Correcting Abnormality
Shannon Western
(written in UK English)

Andrew Cuthbert's office consisted of ten feet by ten feet of solid white. The walls, the ceiling, the door, the desk, the two chairs, the tile floor, the fluorescent lighting-- everything bleached like a skull in the desert sun. Only Andrew himself broke up the monotony, his black slacks, shoes, and tie contrasting the room sharply, but they were all part of the uniform. He figured every other office looked exactly the same. Blank. Clean. Razor sharp.

But it was his very own room, cut off from the rest of the workplace, the hum of people and copy machines in the main workspace replaced by the incessant insect-buzzing of the light above his head. He liked it, he told himself. He was moving up in the chain of command, he convinced himself. Maybe one day he'd have a window. For now, though, he sat in wait of his assignment for the day.

The speaker in the ceiling, just to the right of the light, crackled and then spoke. "Mr. Cuthbert, are you up for a challenge this morning?"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Meyer," Andrew replied to the voice, looking around at nothing as he tried to imagine a challenge inside his alcove of uniformity. It had to be something more than a BPD (Boy Playing with Dolls). Probably even harder than a WDWC (Woman who Doesn't Want Children). But Andrew had received awards for his counselling as a Repairman, his name printed in permanent black ink on white sheets of paper. He could handle a challenge.

"Good." Mr. Meyer sounded pleased. Andrew smiled and began lightly bouncing one foot up and down underneath his desk, waiting for the door to open.

10:01:01 a.m.
The authorities arrive at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Johnson to find the girl still munching on peanut-butter crackers in the kitchen, which is decorated in grapevine-patterned wallpaper. But they make a lot of noise and move at her quickly, and she drops the plate in a panic and runs. Right through one wall, into the bathroom, through the next wall and into the laundry room, all without so much as tearing the wallpaper. The authorities are quite startled by this.

"What in God's name--," says one.

"That's impossible!" says another, who is much closer to the laundry room and has just seen the girl run silently past.

They rush into the guest bedroom down the hall from the laundry room. The girl is there but can't move; her arm is stuck in the wall.

A click, a buzz, and the door to Andrew's office swung open slowly. There in the doorway, silent against the backdrop of the busy and noisy cubicle-world behind her, stood a small girl, no older than five, barely but serenely smiling. This was his challenge? The two security guards who flanked her indicated that she was indeed. "Come on in, sweetheart," he said in a voice pitched higher than normal and motioned toward the chair in front of him with a wide smile. "Have a seat."

The girl didn't move for a moment while she stared at the chair. Her big, blue eyes didn't appear to trust it, and she kept rubbing at pink scratches that covered her arm.

"Come on now, it won't bite," Andrew continued with a small laugh.

One of the guards finally gave her a nudge in the back, enough to force her to step forward.  She kept going, though slowly, and sat herself carefully in the chair. Her tiny black shoes pointed down toward the floor but didn't reach it by a long shot.

"Anything I need to know, boys?" he asked the security guards. Now that she'd moved closer to him, Andrew could smell a faint scent of peanut butter.

"Yeah," replied the first guard as he leaned into the room with a folder and a small fire extinguisher outstretched in one hand. "Here."

Andrew took them, set the fire extinguisher down dismissively on his desk, and read the file quickly while the security guards watched. When he finished, he looked up and raised an eyebrow at the guards. "Are we sure the Johnsons aren't the ones who need to be brought in?"

"Oh yeah," the guard on the right said grimly with a nod. "We're sure."

10:16:37 a.m.
The girl arrives at the Department of Corrections within the complex of the Office of Abnormalities in an armoured truck. She is handed over to two guards. The authorities are glad to be rid of her.

But one guard makes a mistake. He reaches for her arm a little too quickly to lead her inside.

The girl doesn't understand. His movement toward her frightens her. And she does the first thing that comes to mind: The guard's hair suddenly erupts into flames.

The guard flails and screams and runs, until several people tackle him with a blanket and spray him with a fire extinguisher.

The other guard rounds on the girl and shouts, "Did you do that? Did you do that?! You can't do that to an Officer of Corrections!" He takes great pride in his position. He grabs her arm and bends down, not quite meaning to spit in her face as he yells. "Learn some respect, little lady!" Several authorities watch this interaction with bated breath, wondering if he too will become a human torch; but this second guard's hair is never so much as singed.
Another guard is assigned to the girl, to replace the one now going to the hospital, and each is given a small fire extinguisher to carry in his holster.

"We'll be right outside until you're finished," continued the guard.

"I don't see why that's necessary." Andrew flicked his eyes to the innocent-looking girl before him. She was staring at his tie. "Why don't you two just come back when I call?" His voice still sounded sweet, for the girl's benefit, but it now held a degree of sternness. He could handle this on his own.

"We have our orders," the other guard said. "We'll be right outside."

Andrew sighed. "Fine."

Both guards hesitated a moment, watching the back of the girl's head as if they expected her to make some sort of sudden movement. When she didn't, they turned around to face the cubicles, and the door closed behind them.

