Stream of Conscience Part 1

She clambered up from her kneeling position, dropping the screwdriver down onto the carpeted floor.
Her neck ached.
Grabbing the base unit of the desktop PC, she pushed it as hard as she could, forcing the box against the grain of the carpet with some difficulty at first, gradually finding momentum until the plastic and metal box slid into position.
She grunted her satisfaction, then leant down to hit the on switch, relieved when the familiar sounds of the machine powering up began, flopping into the chair in front of the computer desk, hitting the button on the monitor, waiting patiently as the boot-up process worked through, typing in her username and password when prompted.
“Sally88”
“Indigo451”
As the hard drive clicked and buzzed, the tiny needle scanning the surface, finding the data it needed in order to load the OS, she leaned forward on her elbows, the screen too large in her field of vision, blinding her almost, so she closed her eyes, content simply to wait, emptying her mind of all thought, aware only of the routine sounds, so well known that she could identify the precise moment the computer became usable.
Bzzzz.
Bzzzz.
Click.
Stop.
Bzzzz.
Stop.
Now it was ready.
She clicked on the browser icon on the desktop, waited a second or two for Firefox to load, then, two clicks more, she was on her Facebook profile.
One private message waited for her.
She opened it.
Read the words once, quickly, then again more slowly.
A glance at her watch confirmed she was on time.
She moved the cursor down to the tiny chat box, clicked on the name she sought.
Aston4.
‘I’m here,’ she typed.
‘Are you prepared?’ came the response.
‘I am.’
‘All is ready.’
‘When shall I start?’ she asked.
‘Now.’
The single word blinked at her from the screen.
She nodded.
So it begins.

