EPISODE 5: SHATTERED
CONTENT WARNINGS
Listeners who have experience with mental illness are advised to read the content warnings in this episodes show notes before listening.
TRANSITION
INT. ???
VOICE OVER
This one is hard.
INTRO MUSIC
CREDITS
Station Blue
Episode 5
Shattered
INT. ???
VOICE OVER
When you were a kid there was a spot where you lived that filled you with dread.
It might have been one of the windows, the closet on the way to the bathroom or the space behind the couch.
Whatever it was, you avoided it at all costs.
There’s a spot like that in The Station.
THE DOOR.
I hate everything about it.
The handle doesn’t have a lock.
There’s a window on it just big enough to see through, but it’s dark and I’m afraid to shine my mag light through it.
It’s stupid, I know, but...
I don’t feel safe with THE DOOR there.
Lucky for me there’s a freight elevator that lets me skip the stairs, and thus THE DOOR, altogether.
It took me awhile to get up the nerve to use it, but once I did, it became a part of my daily routine.
INT. CAMERA ROOM - DAY (ALWAYS DAY)
LEADS
I think I'm an idiot.
I've been doing these back to back 9 hour surveillance shifts...
My life for the last... questionable amount of days involves:
Wake up, skip breakfast, head to the camera room, stare at the cameras, do a few laps around the third floor, stare at MORE cameras...
Check for notes from Gina, head down for dinner, sleep, wake up, rinse, repeat...
This routine is becoming SO drilled into my brain that I got all the way up here before realizing that I THINK it’s my day off.
I was definitely here yesterday. And the day before that.
It's all blurring together. I don't know if this is day 5 or 6. Or 7.
I've had at least three notable dreams... But I think two of those happened during the same night.
What happened during my last day off? Did I just sleep? Is that what's throwing me off?
You know what? The cameras can watch themselves for a day. I'm going to go sleep.
TRANSITION
INT. ELEVATOR - DAY (ALWAYS DAY)
Matthew hums “Fly Me To The Moon”, the Elevator opens and he enters it.
LEADS
In other words, please be true!
Dadata da dat da dat da!
In other words, I love you!
The elevator shuts off.
Uhhh
He pushes the button several times.
Hey, hey come on. Come on don’t do this to me.
Just, No, just, just no.
Ugh, Come on come on come on come on come on come one come one ahhhfff.
He begins breathing heavily.
Just, just, come. Come on. Just come on! Just
Help!
It's just you idiot, you... help!
Wheezing breaths.
Please open up. Come on, damnit damnit damnit.
No. No no no no no no no no no no...
Breathing deeply
The vein on the leaf the leaf on the branch the branch on the tree the tree in hill please please...
He begins hyperventilating and sobbing.
The vein on the leaf the branch the tree the woods the fuck fuck FUCK
Breathe! Breathe...
Metal, metal dark metal cold metal closed door red light dark dark red light...
Come on. Stale air cold air breathe breathe Sarah.
Matthew slides against the wall and has an intense panic attack.
VOICE OVER
Poor Bastard.
I had my first panic attack in my eighth grade math class.
I had a very strange teacher. He was a little guy. Eccentric. Passionate.
He wanted us to understand something deeper about math.
He’d quiz us on its esoteric history. It’s implications in our lives.
And of course, math wasn’t my subject.
I knew it was important and I knew if I really tried I could grasp it...
Math explains deep things about how the universe works. And I knew that once I started delving into that I’d never be able to come back.
My teacher though? He wasn’t satisfied with my hesitance. He didn’t want to leave any doors unopened.
To him knowledge was always worth the price.
One day he brought in a 13 page packet containing a simplified mathematical explanation on how see-saws work.
He put it up on a projector. It was a 40 minute presentation.
My classmates groaned.
But I couldn’t look away.
It was beautiful. And terrible. I didn’t want to see it.
My mind cracked by page 8.
I was shaking.
Tears were falling.
He noticed. He kept going.
Page 9 and I was rocking back and forth.
Page 11 and I was gnawing at my knuckles.