9:40:59 a.m.
Henry Johnson, who has been a farmer for over fifty years, reaches his wife, who has been a farmer's wife for just as long and who was screaming at the top of her lungs only moments earlier, at the bottom of the stairs. She throws herself into his arms. "What the hell's the matter with you?" he asks, holding her but looking at her like she's a lunatic.

Mrs. Johnson wails into his shoulder and points a wrinkled finger behind her, at the kitchen. "That girl, Henry, that girl!" she says quickly and tearily. "She walked through the wall and she changed the radio station and--"

"Stop that," Henry says firmly, holding the back of her head with one roughened hand. "That's ridiculous, and you know it."

"But she did!" Mrs. Johnson sobs. "She did!"

Henry sighs, unmistakably irritated. "Stay here. You're going to give yourself a stroke."

Mrs. Johnson nods silently and dabs at her eyes with her apron as Henry walks toward the kitchen, feeling sure that her husband will take care of this for her.

Henry steps up to the kitchen doorway. "Hello there, young--" But Henry stops. His eyes widen and his mouth drops open.

The girl is hovering three feet off of the ground, kicking her legs playfully in midair like a kid in a highchair. She's reached the plate of crackers and peanut butter that Mrs. Johnson had been preparing for her on the counter. She looks at Henry, giving him a food-filled smile.

"No…," says Henry. "That's not possible!"

The girl falls, hard, to the floor, but she lands on her feet, and only two crackers bounce off of the plate and stick facedown to the linoleum.

Mr. Johnson grabs his wife's arm and pulls her out of the house in as fast a run as he can manage.

"Well now," Andrew began, taking one quicker glance at the girl's file. He clasped his hands together on his desk and peered down at her. "What's this about you walking through a wall?"

The girl didn't reply any more than to rub at her arm again. But when Andrew looked more closely, he could have sworn she now had fewer scratches than when she had first entered his office.

"How's your arm?" he asked, pointing at it.

She stopped rubbing it and stared at him for a moment before holding it out to show him. She ran a finger along the length of one long, pink, scabbed line, and it disappeared.

Andrew's smile disappeared as well. "No… no, that… you… you can't…," he stuttered, trying to rationalize what he was witnessing. She really was abnormal, more so than anyone he'd ever been assigned.

The girl frowned sadly and pulled her arm to her stomach. She made no further effort to heal her wounds.

Andrew frowned thoughtfully in silence for a minute. Had he stopped her? Could he help her? "What else can you do?" he asked her curiously, almost suspiciously.

When he received no response, he wisely decided that this situation called for some experimenting. And seeing as he didn't have much in his office, this experimenting would have to take place elsewhere. "Come with me." He stood and opened the door, and, after some coaxing from the guards, the girl followed.

Andrew just knew he could fix her. He was a Repairman, after all. If he couldn't help her, no one could.

9:39:11 a.m.
Mrs. Johnson is spreading peanut butter on her twentieth saltine cracker when a tiny hand distracts her. It's coming through the wall, just beside the refrigerator, as if the wall were not there at all. Mrs. Johnson screams and drops the peanut butter-covered butter knife. The rest of the girl's body follows until she is standing fully inside the kitchen and cocking her head to one side like a puppy at Mrs. Johnson's look of horror. The girl takes a step closer to Mrs. Johnson, who can't back away because she's already pressed against the counter, and stares into the old woman's eyes.

Mrs. Johnson can't look away. But gradually her terror ebbs, and she relaxes. She's still in the kitchen, but she feels the warmth of sunlight on her face. Smells musty leaves. Hears birds singing. Until a voice in the back of her mind urgently informs her that these are not her own thoughts.

What evil is this?! she thinks. This is not natural!

"No! Stop!" She jams her hands over her ears and squeezes shut her eyes. "Stop it! Get out of my head! You can't get in my head! I won't let you!" she shrieks and gets herself away from the girl as fast as her old legs will take her.

As Andrew and the girl walked past the identical cubicles outside his office, one of the employees dropped his pencil onto the floor. It rolled in front of the girl's feet, and she stopped, staring at it. The pencil then floated up into the air until it stopped six inches from the employee's nose, where it started doing perfect cartwheels in place.

The employee, whose face registered disbelief and very little colour, said barely above a whisper as he gaped at the pencil and shook his head slowly, "That's… not possible."

The acrobatic pencil dropped to the floor and rolled under the employee's chair.

Andrew scratched his chin, thinking he might be on to something.