She leaned forward, staring straight into the lens of the webcam that sat atop her monitor. For long seconds she did not move, simply gazed at the unblinking eye, imagining the world beyond.
‘My name’s not important,’ she began at last, ‘But maybe my story is. Perhaps, if I tell my tale, it can make a difference.
To one person?
To a hundred?
Who knows? I’m going to tell it anyway.’
She sat back, now, relaxing into her chair, taking a quick swig of coffee from the mug on her desk, wincing when she found it was cold, drinking some more regardless.
She sighed.
Then started speaking again.
‘Truth is, I’m not sure if anyone will even hear this. I hope so. I really do. But that’s out of my control.
I’ll start at the beginning.
I’m a nobody, really. A grunt. One of those people you can pass by everyday in the street and not even notice. It’s not a criticism of myself. I like it that way. I prefer being anonymous. Well, I used to.
I worked as a care worker at a local hospice. Elderly people, mainly, though all had something wrong with them besides their advancing years. Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, motor neurone conditions. You name it. Most could fend for themselves to some extent and, fortunately, most of them could tend to the intimate bodily functions –but not all – so my job was mainly about keeping them company, taking them where they wanted to go and generally keeping them active.
See, one of the myths about the elderly is that they like to stay at home, like to be indoors where it’s safe and quiet. Not in my experience. Most of my clients liked nothing better than being out and about, as much as was practical, and I always supported them as best I could. Cinema visits, trips to the park, the swimming pool. Whatever they wanted, if I could help them, I would.
That was my job.
Or so I thought.
I had one guy under my care – let’s call him Alf. Alf was a prickly character, quick tempered, and one sure fire way of setting him off was to make him feel as if you were helping him too much. He liked his independence, liked to do as much as he could for himself, despite the fact his Alzheimer’s was fairly well advanced and his frail old body was blighted by a form of muscular dystrophy which meant he had trouble walking unaided. Still, the old swine had attitude. And he could swear like a sailor when he lost his temper. Nothing malicious, comical in fact, and I never took it to heart.
Admired him in many ways.
His effort.
His resilience.
His insistence on doing all that he could for himself, even though he probably couldn’t tell you what he had for breakfast.
A proper character, you know.
In the home, we had a contraption called a rollator. We had a few of them, but one in particular I’d set aside for Alf’s use so, when we went out and about, he could hold onto the handles, and guide himself where he wanted to go with the four wheels.
He loved it.
Then, an inspector came in, a medical inspector, checking out the equipment and reading lists of clients and their individual conditions and, as soon as he read Alf’s file, that was it. No rollator for you, squire, despite the fact he had been using it for over a year without an incident. Despite the obvious evidence that it was beneficial for him. No, the inspector decreed that Alf should sit out the rest of his days in the home, unable to leave, effectively cutting off the very independence that I was sure was the only thing that had kept him going in the first place.
It would kill him.
I knew it would.
I broke the news to Alf and the look on his face near broke my heart. His bottom lip trembled, and he started weeping, the daft old sod and, wouldn’t you know it, that set me off, too.
Well I couldn’t have it.
It just wasn’t acceptable.
In defiance, I allowed Alf to keep using his rollator. Allowed him the independence he so badly craved and, for my efforts, I got sacked.
No questions.
No discussion.
Just out the door.
I tried to appeal and they pretty much laughed in my face, my manager waving a time-stamped photograph of me with Alf and his bloody rollator at me, citing it as proof of gross misconduct.
Jobless, angry, I was climbing the fucking walls. I didn’t know what to do. I’d never been out of work. Didn’t know what it meant to have a huge void of time spanning out before me, no way to fill it. It only took three days for me to crack. Still raging, I went back to the care home, snuck in really, furtive and nervous, a trespasser now. I made my way to the cupboard where Alf’s device was stored, anxious, wondering if it would still be there.
It was.
Removing it quickly, I exited the building, breathing deeply, now adding theft to my list of apparent crimes against the company. Two streets away from the scene of my felony I began to relax, feeling suddenly elated.
Manic almost.
It was as if this act of defiance had liberated me from the tumult of dark anxieties that had been pressing down on me. I felt like a child, not a care in the world all of a sudden, and I knew I could do anything I wanted. Without thinking about it, I headed for the park, the very place me and Alf had spent our happiest times together, me on the park bench, observing, he ambling about on his four wheeled contraption, watching the people pass him by, sometimes smiling, sometimes frowning, occasionally swearing for no reason, but always vibrant, always alive.
To this day, I don’t know what came over me.
I dashed to the edge of the lake that served as centrepiece to the park.
I folded the rollator up to its smallest state and then – don’t ask me why – I started jumping on it, started smashing the damned thing up. Maybe it was a symbol of all that had suddenly gone wrong, something that needed to be destroyed in order for me to move on with my life. In the past, after a break-up, I’ve changed my hairstyle, changed the way I fix my make-up. Changed something. Perhaps this was similar, though in a destructive way. I needed to rid the world of the bloody thing, to reset the balance of the universe for, in my mind at least, it seemed improper, somehow, for the rollator to still exist, yet not be put to correct use.
So I jumped up and down on it.
I kicked it.
The wheels fell off first, and I picked these up one by one, hurling them into the lake, as far as I could manage, far enough that they could not be retrieved, anyway, and that was good enough. In they went, arcing through the air and, as I released them, I bellowed at the top of my voice: ‘Piss off, wheels.’
I was like a thing demented.
Never having acted in this way previously, I felt so energised by the bold spontaneity of my actions, I didn’t even consider how I must appear to passers-by. Heck, I wasn’t even aware of the crowd that had started to gather to watch the mad woman smash up a stroller and chuck it in the lake.
Who wouldn’t want to watch that, right?
I kicked down again, this time snapping off part of the frame, picked it up, swung my arm back to hurl it, too, into the water, when the backward motion was abruptly halted, so my own momentum caused me to swivel and spin on the spot, bringing into focus what had prevented my intention. A child, no more than thirteen, had apparently snuck up behind me. Why, I have no idea. Perhaps to try to stop my crazy behaviour. Perhaps just to get a closer look. Either way, he wouldn’t be looking at much of anything for some time after. The metal pole I had smashed off the rollator was now stuck into him, jabbed right into his eye socket, so he stood and stared at me with just one good eye, apparently rooted to the spot.
‘That’s gotta hurt,’ was my first, utterly inappropriate thought, the wildness of the spectacle before me preventing any rationale response.
‘Jesus Christ,’ I heard from somewhere else, a woman’s voice, then someone bursting out of the gathered spectators, grabbing at the boy, screaming, holding him, screaming some more, and it took a while to realise she was screaming at me, demanding to know what I had done to her son.
My memory gets fuzzy after that.
Vague recollections of more people shouting at me, of flashing lights, handcuffs. Of questions and accusations.
Then the magistrate.
The man who decided to take away my son.
Perhaps it was fitting punishment for me. After all, I had taken away at least part of another’s only child. The boy lived, but he would never see out of the damaged eye again.
But they took my boy away from me permanently.
I was an unfit mother.
Damaged goods.
Bipolar disorder, they said, with an emphasis on the manic side of the spectrum. I was liable to make rash decisions that could endanger the safety of myself and anyone under my care therefore, it was the duty of the state to absolve me of that responsibility.
Jobless and now childless, things were about to get much, much worse.’

The newsroom bustled with the usual frenzy of activity. Journalists scuttling from desk to interview room, from canteen to computer.
The wall clock read 11:45am as the telephone on Samantha’s desk began to ring. She snatched at it, annoyed that her train of thought had been interrupted.
‘News desk,’ she said.
‘You’ll want to make a note of this,’ the voice at the other end of the line said, a peculiar quality to the tone, distorted somehow, processed, the caller clearly speaking through some form of electronic device to mask his (her?) true voice.
Sam’s pulse quickened instantly.
Only one type of person made an effort to disguise their voice: someone newsworthy.
And she had the scoop.
‘Are you next to a computer?’ she was asked.
‘I am.’
‘Fire up your browser.’
‘Already open.’
‘Type this into the address bar: ustream.tv/sally88’
‘One second.’
Sam did as she had been asked. The screen loaded, quickly, but the media player at the centre of the page took a while longer as the data buffered.
‘What is this?’ she asked while she waited, anxious to keep the caller on the other end of the line.
‘You’ll see. No more talking. From now on, you just listen.’
Not wishing to provoke a hang-up, Sam complied.
The media player finally completed loading and, on screen, a woman, maybe mid-twenties, stared out at her, speaking, though no sound could be heard. Sam cranked up her speaker volume.
‘Who is she?’
‘Name’s aren’t important, Miss Telegraph journalist. All that matters are the words. I’ve given you a heads up, here. Soon, all eyes will be on this woman.’
There was a click, then then phone line went dead.
Sam replaced the receiver.
Stared at the screen.
Listened.