Voices

• Saskia Riedel, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2013

When I was seven years old, I first heard her voice. I was playing a treasure hunting game with some friends, when I heard a high pitched whisper in my ear, "Beth, check the letter box, check the letter box, Beth." I did what they said. I opened the bright red letter box that stood out the front of our house like a beacon to all visitors. Inside was two chocolate frogs wrapped in purple tinsel. Throughout that day the voices continue to tell me where to find the best chocolates, the biggest ones. At the end, everyone was impressed with my goodies.
"How did you find them?" My mother asked.
"A voice in my head told me," I answered truthfully. I turned away before I could see my mothers disapproving glance.
The voice returned two years later, this time telling me to enter the school bathroom. As I looked in the bathroom mirror I saw a face that was not my own. Her hair was light blonde, her eyes a clear blue, a far cry from my messy brown hair and hazel eyes. The whisper in my head said to me, "My name is Jasmine, I died a couple of years ago, please don't be afraid."
I was not afraid of her. I never could be. But people started to become afraid of me. I talked to Jasmine in class, in tests, everyone seemed to think I was weird. I was perfectly fine. I just had a friend in my head. When I was in Year Nine, Jasmine told me to do something for her. To go into a forest and find a rock. A special rock. After school I went to the bush behind the oval. I walked for several hours on a dirt path. After a while the path went away but someone had gone through recently so the bushes and twigs had been snapped and cleared away. A kookaburra's laugh echoed eerily in the distance as I continued to make my way through the tree's. Finally I reached a clearing in which a large rock was placed in the center. The words 'Jasmine was here,' was carved onto it and stretched across the top was a bleached white skeleton. Jasmine walked towards me. "No one came for me,I didn't know where to go. Thank you for listening to me."
She stepped toward me, as if she was going to give me a hug. Then she stopped and shook her head. "Here." She handed me a chocolate frog. Then she vanished.
I felt a warm hand on my shoulder. I was sitting in the middle of the bush and it was dark. The rock and the skeleton were gone.
"Your lucky," said a voice, "A couple of years ago we had another schizophrenic girl go missing out here, but she was never found."

Like Jasmine before me, I was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I have to take pills and medication. Everyone gives me weird looks when they here about me. I know I should respect doctors, but they say seeing and hearing Jasmine was a hallucination and I can't believe that because I still have a purple tinsel wrapper in my pocket from Jasmine's chocolate.