Bert

Anna still remembered when she could speak. It was hard to forget, of course. She would entertain the people around her with delicately crafted tales that would just come to her. But that was over. 
 

She hadn’t said a word for three weeks. 

Her family was incredibly concerned but preoccupied with her brother Reece’s poor exam grades, and her friends were being pressured to leave her one by one. The only one she had left was Bert.

Bert was a stuffed rabbit she had had for as long as she could remember. He was torn in some areas, and was covered in grey tear stains from comforting Anna for so many nights. But even when it was just her and Bert, she couldn’t seem to find her voice.

It was a Monday evening, and Anna had locked herself up in her room, lying on the floor, listening to her parents talking to Reece. Something about getting into a certain college. She rolled onto her side and faced Bert. She examined him closely, then noticed a piece of string that came from his back and curled around him. A loose thread perhaps, she thought. She tried to pull it off, but instead it extended slightly, and a voice came from inside Bert’s chest.

“I don’t need you.”

Anna recoiled, startled. The voice sounded so familiar. And Bert had never had a voice box. She wanted to scream, but couldn’t bring herself to. The voice came again-

“No one needs you.”

She picked Bert up and threw him across the room, panicking. But throughout the night, the voice wouldn’t stop repeating itself, and she had finally figured out that it was her own, somehow removed from her body and placed in Bert’s. The voice grew louder and louder, until she got out of bed and started to violently bang on her door, before it was opened by her mother. Anna covered her ears desperately, and pointed at Bert, crying and struggling to breathe. Her mother walked across the room and picked Bert up, and, before exiting with him sighing, “This is the tenth one I’ve had to get rid of.”