jon/elmo
by sofia wolfson
After Hannah wrote the speech, she memorized it, then performed it for her stuffed animals. By the fourth try, the words began feeling unfamiliar in her mouth, devoid of meaning, and that’s how she knew she was ready. If she treated it like a performance, she would get her point across, easy. And if she didn’t? She hadn’t thought that far yet. All that mattered was that the voice inside her head, the one that sounded like a combination of Jon Hamm and Elmo, told her to and so she listened. It’s not that she was feeling particularly emboldened to admit to Matthew how much she wanted to submit herself to him. Nothing had shifted in their relationship, no faults sliding abnormally against one another. No new developments, no great epiphany. Rather, the Jon/Elmo voice had filled her head and she welcomed its familiarity.
The voice appeared for the first time on a Friday in the 7th grade to tell her she was a worthless piece of shit who would only deserve love if she lost ten pounds. So she lost the weight. It wasn’t that hard to go from three meals a day to one, not hard at all when the Jon/Elmo voice was so persistent. And when she met her goal, the voice quieted. Thus began the cycle.
She met Matthew at a divorce party for a mutual friend of theirs, who’d married young and slowly became “allergic” to her husband, in her words. Hannah wasn’t all that attracted to Matthew until he started talking. The drunker he got, the more he talked and talked and talked. Hannah had never had a boyfriend and Matthew always had girlfriends. Matthew’s current girlfriend was fond of Hannah because Hannah didn’t seem like a threat, not even a little bit. Hannah knew this was why she was allowed to be friends with Matthew.
There were many things Hannah loved about time spent with Matthew. For one, they could talk all day. Hannah had only ever known silence, cut off sentences, the cliff that approaches as you run out of things to say. Matthew knew how to prompt her, to lure her into conversation. Hannah loved his stories, how they evaded narrative structure and unfolded in their own way, digressions aplenty. Whenever he got to the end of some random tale, he’d give her this look, his whole face melting in relief, and she knew how much he appreciated having an audience.
But what Hannah loved most about Matthew was that the Jon/Elmo voice completely disappeared when she met him. For the first time in years, she was able to trust her own, singular intuition about everything, no longer commanded by some insidious entity. That was until it returned one day, a year or so into their untraditional, yet sound friendship. Matthew had dropped Hannah off after a movie and as he was driving away, she heard the sharp inhale of the voice and shuddered in anticipation.
“Tell him,” the voice said. She waited until she was safely back in her apartment to answer, fearful of her neighbors’ judgment.
“Tell him what?” she asked, her hands pressed against the front door as if she could shut the voice out, physically.
It returned.
“You know,” it said. “You’re lying to yourself. You want more. You’re meant for each other. You need to tell him.”
Up until the voice returned, Hannah hadn’t wanted anything more than what she already had with Matthew. What they had was comfortable. What they had positioned them in close proximity, yet not too close. What they had drew strict boundaries to avoid anybody getting hurt.
“But I don’t feel that way,” she said to the voice.
“When have we ever been wrong?” the voice responded. She stopped her questioning. She opened her laptop. She composed the speech. Rather, the voice composed the speech and she acted as the scribe. As she wrote it out, she recognized the feeling as it overcame her. Yes, the voice was right. She had to say it immediately. The voice was always right.
Well, the voice wasn’t always right but Hannah didn’t have the will to fight it. One time, the voice instructed her to hold her breath in the tunnel on the way to work. She woke up with her car smashed into the center median, only a little bit banged up, no broken bones. There was no one else on the road in the early morning to endanger. When the paramedics came, she struggled to come up with a comprehensible lie. But she knew one thing: She couldn’t tell anyone about the voice.
The speech was written. The speech was rehearsed. She was passive in all of it and she was fine with that. Every time the voice reappeared, she softened towards it. It was as familiar as a family pet or a mastered hairpin bend. She called Matthew. He didn’t pick up. She repeated the speech in the mirror.
The Jon/Elmo voice assured her, “Hannah, you’re doing the right thing.”
“I know,” she insisted. “Now I see it clearly. This is what I need to do.”
“You can always trust us,” the voice said.
She tried calling again. No answer. She glanced at the clock. It was two. In the flurry of speech writing, Hannah had lost all sense of time. Of course Matthew was asleep. She’d have to wait until tomorrow.
Typically, Hannah couldn’t sleep until the Jon/Elmo voice left her. Sometimes it only appeared for a day. Other times, when it persisted for weeks, she moved through her days with a certain heaviness, her eyes receding into her skull, her whole body vibrating with unrest.
She tossed and turned all night. Around six in the morning, she gave up on attempting sleep and took a walk. She rehearsed the speech under her breath, which she could see physically, her words forming white clouds. The voice encouraged her and she liked the sound of it. Whenever it reemerged, she forgot what life was like without it.
