Title: Voices In My Head
Rating: PG13 (language)
Disclaimer: Skins is not mine. No way. No how.
Prompt: Done for a prompt at comment_fic: magical or supernatural powers in a world where that's unusual.
Effy Stonem was born all wrong (backwards). She really was. When she was young, her mum asked her what was wrong and she answered, "The voices are loud. Tell them to shut up!" She had put her hands in her hair and waited for her mum to fix it but she just got a strange look and, "Nobody's talking, Effy."
Her mum kept looking at her strange after that…because she was born all wrong (backwards).
Effy never told her again. Instead, she'd walk away. She'd hum in her head and drown out the noise or go into Tony's room and huddle beneath his covers. Tony was quieter than normal people and he never looked at her strange.
"You don't fool me Effy Stonem," he liked to say and he was right. He couldn't hear like she could but he could always hear her.
That was nice, not having to talk, not having to add to the noise. (Why don't you speak, Effy? Does anybody ask you why?)
She heard Tony because she was strange and Tony heard her because he was her big brother.
But then Tony went away and huddling under his covers didn't work as well when he wasn't there. She had to party, get so fucked up that she heard everything like it was underwater. Freddy: "I love you. Doesn't that matter?"
JJ: "You kind of ruined everything."
Katie: "Effy Stonem… fucking joke."
"Effy Stonem…fucking joke," Effy said aloud and laughed at the sky.
Katie's eyes widened.
Effy laughed again.
She laughed as she walked back home. Her makeup was smeared and she held her boots in her hands. The neighbors looked out their windows and shook their heads because Effy Stonem was drunk again. Effy Stonem was high again. Effy Stonem was fucked up and strange and…
"They're loud, yeah?" she tries.
Freddie frowns. Katie and Emily give her strange looks. "Nobody's talking, Effy." (What's wrong with you, Effy?)
Effy never meant to tell them again. It just came out when the voices got too loud, started screaming in her head and humming didn't work and Tony's covers didn't work and beer and drugs and fucking didn't work. She just wanted it to stop even if it meant that she had to stop.
(Born all wrong.)
She cut herself, made herself bleed and, when Freddie came, begged him not to stop her. Freddie didn't hear her though because he wasn't strange like her and he wasn't Tony.
So, she lay in the hospital with her wrists wrapped up in gauze while the voices screamed. "They're loud," she whispered.
And Cook (brave Cook) sat beside her. "Tell them to shut the fuck up."
My first Skins fic! What do you think? Review.