I don’t even know how the rest of the class reacted to me. I was sobbing. I was broken. Not exactly normal behavior.
When he turned off the projector after page 13 it was like whiplash. It all hit me at once. I was unmade and remade in that moment.
He asked me if I was okay. I nodded.
How else was I supposed to react? I was a raw nerve, touching aspects of reality that were previously hidden from me. I was seeing things that I’d always suspected were there but did my best to ignore.
Unseen, unheard. And the world keeps spinning.
I was a wreck for the rest of the day.
I saw numbers everywhere. Horrendous equations explaining things that I used to think were simple.
They flew out of everything. It was a fireworks show. I couldn’t hold down a basic conversation, the complexity of lip movements paralyzed me.
Imagine you want to open up your lunch box. And you realize that a certain amount of force is going to have to be applied in order to undo the latch.
And then you have the swing of the lid. How many pages of equations would you need to explain the swinging of a lid?
Only that’s the simple part. You have the heat being stored in the metal. You have the chemical make up of the plastic bag. And that’s not even accounting for the finger movements, the neurons, the rate of decay and all the while you’re seeing a filter of numbers and graphs and equations over what was once your comfortable reality.
I didn’t understand any of it. But I had a taste. I couldn’t close the door.
I was kind of a weird kid. It was the eight grade, we were all weird. Nobody questions my odd behavior too much. Some thought it was funny, most people ignored it. But the rest of the day felt like an eternity. My memories aren’t quite right from that period.
I do remember trying to fall asleep, looking out the window at the stars and taking in how much was out there. It wasn’t fun.
After a few days I stopped seeing everything in math. After a week it was like it never happened. What was so real before seemed like an overreaction after some space. That became a common theme. Have a bad mental episode. Take awhile to recover. Go back to... normal, look back, question the validity of the episode.
A few weeks later my math teacher stopped me after class.
He had a surprise for me.
He presented me with a much thicker packet on how see-saws actually worked. No implication. Laminated in a professional binder.
His gift to me.
I think he was proud. I had cracked the door open. I had paid a small price. I was on my way to learn deeper secrets.
I spent a lot of time looking through that binder over the years. I didn’t understand most of it, I still don’t. And that protected me. I was shielded. If things are complicated enough you are in no danger of harming yourself by looking at them.
But the attacks only got worse from there. I didn’t have the vocabulary to express what was happening to me.
They didn’t happen frequently enough for me to try to get help. They weren’t predictable, I never knew what would set them off and after recovering I would usually forget they were a thing... at least until the next one happened.
I just thought it was teenage hormones. Teens go through a hard time, right? That’s just part of the metamorphosis. By the time I was an adult I knew something was off, but I was... not used to them. I had accepted them as part of me. An inevitability.
I would be living my life when, out of nowhere.
Things would go sideways.
Sometimes I would catch it in time. A voice in the back of my head would notice the paranoia building. The extreme reaction to mundane things.
Sometimes I’d be able to get somewhere safe enough to calm down.
But usually, by the time I realized something was wrong it was too late.
And it would get ugly.
I’m talking overwhelming fear.
I’m talking laughing and sobbing so hard that all of the capillaries around my eyes would burst. I’d have red dots on my face for a week.
I’m talking blackouts. Missing time.
Waking up, face plastered to the floor in a puddle of my own drool.
Waking up somewhere different from where I started.
Sometimes I would wake to find my wall covered in furious scribbles. Strange imagery of mouths in the middle of foreheads, trees with eyes, shadowy fire. My mind trying to make sense of what was happening to it.
It would shatter me.
It would take weeks to put the pieces back.
My through would tighten when I tried to speak to people. My pulse would race.
My blood would run chilly.
I wouldn’t sit in chairs, I would retreat into them, hugging my legs, my hands absentmindedly picking the edges of my shirt into tatters.
It would be like I wasn’t even there. Like the attack cracked my head open and everything that was me leaked out.
I would try to hide it. I would avoid people.
I would tell them I was tired. That I had a lot on my mind.
I would leave.
It happened in public once. I don’t remember the lead up. I just remember waking up naked in a hospital gown.
