Wake-up Call (Oneshot)(Calvin)

I can't move. I can't see. All I can hear is a hollow, rushing, whistling noise.

Where am I? How did I get here? Why can't I move? Oh god, was I in some kind of accident? Am I in a hospital? Something's wrong, very very wrong. It's like my whole body has gone numb. Even my thoughts are sluggish, as though my mental gears have rusted over.

I try and yell for help.

I feel a shifting, grinding sensation like someone's rubbing a file against my jaw. INSIDE my jaw, as impossible as that is. I can feel my jaw now...but it feels wrong.

I focus on that sensation, despite the growing discomfort. It's feeling something, and that's better than the endless numbness. It grows stronger, and it becomes harder and harder to want to keep feeling it. It's like pins and needles, after your foot's gone to sleep...But so much worse. I've never been good at dealing with discomfort, but there's something about the idea of going back to before that's much more terrifying. I keep at it.

Where am I? If I was in some kind of accident- if I'm blind and mute and crippled- shouldn't someone be here by now? A nurse or family or anyone? Why can't I remember the accident?

Why am I alone? Why can't I see? Why can't I move?

What happened to me?

Finally, painstakingly, I manage to move my mouth. It feels wrong, like I'm breaking my jaw to do it. Nothing comes out that I can hear. All I can hear is that endless, maddening whistling.

I'm deaf now. Whatever happened, I'm deaf. But it's okay, I'm alive, and I woke up, and maybe it's temporary. The doctors can help, and even if they can't, I'm alive and they can fix this. I tell myself that until I believe it.

I want to see.

And it's as simple as that. Suddenly I can see, in perfect clarity, but like opening my mouth, it isn't quite right. I'm half-blind without glasses, but when I see the world now, it's in perfect clarity. The world seems sharper. Clearer. As though I'm not looking at it through eyes at all. Something about this isn't right, but I'm too distracted by what I'm seeing to care yet.

I'm not in a hospital at all. I'm in a park, staring straight ahead. A moonlight park at night, with trees and benches all around me, and why am I so far off the ground? There are spouts of water all around me, as silent as the rest of the world. I'm apparently standing in the middle of a gushing fountain, but I can't hear anything. Everything looks larger than it should.

Something's very wrong.

The silence is deafening. There's only that distant, damnable whistling.

I want to hear.

And I do. I hear the splashing of the water, the whistling of the wind, the distant traffic, even the faint electric hum of the lights. It's a deafening cacophony, pouring over me in a flow of noise that shouldn't be how I hear things at all, but right then and there, I can't bring myself to care. I just let the noise flow over me, blessed relief from that endless echoing.

I'm starting to get it. I still have no idea what's going on or how I got here but I get it.

I want to move my head. To look down.

I get a look at myself and that's when I realize just how badly things have gone wrong.

My head grinds downwards with a quiet rasp of metal. People shouldn't make that noise when they move. But that doesn't matter because I've just gotten a good look at myself. I look like I'm wearing some ridiculous uniform. Later, I'll find it's a drummer boy's outfit. My body looks nothing like it should, with too short legs. But that doesn't matter because what matters is much worse. I'm made of metal, a dulled bronze stained with patina green. My face's reflection ripples in the water, a blank-eyed cherub with a contemplative expression sculpted onto its lifeless face.

Lifeless.

A pigeon flutters to the half-lit cobblestones nearby, eyeing me with dull curiosity, then seems to lose interest and turns away, pecking at the stones.

I'm a statue. A goddamn bronze statue.

Now I remember everything. The car. The puuchu. Things going even more wrong.

I want to gasp. But I don't have lungs anymore.

I want to recoil. But my body's sluggish, so all I do is slowly, painfully slowly, move backwards.

I want to scream. And this time I'm in luck.

I scream, an inhuman wail of a noise coming from the air around me rather than nonexistent lungs that splits stone and sends water splashing everywhere.