We have a new story! This was something that has been bobbing around my head for what feels like a few months at least. It is inspired by a caption on DeviantArt Just4n0th3rUs3r but it is also a bit of a medical field transformation. I meant it to be a flash fiction, but the details got the better of me, so the first part of the story will be free to those who want to read the rest of the story as I release it, please join my Subscribestar for just $2/Month! I will be releasing more captions, and additional parts of this story! If you subscribe for 2 months straight, I will also design and render a special faebabysandy sticker image for you!
Here we go!
Fun fact: Hearing voices is actually surprisingly common in the world. Some people hear their own internal monologue throughout the day, while others just hear a voice that has opinions that they expect others to have. What is interesting about the voices that people hear is the vibe of the voice. You see, in America, most of the time, the voice is negative, while in other parts of the world, the voice is primarily one that is encouraging. So for Americans, it isn’t odd to have negative thoughts, but it does make it harder to ignore them when the voices are negative too. The strange thing is, while I am used to this sort of thing from time to time, lately the voice in my head has changed.
You see, I moved out of the dorms recently. My internship at a psychologist's office actually pays rather well, and with the money and basically guaranteed job placement after it ends, I was able to get into an apartment within walking distance from the office. My name is Lucy, and I’ve always wanted to be a psychologist, even if it has been a bit hard for me, because I am a bit of a ditz when it comes to keeping track of appointments and things. That’s why I was so happy to get the apartment, now even if I sleep in late, or study too much, it’ll be hard for me to be late to work.
This place where I am working now is amazing too; the nurses are all friendly, and the doctors all practice different areas, which means I get to learn about all sorts of different psychological practices. Lately, I have been working with Dr. Kara Davis, or Dr. Kara as she insists I call her. She is a hypnotherapist and general psychologist, and the first part of her title is a bit silly to me, after all, only a small group of people in the whole world actually can be hypnotized, and they are normally very suggestible anyway, so there isn’t really a point to being specialized in that area.
I seem to have got off track. As I was saying, I am used to having a bit of a negative voice in my head, but ever since I moved, the voice in my head has started suggesting things that I think are kinda weird. It isn’t anything sinister, and I have been mostly ignoring the voices, but they are super persistent. Part of me wants to give in, just to see if listening to the voices is a good idea. I keep meaning to ask one or two of the doctors about the voices, but I normally seem to forget to do that while I’m at work. Maybe I am a bit embarrassed by what the voices want me to do, too, I mean, why would they want me to suck my thumb? That’s incredibly childish, and something I haven’t done in decades, at least.
Getting home that night, the voice in my head started suggesting that I suck my thumb while I watch TV, that it would be okay because no one would even know, so it wasn’t weird to do that. The voice had been going on and on for about a week already, so I gave in. My thumb slipped in between my lips effortlessly. As I started to suck away, I felt a sudden flood of happiness fill my head, or rather my entire body, I asked myself why I had avoided sucking my thumb all this time, it felt great, and for some reason it even made watching TV a bit more enjoyable, even if I ended up watching a few late night Anime instead of my normal reality television and celebrity competition shows. I didn’t hear the voice for the entire night, which was nice as well, I didn’t want to hear it say ‘I told you so,’ or something like that.
I ended up falling asleep on my couch, thumb in my mouth, and the TV left on all night. The early morning jingle of the children’s TV show started rousing me, and I noticed that my thumb was still in my mouth; I could feel that it had pruned up overnight, from my consistent sucking. Checking my phone, I realized I was actually running a bit late, so I quickly dressed and sped walked to work, trying to keep my thumb out of my mouth the entire time.
“Hey there, Lucy, care for a ring-pop?” Dr. Kara’s voice chirped at me when I walked into her waiting room, just before I was supposed to clock in. The idea of sucking on a lollipop felt like a perfect way to handle the urge I was having to suck my thumb, so I gleefully accepted. The artificial strawberry flavor hit my tongue, and my eyes nearly rolled back in pleasure, but I fought the urge off. Dr. Kara gave me a pat on the shoulder before leaving me to suck away on my ring pop, the hard candy and plastic ring bobbing silently in my mouth with each suck on the candy. My head felt the same pleasure as I felt when I was sucking my thumb. Within minutes, I had forgotten that I was even sucking on the candy and got to work putting files away, letting the tongue mindlessly fiddle with the candy in my mouth. It wasn’t until the end of the day that I suddenly realized that I had skipped lunch, and was sucking on the plastic of the ring pop ring, the candy having long since dissolved in my mouth. Part of me wanted to throw out the plastic ring, but the voice in my head was back, “Sucking on the ring feels good, right?” Of course, I internally agreed, but I felt so odd sucking away on the plastic ring, which prompted the voice to speak up again, “Well then, just start sucking your thumb, nobody will care, and you are close to your house.” For some reason, the logic was sound enough to me that I agreed with the notion the voice gave me, and did just as it suggested again, throwing out the plastic ring in order to start sucking my thumb, as I walked home.
