The Wake

It was a trend that kept popping up in conversation; podcasts that had the power to make you do things. It was more than persuasion, it was hypnotism. At first she brushed it off as another fad that preyed on the simpletons, like dieting pills and shamWOW. She resisted it when people told her of the merits. One person claimed his looserness was cured; he was getting booty left and right, any time of the day. But Marnie wouldn’t buy it, she couldn’t buy it. If Susie found out about this, then there was nothing to stop her from trying it; and it was Marnie’s mission to keep her friend out of such absurd shams.

That was until Julia, Marnie’s older and much admired friend, spoke several very harrowing words.

“I’m going to have a baby.”

Marnie launched forward as she choked on her Coke. A pretty spray of soda and spit arched across the table and prismed a rainbow in the air above them.

“Excuse me?” she said between coughs.

Julia, in all her unforgiving and immaculate glory, nodded. “I’m going to have a baby,” she repeated. Marnie shook her head.

“When did this happen? You don’t even have a boyfriend!”

“Thank you,” Julia said as a scowl passed her pretty pink lips.

“But,” Marnie began. She thought back through time, of all the men she had seen Julia with. The number was small, no more than five. In fact, that last time Julia was in a serious relationship, Marnie was just a freshman, a few years ago. Unless Julia was sleeping around, which Marnie couldn’t see, then this woman was incubating the messiah.

“Do you have a secret lover, or something?” she said.

Julia shook her head. “Please, I have no time for that crap.”

“Then how did you get pregnant?”

“Oh,” Julia said as she waved a hand across the table. “I’m not pregnant, not yet. I was just thinking that it’s about time I have a baby.”

“You were ‘just thinking’?”

“So?”

“Babies are not something you ‘just think’ about.”

“Well, it’s not wholly unheard of. I’m secure in my job, I can support myself and another. Unlike you and you prissy Alzheimer friend, I am mentally stable. I don’t see why I shouldn’t.”

“What about the other half? You know, the man, you don’t have one. That part is important. …Sperm bank?”

“Oh,” she said and waved her hand again. “Please, as if I would go to one of those places. No, I’m going to enjoy getting pregnant, a lot.” She leaned across the table, closing the gap between them. “I hear that if you come together, it increases your chances for a boy.”

“Really?” Marnie said, becoming interested. Julia nodded.

They both took a deep swing from their cans of Coke. Being the ‘successful’ modern day woman that she was, Julia had always held out on things like relationships and marriage and babies. In any beginning to what could be a romance (not that Julia would ever use, let alone think of the word), she would always find something that was the deal breaker, and not in his favor, whoever he happened to be at the time. Julia wasn’t patient. She thought a million miles a minute and didn’t wait for you to catch up. So the thought of her getting sperminated was something extraordinary to Marnie.

“What brought this on?” she asked.

Julia put her hands up, palms exposed, ready to tell a story. “It’s this podcast I listened to a few weeks ago.”

Marnie screamed as inaudibly as the inner workings of her mind would let her.

“It was something about life plans and beating back the conventional idea of houses with white picket fences and fractured children.”

“Fractured children?”

“You know, a nice house with a white picket fence and 2 ½ children? Why is it a fraction?”

Marnie nodded.

“Anyway,” Julia continued, “I was listening to it, listening to it, when it just stopped. I mean the clip was over. I looked at my watch and saw that thirty minutes had passed. At first I was really pissed. I mean, I just wasted a good unit of time listening to nothing, I didn’t remember anything. Then a day later, I saw a fat soccer mom bouncing a baby on her tire rolls, and I thought, I want that.”

“Lard?”

“No, a baby. Though, I didn’t see how she could have such an adorable baby, but that’s beside the point.”

Marnie shook her head. “Wait, wait. Did you just say ‘adorable baby’? What happened to ‘shitting vomit machine’?”

Julia shrugged her shoulders after finishing her Coke. She gave a cute little smile and sighed with content in her voice. This was very out of sorts. Julia was never content, she was always going for more, going for the next step. She never slowed down.

It was the podcast.

A podcast that could change such a radical person as Julia was something far beyond the reaches of reality, or Marnie’s reality at least. The other people that had told her about this mysterious podcast were people she didn’t know very well. But Julia, she was like the older cousin that corrupted you for the better, someone indispensible to Marnie. So she checked it out.

At home she sat at the dining room table with a laptop in front of her. Logging on to the interweb, she found out that it wasn’t one podcast, there were hundreds, for all different types of situations and states of mind. Men, women, pets, careers, silicone implants, and Snow Monkeys. There was something for everyone.

She scrolled through the choices, wondering which one to select for herself. Was it destiny when her cursor immediately fell on one titled Bringing Out Your Inner Voice. Clicking on it she was presented with a media player. The soothing voice of a man began to fill the room just before Marnie pressed pause.

She slouched down in her seat. How did one arrange for one’s mind to be hijacked and changed? She went around the house, closing the blinds, switching off electronics and anything else that made noise. The doors were locked, the windows latched and despite the growing stuffiness and heat, she sat back down and listened to the silence. Everything was dead, save for the quiet hum of the refrigerator. She was hankering for some ice cream after this didn’t work.

Dragging her finger across the laptop touchie pad, she pressed play.

The male voice came through again and she felt her shoulders slouch and the crook in her neck loosen. She was still quite lucid, though on the edge of her seat, waiting for the moment she would lose control. It was all very much like a séance, when you’re expecting something to happen, afraid of anything that could happen, yet you still wait with baited breath.

She closed her eyes…then her phone rang.

“Shit,” she muttered as she pressed pause again. Glancing at the phone, she saw it was Susie.

“What,” she barked into the mouthpiece.

“You said you wanted to meet the waptard, so come on,” Susie said.

“I can’t, I’m trying to hypnotize myself.”

“Hypnotize yourself? Worst excuse ever! I’ve got the wap all riled up and ready to go.”

“Sorry, I can’t.”

“Bitch! You’re the one who wanted to meet her!”

“Sorry, I can’t”

“You can’t? You can’t leave me here with her!”

“Where are you?”

“At a coffee shop somewhere on Nicollet. Marnie, you fucking flake, she’s speaking in tounges!”

Marnie almost laughed.

“Sorry girle, this is some important stuff. I’ll call you later.”

She didn’t wait to hear another insult laced with curses, she had to get back to business.

Pressing play again, listening to the voice again, she again closed her eyes and listened to the silence around her, and to the podcast. She waited and waited, wondering when it was going to take its affect, and if it was different for everyone. She considered calling Julia to ask about how to get in the mindset, or so to say, when her phone rang again.

“Shit,” she said and picked it up.

“You fucking bitch. That was the most torturous hour of my life. You couldn’t come out to see what you wanted to experience in the first place? I’m tired of you backing out on me when I do these kinds things for you. I’m always arranging things and then you decide on a whim if you want to follow through or not. I’m tired of it. Are you listening?”

Marnie pulled the phone away from her ear, feeling lethargic and heavy all of the sudden. Looking at the screen she saw that an hour had passed. Susie was still yelling on the other end and Marnie was just noticing that the podcast had ended. When, she didn’t know, but the audio clip was only about fifteen minutes long. Total.

Frowning to herself she brought the phone closer to her face and examined the time blaring across the screen.

It was truly an hour later. She had just wasted an hour of her life listening to nothing.

What a way to piss a person off.

She knew this was a sham.

She stood up and went to get some ice cream.