They wanted to admit me. It was my first year on the road, I didn’t have a stable address and they wanted to admit me. They acted like they wanted to help. But how are you helping when you charge me 2,000 dollars a day just to sleep there? 250 dollars a pill? 10 dollars for the cup holding that pill?
Not to mention the five grand for the emergency room visit, the two grand for the ambulance that got me there, and that’s not even including time with their psychiatrists?
Follow up? How are you trying to help me while writing me a Debt Sentence so severe I’ll never be able to climb out?
You what, you want to help my anxiety? Did you factor in the anxiety of an American Hospital Bill? Did you factor in how much a lifetime of treatment would cost me?
I had to lie through my teeth to get out of there.
No, I’m not a danger to myself.
No, I’m not a danger to others.
I’m just tired.
It’s not a big deal.
I had a bad day. It was a breakup. Everyone has break ups.
It’s fine Doctor. No Doctor. Where is my backpack Doctor?
As soon as I got my keys I snuck out of there, drove away and never came back.
One break down in the wrong place at the wrong time cost me all the money I had made over the last 6 months. And that was without treatment.
It’s the main source of dread in my life. The attacks. I hate it. That wolf is always at the door.
Things might seem fine. Life might seem fine. But there’s always the knowledge that at some point in the future, could be next week, could be six months, things will build and build, the slope will get slipper and before I know it I’ll be tumbling off that cliff again.
It’s been one of the few constants in my life.
INT. ELEVATOR - DAY (ALWAYS DAY)
We hear Matthew sobbing on the floor.
VOICE OVER
Listen to him. You think that’s a reaction to being stuck in an elevator? No one to hear his screams, no one to get him out?
That was just the catalyst.
Isolation? The dark? Being trapped? That is nothing, and I mean nothing, compared to what’s happening in his mind right now.
I’ve had that happen to me on a sunny day, in a meadow. I’ve had that happen to me in the safety of my own home.
He can’t even see right now. He’s like a babe in the womb. All he knows is red and lighting storms and the suffocating confinements of his own skin.
Can you imagine it? Carrying that around with you wherever you go? It doesn’t take a research station in the middle of the ice.
Sometimes an odd look from a stranger is enough to push you over the edge.
Sometimes it’s a harmless episode from your favorite TV show.
Or an old note from a loved one.
When the mind decides to unleash every concept you have of terror on you?
The real world can’t touch that.
INT. ELEVATOR - DAY (ALWAYS DAY)
The elevator opens part was on the second floor. An unidentifiable drone begins to build.
VOICE OVER
Though Station Blue certainly tries.
Come on Leads. Wake up. You wanted that door to open didn’t you? Well it opened. Straight to the Second Floor.
LEADS
Who’s there? Who’s there? Hello?
Hey. Hey stay... stay back... who’s there? Is there anyone... is anyone... can’t see... I can’t see, I can’t...
VOICE OVER
That’s right.
There’s a little gap to the First Floor. It’s just big enough.
Matthew struggles to fit through.
VOICE OVER
There you go.
Now run.
TRANSITION
INT. HALLWAY - DAY (ALWAYS DAY)
TRANSITION
VOICE OVER
Run.
TRANSITION
VOICE OVER
RUN.
Ext. The Ice - Day (ALWAYS DAY)
Matthew falls into the snow, sobbing.
LEADS
I gotta get away from this place, I gotta get away from this place, I gotta get away I gotta get away I gotta get away...
OUTRO MUSIC - FRIGID WIND
This episode of Station Blue was written and directed by Chad Ellis and produced by Gretchen Schrieber, Kesenia Zinkevich, and Wes Jordan Frisby.
The cover art was created by Kessi Riliniki.
Our intro and exit music, Frigid Wind, was composed by Sage GC.
Matthew Leads was voiced by Chad Ellis.
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In the story, Perry, an agoraphobic woman living in a lighthouse wakes up to find her home in a completely different location, spurring her to search for her missing brother.
That’s all for tonight.
My name is Kristen McLaughlin, and until next time.
I will haunt you.