The same thing happened the following few days. Dr. Kara would give me a ring pop, then I would suck on the plastic ring all day until I was leaving, and I would switch to sucking my thumb on the way home. It wasn’t until I was scrolling on my phone one day that an ad for baby supplies caught my attention. Mostly because it was an odd sight, I didn’t want kids, nor did I have any, so why had it popped up? That’s when the voice piped up again, “You should get a pacifier, it's better than sucking your thumb.” I rolled my eyes at the idea. A pacifier was obviously better than sucking my thumb. As a medical student, I did learn that it was at least a bit more sanitary, but it would look very weird for a 28-year-old medical intern to be sucking a pacifier at all.
“No it wouldn’t, you’ve been sucking your thumb and sucking on a ring pop every day, and no one has said it was weird.”
I paused, the voice was dead on right. I wanted to argue, I wanted to deny the facts, but it had been so normal to see me around the office sucking away on a ring pop that most people didn’t even expect me to answer questions verbally, just nod or shake my head. Dr. Kara didn’t even ask me if I wanted a ring pop anymore, she just… It was right at that moment that I realized I had been walking into work sucking my thumb. After a few days, Dr. Kara was simply pulling out my thumb and plopping in a ring pop for me! I was flushed with embarrassment before I started looking for adult-sized pacifiers.
“No one thinks it's weird that you suck your thumb, but it is better to be sanitary, right?”
The voice was right, this time, and I didn’t even try to argue. I found a few different ones, different colors, my imagination got the better of me, as I figured I could maybe match the pacifier with my plain work shirts, or my scrubs on the few days I wore those. As I pulled up on a particular website, I noticed it also sold adult-sized onesies. The voice in my head chirped up again.
“I bet wearing a onesie would be much more comfortable than a regular shirt, look how cute the designs are!”
The voice was much more animated now, and its excitement was infectious. Before I realized it, I had ordered five onesies and matching pacifiers, plus a few extras. If the voice had been right about sucking my thumb, it might be right about onesies and pacifiers. It would take a few days, but as an intellectual type, I had to test the hypothesis; it was only rational. The next morning, I was back to sucking my thumb. As I walked to work, I was determined to ask Dr. Kara why she didn’t see it as weird and make mention of me sucking my thumb. The sudden pop snapped me back to reality as, for the first time in a long time, I felt my thumb being taken out of my mouth. I turned my head just in time to avoid Dr. Kara plopping a ring pop into my mouth, which gave her pause.
“Dr. Kara, isn’t it weird that you are letting me suck on a Ring Pop all day? Plus, shouldn’t a grown-up like me not suck my thumb, either?” I didn’t notice the two odd things that happened: the fact that I had referred to adults as grown-ups, and the smirk on Dr. Kara’s face as I asked my questions.
“Oh, well, we in the psychology profession all have little things that make us odd, it's the sign of a good doctor to be honest with you. You could be one of those weird ones who doesn’t know how to talk to adults, like Dr. Hendrickson,” Dr. Kara replied with a chuckle at the end of her statement. The logic was sound, all through medical school I had been reminded that most head doctors were a bit off, so if sucking my thumb or sucking on a ring pop all day was my thing, and it could be worse, then I felt self enough to let Dr. Kara pop the ring pop into my mouth and go about my day.
As I was working, I was getting a bit frustrated with my work; things were just so out of sorts, and I even had to ask Dr. Kara for some help. She suggested that I take a short break and do some therapeutic activities, to which she handed me a grown-up coloring book, not the kind for kids, the kind with complex patterns and intricate designs that really tested the skill that a grown-up had with staying in the lines. I hadn’t colored in a while, and the idea did seem a bit appealing. I even heard the voice in my head get excited at the idea of coloring. Everything seemed incredibly pleasant the rest of the day, even if I did end up spending it coloring in every page of the book.
