriate symptoms, all by itself. The human mind was a seriously fucked up piece of work, and she herself was a particularly fucked-up specimen.
One day, she was actually awake when an unknown visitor showed up. "There's a Dr. Evans to see you," the nurse said, bare seconds before a short, weaselly man with more hair on his chin than his scalp and too-large glasses entered. He smiled greasily at Karen. Karen hated him at first glance, even before she remembered who he was.
"Good afternoon Karen - may I call you Karen?"
"No."
"All right then, Miss. Fields. Do you remember those letters I sent you? I'm from the Neuropsychological Research Institute, and Dr. Williams con…"
"You Hippocratic-Oath-breaking bastard. What the hell are you doing here? I'm not awake so often as I can afford to waste time on you."
"I didn't break any oaths, my girl. If anyone did, it was Dr. Williams, but that's beside the point. I would be very grateful if you would aid the advancement of science by answering a few questions. You don't seem to be very busy."
He had her there. A wicked gleam lit her eyes. "Well, I guess so. Better hurry. You never know when I might go off again."
Dr. Evans sat down eagerly, and started asking questions, after he had turned a little tape-recorder on. Karen told him everything, and a few other things besides. At the end, his eyes were shining with visions of Nobel Prizes and his own glory.
"Oh, before you go, doctor…" Karen said innocently.
"Yes? You've been most helpful, thankyou again…" The tape player was still recording, although he had just picked it up to turn it off.
"I just remembered, one of my milder symptoms seems to be a propensity for compulsive lying…" She saw uncertainty undermine his glory and bring it all crashing down. She might be lying about that, but if her lying claim was a lie, did that disprove the claim or verify it? The seed was planted, he would get no Nobel Prizes from her.
Karen's parents visited the next day, and for a wonder she was awake. She told them about Dr. Evans' visit, chuckling to herself, but the glances her parents exchanged said only that they were puzzled as to why Karen found it so amusing.
"But he might just ignore what you said and publish some sort of nonsense anyway," her mother protested.
"He will know, or at least suspect it though, and without credibility, you're nothing. If he published, his colleagues would look into it very carefully, if they didn't laugh him out of the field right away. He needs an airtight argument, and I poked a big hole in it. Whatever argument it was. He won't publish anything about me, whatever he's trying to prove." Her parents nodded uncertainly, they didn't know much about the competitive and nasty world of scientific publication.
Suddenly she felt the first signs of vagueness, detachment that she knew now presaged an extended absence. Tears filled her eyes. She saw so little of her parents now, for all she knew she could go off one day and never come back. "I love you," she said, holding out her right arm for a hug. Her left was covered with needles, putting things into her and occasionally taking blood out for tests. They all embraced, suddenly choked up. "I never made a will or anything… give my books to the library at school… invest my money and give it to… I dunno, cancer research or something… everything else can go to the Salvos…"
"Hush now, you're not going to die," her father grunted, hoping it was true as he said it.
"I will eventually, might as well get it over with now… tell the doctor I want to donate my organs. I doubt they'll want my messed-up brain though." She couldn't repress a snort of laughter.
"I don't think they do brain transplants, dear," her mother said, still hugging her daughter. She sat up reluctantly, rubbing her back.
Karen felt tears well up again - this was not a good day. "I'll never get to do anything," she began. Travel, learn, experience - she'd only been out of the country once, and she had been only 6 years old then. New Zealand hardly counted anyway. She'd never even seen this country.
"You'll get better," her mother asserted. A positive attitude was everything. "Then we'll take you to Uluru, and the Great Barrier Reef, and whale watching, and Shark Bay and everything. But you have to get better. You have to…" Margaret Fields watched as her daughter's gaze grew unfocused, her mouth slack, the hand she was holding grow lifeless, yet also seem rigid, as if it was being forcibly held limp. She clung to her husband, and it was this sight Karen last had of her parents as she slipped away from the waking world for the last time.

Part Two of Visions

Main Page
Alisaura's Page

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page