She listens to podcasts all day and all night. That is her hobby that fills most of her free time. Why she listens is the question you should ask. She appears to be a normal woman with an average job and house. She likes the scary podcast the best about true unsolved crimes and great mysteries. She is searching for the answers but she barely remembers why she can’t stop listening. She feels entangled in some way to these stories. The podcast she listens to only once and never repeats. She has a list of all the podcasts she ever listened to. Some were pretty boring about the history of knots but she had to listen. She is finding something she is missing. She can’t stop or she might forget what she is doing. Her brain knows these many different worlds like different nooks in her house. She may sound like she is crazy but if you were her you would know you couldn’t stop or all is lost.
She dreams every night about a place she used to be where she had a husband and a child. Sometimes the details are fuzzy other times she remembers she is a girl with a cute headband with cats on it. Her husband has a beard and makes really good pancakes. She doesnt know everything but her dreams tell her this is not where she belongs. While she is awake her life seems to make sense but it’s not right it feels empty but you can’t tell what is missing. At night she knows the truth but it doesn’t come with her to the waking world. She listens for what she is missing, especially ones about missing people. She hopes one will make sense to her. She wants to feel alive again. Her house always seems to be empty of people even though no one lives with her. She just listens hoping to find herself and meaning why she dreams of somewhere else.
So she listens to every signal podcast with a story in it. She hopes she will recognize a voice or a memory. She barely eats anything only to take out all that seems to taste bland no matter what she orders. She feels like everything is a pale copy of what life should feel, taste or smell like. It sometimes smells like disinfectants no matter wherever she goes in the world. If only she could be somewhere else other than in her bed in her house. Even outside doesn’t feel different and it never smells like fresh grass. It’s like life has been bleached away with only a thin outline remaining of the original. Faded like a tshirt you washed too many times and thread bare. Trapped no matter what in this whited out hell. She waits for the next podcast to roll over with that familiar beep it always plays. It always seems comfortable to hear that beep beep beep beep beep. She wonders if she ever finds peace or what she is looking for.
A man and teen enter the hospital to visit someone who they visit every week no matter what. The man knew the patient 10 years before it happened to her. The teen doesnt remember her because she was too young when it happened. It is always too hard to think about because it was so random. An attack in broad daylight by a man in a black coat and the video camera didn’t get too much detail. He even went on a podcast about this man in a black coat in hopes of finding him. How could someone beat a random woman senseless and leave her in a coma and not even rob her. This makes no sense and caused him to look everywhere and the only thing was some other reports of a man in a black coat beating someone but that was 40 years ago so it couldn’t be related. He just knows hope taunts when he comes in everytime he looks into her eyes. The doctors say her brain activity is very high like she wants to wake up but can’t quite do it. They talk to her hoping she remembers them. When they’re not there they play podcasts for her. He feels like his world is not really real without her in it. He cries at night sometimes and his daughter hears him but he tries to fake it for her to be there for her but feels like a ghost floating on a windy day. One day she wakes up he hopes as they finish up their visit.
She dreams of her real world again if only she would wake up into the right world.
She can’t see in her dreams but a figure in a black coat floats just off view feeding her dreams and hopes. She doesn’t know but this figure controls this world and feeds off her little by little because he is a soul sucker who feeds off your soul until it’s all gone which takes decades. There is no escape as his meal just dreams of her old life.
Amelio's Palace of Stories 