She walked and walked and walked until the streets were unrecognizable. She wasn’t afraid because she wasn’t alone. When she assessed a block to be completely empty, she replied to the voice audibly.
“Sometimes I feel like nobody understands me in the way you do,” she told the voice.
“We know,” the voice said. “We’re always with you, even when we’re silent. Even when you cannot detect us.”
“But there are times you’re gone,” she said. “Or you seem gone.”
“Now you get it.”
After a few hours of walking, she found herself at Matthew’s apartment. She could not remember the walk there, nor the moment when she chose his place as her destination. The voice was growing stronger, now taking control of her limbs. It wiped away original thoughts, even her desire for them.
“Knock,” the voice commanded. Hannah knocked, lightly.
“Harder,” the voice commanded. Hannah knocked with more force.
The door swung open to a barely awake Matthew. He was rubbing sleep from his eyes and had only half-gotten his shirt on, one arm properly through the armhole, the rest of the fabric stuck over his left shoulder.
“Fuck, Hannah,” he said, yawning. “It’s not even nine.” Then, as though he could sense his effect on her, he shook himself awake and said, “Come on in. I’ll make some coffee.”
Hannah stood in the doorway, knowing she needed to hear something more, not knowing exactly what it was.
“She’s not here,” Matthew said. That was it. That was the thing.
Matthew, half-awake, was unsure why Hannah had appeared in the early hours of the morning. It was not unusual for them to have coffee together, but never before had she arrived at his door unannounced. He was too tired to question it and, in truth, was just happy to be in her presence.
Hannah, very awake, was not alone. She carried the voice with her. The voice that had caused her to lose weight, to change her hair, to punish herself again and again. But this time was different. This time the voice had a larger plan, larger than just Hannah. The voice was growing in size and shape and persistence and power. This time, the voice would implicate another being, another body.
The speech, Hannah thought, do I say it now?
“Wait,” the voice instructed. Matthew made Hannah’s coffee for her. Cup half-filled with almond milk, splash of maple syrup. He passed it to her and for the first time, this gesture made her ache all over. The voice illuminates the invisible, Hannah thought. I’ve always loved him. She was impressed at how intellectual her thoughts sounded and wanted to write them down but was afraid Matthew would ask what she was doing. So she repeated it to herself a few times, hoping to cement the words to memory.
“It’s nice that you know my coffee order,” she said.
He laughed and took a sip of his. “You’re funny.”
“I mean it,” she said. Only then did he look up from his mug and see what she meant, the sudden sincerity that spread across her face.
“I don’t know why you’re making a big deal out of it now,” he said, agitated. “You’re my friend,”—she shivered at the word—“and I pay attention to these things. You’ve known this for as long as you’ve known me.” When she didn’t answer, nor look at him, he added, “Right?”
“Now,” the Jon/Elmo voice said. Hannah’s active thoughts went dark. Words started falling out of her mouth with no effort. She had rehearsed them.
“I have been lying to myself since we met. I am in love with you. When I was in middle school my dad told me that boys and girls can never be best friends. I thought he was being old fashioned and close-minded but now I understand. I see it so clearly now. What we have resembles a relationship, not a friendship. We go to the movies. We go to nice meals we have reservations for. Reservations! Who gets a reservation at a French bistro in half-light to eat oysters with a friend? This isn’t normal. Why am I in a group chat with your mom and sister filled with vanity plate spottings and local gossip? Why was I your plus one to your office Christmas Party? Why am I the one you call first when your car breaks down or when you end up in the ER for another Crohn’s flare up? This is not normal! I don’t care how progressive we are. I have been lying to myself. I have been waiting for you for so many years, and here you are, acting like my partner but you’re not! How long are we going to keep lying to ourselves?”
When she got to the end of the speech, the sentences were no longer hers. Were they ever?
Now the speech was out there in the room, lingering in the air molecules. She looked down at her hands, wrapped around the warm mug. Matthew’s hands covered the bottom half of his face in contemplation. Right when he was about to speak, the doorbell rang. He mumbled something inaudible and excused himself from the table. Hannah slowly got up after him, lingering in the hallway. Matthew opened the door before checking to see who was there through the window like his mother taught him not to. There was nobody there.
“You heard that too, right?” Matthew asked. “The doorbell.”
“Yeah,” Hannah said, suddenly overcome with exhaustion.
“We did that,” the voice said.
What? Hannah thought.
“That did not go well for you,” the voice said. “We needed a diversion.”
But you’re just a thought. You’re not physical.
“We’re more than that,” the voice said. “Don’t reduce us. You’ll regret it.”
