Imagine Danielle!Cathy sitting down with Joan for a talk.
The MD had been acting up for awhile, constantly messing up, especially during shows. Something seemed to be bothering her. And nobody else was going to do something if it wasn’t yelling at her.
“Well.” Cathy said. “Talk to me. What’s been going on with you?”
For a moment, Joan said nothing. And then...
“I keep thinking I’m there.”
Cathy furrowed her eyebrows. “Where?”
“The tower. The scaffolding. The sickroom. Henry’s bed.” Joan swallowed thickly and shook her head. “I just— I close my eyes and I’m just—there. I’m always there. I see it all the time. But— but it’s more than that, Cathy.”
She looked up, tears glistening in her eyes.
“I can hear it, too. The crowd, Anne’s speech, Maggie screaming. She never stops screaming. And then the clattering of the sickroom, Edward wailing, Jane moaning in agony. She cried for so long before she—died. And even more—the crowd murmuring, the yelling, Kitty crying, that damn sound of a blade cleaving through flesh and muscle and bone—again. That sound is the worst. It’s awful. The screaming is one thing, but the sound of skin ripping apart and bones breaking...it’s sickening. But then there’s also Henry and his breathing and talking and m—”
Joan sobbed, tears running down her cheeks.
“I can also smell it. The blood. The infection. The pus coming out of Jane’s fucking ripped vagina. It’s still here, like it’s permanently glued to my body.”
Another sob, this time weaker. Joan put her head in her hands and squeezed it like she was hoping to crush her skull between her palms.
“A-and everyone a-always g-gets so mad at me. I-I don’t m-mean to mess up, I really don’t! B-but everyone c-claims I’m faking it for attention. Anne s-says I have nothing to b-b traumatized about. Th-that I didn’t go through shit.”
She looked up again, staring into Cathy’s eyes.
“If that’s the case, th-then why do I feel like this? Why do I see Anne and Kitty’s headless bodies out of the corner of my eye? Why do I see Jane, feverish and dying, in my bed? Why do I see only corpses when I look out at the audience during shows or the faces of my dead queens in the rows of people?”
Cathy said nothing, still trying to process everything that she was told, but Joan took her silence as a sign that she didn’t care, so Joan stood up, whimpering, apologized, and then began walking away.