9:34:31 a.m.
Mrs. Johnson leads the girl into the living room, to set her down in front of the radio while she makes her a snack in the kitchen. Henry Johnson is calling neighbours from the upstairs telephone to ask if they might know to whom the girl belongs. The girl sits in a floral-patterned armchair that's covered in plastic. Mrs. Johnson turns on the radio to a children's show about a talking turtle and starts to head to the kitchen… but she stops when she hears the station change to what sounded like a news report. In Italian. The girl is still sitting in the armchair. The radio is still sitting on a shelf out of her reach. As Mrs. Johnson stands there, she hears the station change again, this time to bagpipe music, which Mrs. Johnson has never heard on her radio before. And then again it changes, this time to jazz, which Mrs. Johnson has never heard before, period. And again, to a commercial about elective liposuction surgery. She looks away and continues into the kitchen, forgetting to blink for a full minute as she tells herself that the radio is old and probably needs replacing.

Andrew began taking the girl to a slew of places around the city; to test every possible abnormal ability he could think of. The guards followed behind, but as they continued along, they became more curious than worried about allowing the girl around large groups of people.

They stopped at a nearby community swimming pool, where Andrew allowed the girl to jump in, dress and all. The guards warned him that allowing her near other children might not be wise; but Andrew dismissed this information with a brush of his hand. He wanted to see how she interacted with them.

Other than the fact that she didn't say a word (and that she was swimming in a dress), the girl acted like any of the other children. She played a game of who-can-hold-their-breath-the-longest with some of them, in fact, until one little boy realized she was cheating; he opened his eyes in the chlorine and saw her breathing like normal, yet underwater.

"Not fair!" bubbled the little boy at her, figuring she had a tiny hidden oxygen tank somewhere. "You can't do that!"

The girl paddled to the surface as quickly as she could and came up gasping for breath.

Andrew watched this all curiously from a slight distance like a zoologist studying an animal in its natural environment. He hadn't heard or quite seen what had made the girl rush to the surface as she had, but he did notice her staying underwater for an awfully long time. Once the girl was out and dry, he continued them on their quest.

9:27:55 a.m.
Mrs. Johnson has cleaned the girl off a bit and pulls a light pink dress over her head. It belongs to one of her granddaughters and she thinks it's adorable. "There; now don't you just look like a little angel!" She beams at the girl. The dress is too big for her, but she no longer looks like a wild animal. Mrs. Johnson turns around, closes the wardrobe door, and looks back at the girl. The girl stands comfortably naked again, the dress lying in a lump at her feet.

Mrs. Johnson puts her hands on her hips. "Now, young lady…." She slowly, arthritically bends down, picks up the dress, and once again slips it gently over the girl's head. The girl complies but her smile has shrunken. "Come now," Mrs. Johnson says in response to the minimal smile, then declares sensibly, "You can't just go around naked as the day you were born!" She chuckles and leads the girl out of the room to find her a pair of shoes.
The dress stays on.

Later, when the girl began climbing up the side of a brick building along the way to smell the daisies in somebody's third-floor window, Andrew yelled up at her with his hands cupped around his mouth, "Hey! Get down here!" And after a pause, added enunciatively, "You can't do that!"

He caught her before she hit the pavement. And he was now almost certain how he could help her to become a perfectly normal little girl. They continued on.

When the sunlight shining down on them grew hot and made them sweat, a cool breeze began blowing, but only on the girl. "You can't do that," Andrew said to her, and the breeze stopped. Andrew smiled.

When they walked by a tree stump, the girl pressed the top of it with her fingertips. It slowly began to grow again, the remaining bark climbing upward and sprouting into branches. "You can't," Andrew told the girl calmly, and the developing tree withered and died again before their eyes.

When she saw a broken window, and it began fixing itself, Andrew touched the girl's shoulder. "Can't." And it stopped.

The day continued with similar instances, and the next day the same, and the next, and the next, each night ending with the girl being taken back to a secure room at the Department of Corrections. She never escaped. By the end of the week, Andrew finally felt he had exhausted every possibility and decided that the girl was ready to join the world, to begin her normal life. He took her back to the office, assigned her the pretty name of Abigail Ann, and set her up with a family. When the young, carefully screened couple arrived, he gave them specific instructions to, should Abigail Ann ever display any unusual behaviour, simply tell her that she couldn't do whatever it was that she was doing. They nodded and smiled.

As the couple led her away, the young wife holding Abigail's hand, Andrew crossed his arms in front of him and smiled to himself. A job well done. A challenge overcome. Maybe he'd be promoted.

And though the girl looked thoroughly unhappy at the moment, he felt sure her new parents would get her to smile again. They were good, normal folks, after all.

9:22:56 a.m.
Mrs. Johnson is picking blackberries on the edge of her husband's property, the length near the barn that borders the woods. She hears the crackle of twigs breaking and looks up. A girl of no more than five stands watching her, smiling but dirty and naked as a pig in a pen. 

"Oh my!" Mrs. Johnson sets down her basket and holds a hand out toward the girl. "Come here, sweetheart." The girl doesn't move. "Now, dear, I won't hurt you." She smiles warmly, sweetly, but the girl still doesn't move. "Young lady, you can't stay in the woods like that! I'll take you inside and get you cleaned up. And make you a snack. Now how does that sound?"

The girl's smile falters for a split second, and she steps out of the woods.