“Maybe the wind set it off,” Matthew said, scratching the back of his head, “or something.”
They stood there, unmoving. Finally, Matthew passed Hannah to get back to the kitchen. She couldn’t remember what she had said only a minute prior. The speech, although rehearsed, was now erased from her memory.
“About all that,” Matthew said. “I, just, you know how much—”
“Forget it,” Hannah interrupted, sitting back down at the table. “Please just forget I said anything.” She felt herself, singularly, gaining strength. Immediate regret overcame her.
“What do you think you’re doing?” The voice reprimanded. “Are you doubting us?”
No, she thought. But I can’t seem to remember what I—
“It’s out there, Hannah,” the voice said. “You said what we told you to say.”
Matthew was talking but she hadn’t been listening.
“I just need a friend right now,” Matthew was saying. “I need you to know how much I love you, I really do, but not in that way.”
“We need to change our tactic,” the voice said.
But I did the speech, Hannah thought. The voice quieted in contemplation.
“Stand up,” the voice said. Hannah stood. “Take off your clothes.”
What? Hannah asked. She wrapped her arms around her stomach.
“Now,” the voice said. She began pulling at the end of her shirt. She reminded herself that the voice had only ever helped her, so why question it now?
Matthew shielded his eyes and said, “Hannah please, don’t do that. I’m just trying to have a conversation.”
“Don’t listen to him,” the voice said.
With some force, she managed to let go of the hem of her shirt. She sat back down and tucked her hands underneath her thighs.
“You keep, like, going somewhere else,” Matthew said.
“I’m here,” she said. “I’m here. I’m sorry.” The more she spoke, the more she felt back within herself. “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here,” she repeated, torn between two worlds of consciousness. There was the version of herself that wanted to submit to the voice, the other that began to question it. How could she objectively identify what she wanted while it, whatever it was, was still inside of her?
“Listen, I need to tell you something,” she said. “I haven’t told anyone this. Sometimes, there’s this voice—”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” the voice asked.
“I go into periods of total surrender. I can’t sleep. I can’t think. I mean, I’m not even sure what I said a few minutes ago. I’m not even sure how I feel about you.” She paused, contemplating what to say next. “The voice, it sounds like—” Suddenly she couldn’t speak. She opened her mouth, moved her lips and tongue around but no sound came out. The muscles in her neck strained against her vocal cords.
“Hannah? What’s going on?” Matthew lunged out of his seat and ran towards her. He approached her body as if examining a cadaver, unaware of where to start. He settled on taking her pulse, which he found steadily rising until her body was vibrating in double time.
“I’ll call 911,” he mumbled to himself, terrified, fearing his rejection of her had triggered this episode. Hannah tried to tell him not to. Not only had she lost her voice but also control over her hands, which remained gripped around her coffee cup as if some other being was holding her there. She thought of the pottery scene from Ghost.
An original thought, she thought to herself. I thought that.
“No, you didn’t,” the voice said. “How do you still not get it? How stupid are you?”
“I don’t know,” Matthew was screaming over the phone. “She’s breathing but she can’t speak. I can’t tell! I’m not a doctor!” Then the room went quiet. Now all Hannah could see was Matthew’s face moving dramatically. Her body began turning towards the right, standing up. Not because she commanded it to. Some other force was acting upon her.
“In the past, we’ve told you what to do and you’ve done it,” the voice said. “You’ve done it and then we are able to rest. When we don’t get what we want, we have to terminate the obstacle.”
Terminate? Hannah thought.
“Yes, terminate,” the voice said.
The fruit knife was covered in the juice of a grapefruit Matthew had cut open for the two of them to share. Hannah reached for it. It felt surprisingly light in her hand.
“Do you remember from theater class,” the voice said, “the part of the body you were taught to avoid? That soft spot right under your sternum. Remember what your teacher said? It’s so vulnerable even a subtle hit could kill you. Remember that, Hannah? Don’t you think she was telling you that for a reason? Not unlike Chekhov’s gun. Once introduced, it must come back. You can see the spot on Matthew, right? We’re illuminating it for you. It’s so easy, isn’t it? To get what you want.”
“Please, please stop,” Hannah said, finally addressing the voice audibly. Tears automatically streamed from her eyes although her face was trapped in place. Then, with the ounce of agency she could muster, she rammed the knife into her thigh. There was finally feeling in her body. Even the searing burn of a wound was welcomed. She left the knife in her leg to confirm she could move her hands on her own again, smiled at the sensation. And the voice went away.
Sofia Wolfson is a musician and writer from Los Angeles, now based in Brooklyn. She received her MFA in creative writing from the New School and her fiction has appeared in the Oyez Review, Superstition Review, Open Ceilings, Flash Fiction Magazine, Westwind, and more.