I had earnestly been in search of slumber, but the bed where she lay was cold and damp. I knew it was all a dream, and everything would be fine by sunrise. Sunrise seemed to be a cure-all for that which would hinder me. Storms were always gone by sunrise. Adversity, pain, and fear were always chased away by the sunrise. So, I told myself, would be last night’s events.

It was many nights that I had struggled with the loss of my soul, as she had – no doubt – taken it when she left. I was left gurgling on the floor, short of everything including breath, and namely, my sanity. But I knew it was a facade. A hazy delusional fantasy twisted by some dark inferior part of my mind, into existence. And I wept.

My therapist had reminded me that everything would return to normal as soon as I came to accept the misinterpretation of a nightmare. That’s all it had been, she said. How can you lose someone if they had never existed? But its realism was inexplicably perfect. Accurate to the final point.

With nothing but fear to hold on to, I locked myself away. For nothing but the feeling of solitude could I bear. The misshapen dimension I was growing quickly accustomed to was now becoming my nemesis. My sanity was fading fast, as was my virtue. I could scarcely proclaim reality in any case. There must have been something, I thought. Something about the dream I had experienced that I could bring into proof. Solid concrete proof that I wasn’t delusional. Upon my new investigation I came to light upon a most mysterious revelation: there were tiny but very vivid fingernail scratches on the wall. My therapist dismissed them as an artifact of temporal compression stepping. They would go away with my realization of the truth. All I could do now was wait. And hope.

It has been a while, hasn’t it? I thought everything would be different by the time I woke up. Those little scratches are still on the wall. It kind of freaks me out to think that all this really did happen. She was here for nearly five months. When she died she took everything with her. Including, as it turns out, my sanity.

But all is well, I suppose, except those little scratches on the wall. I took the medicine about seventy-two hours ago, and just woke up a few minutes short of plan. But I doubt that small discrepancy is what made the difference between success and failure. I have a lot to think about indeed.

The phone rang a few minutes ago and it was a wrong number. That is the fifth call this evening. But the funny thing is, it sounds just like her. The hollow metallic ring of her old scratchy voice. It still gives me shivers when I think about it. I am glad she’s gone. It’s better for the both of us. Perhaps I am being selfish, but my therapist says these feelings are natural.

Just the other day, in one of our more productive sessions, she asked me what I would do when she was gone. I didn’t know how to answer that. There was too much on my mind. I mean, I expected it would happen soon, I just didn’t know how soon, so ultimately, I really wasn’t prepared. At least not as much as I should have been. My therapist had told me it would happen this way.

She sits on the same couch as me during our sessions, and sometimes holds my hand. It makes me feel better about the things we talk about. We have a good relationship, you know. That doesn’t happen very often. I was concerned about one other thing, though – I told her. I asked her if it would make any real difference if I finished the whole thing myself. She said no, she didn’t think so. But ultimately it would have to be up to me to decide how best to handle the predicament. We will see how fast I come out of all this. If I ever do, that is.

It was awkward with her gone. My mind could not fathom the new structure in which my consciousness resided. I felt sickly and weak. I could hardly walk, and my words were slurred as if I had consumed way too much alcohol. But I had not. I hadn’t had a drop in months. Though I wouldn’t have turned one down at that moment.

Then her voice again. Like a scraping against the inside of my skull. Right at the back of my mind, I could hear it. A pale quiet quality it had, but audible over everything else in my mind. Alone I sat in this cold damp room and clicked my chains together – the only means by which I felt I could keep my sanity. I used to cherish these moments when I could spend time alone, with no interruptions. No confusion. No contradictions. Now I sat begging and weeping in my solitude.

The lights were flickering constantly. I say lights. There was only one. But it was blurred by my madness. There could have been a hundred. It hung high above my head on a rusty rod, and water from the wet concrete ceiling dripped onto the bulb and splattered. Drip. Drip. Drip. It had been that way for the last three or four months. But what was time to me now? They had taken my clothes when they put me in here. They would take my sanity on my way out. If there were a way out.

I held doubtful in my mind the chance that I would ever see raw sunlight again, but instead remembered what my therapist had said, all those days before. She had told me that solitude was a blessing. Confinement was a luxury. I knew she was making absurd analogies with corpus union. But I still had to believe it applied to me in all my facets of humanity. All I could do now was hope. Hope and thought were my only two companions. And that ringing in my head. But I’ll pretend that is her voice.

She finally looked at me. That’s what I had wanted. All along, that is what I had prayed for, deep into the nights. I wandered about the emptiness like a disgraced cosmonaut. Nothing could keep my mind off her. But she had finally looked at me. And it was all I had needed.

Like a fire burning in my stomach, I had wanted her. She looked at me with an air of slight disapproval. I was so dirty. I had been in here for months. Maybe years, hell I don’t know. I just know how I felt. I had ached for her deep in my soul. And now here she was. I had many times reached for her in the moments of my most powerful wanderlust. But my hands had gone through her like a spectre. She was not just my imagination. I kept telling myself that. Over and over. She must be real.

But now I saw her, and felt her presence, more real than anything I had ever known. I could feel her breathing. I could feel her warmth in my cold, damp cell. She stood there in front of me, looking down at me. I was sick with anticipation. And then she smiled. I realized that her disapproval had not been of me, but instead of the condition in which I had been kept. She had no irreverent emotions for myself. She was so clean. So perfect. So free. And I was trapped with a figment of my wildest imaginations. I shivered with nervousness. Because now she was real.

As the smile left her lips, she looked at me with a deep sincerity, a love for all that we were to be. And I knew she was real. As she stepped out of her clothing I was nearly overcome by my desperation for reality. She had me close my eyes, and as I sat on the cold concrete, I felt her sit on my legs, facing me, and pull my head to her chest. She swaddled me in her arms against her breasts and kissed my head. I was in her care now.

I felt my hands reach up to caress her, and an explosion of dismay and punishment slammed me back into my reality. My mind went instantly into shock as I saw her stand up and look directly into my eyes, disbelieving. I told her how real she had been to me. I smiled irresolutely as she turned away, becoming once again, nothing but a memory. As she dissolved into the improbability from which she had ultimately come, she whispered quietly, “I know.”

I have suddenly become aware of my need for sustenance. Like no other want or need I have ever felt before. My pangs were more intense than I could cope with. I tried sleep, but sleep failed me. For days now I had been awake. Dreams of slumber dance giddily before my eyes, but just out of my reach. I tried desperately to ignore my pain, my desires.

Through the shadows I thought I saw a familiar face. Directly opposite me on the cold wet concrete, just beyond the darkness, I could sense her. She was blurry and fuzzy, as a picture on a television. But she was definitely there. I tried smiling at her, but it was as if she was confined to her own world. Her own dimension. She had no idea I was watching her. She raised her shirt to stretch and probably to satiate her burning desires, which were made evident by her visage.

I could see her more clearly now, but still, she blinked and warped repeatedly as the image corrected itself again and again in front of my eyes. Was this a cruel sort of joke? A temptation? A tease to my senses? It was as if she was being projected onto my cell wall from directly behind me. I knew it was impossible though. She was, I proclaimed, a figment of my imagination. I knew it, like every other vision I had seen before. I was getting used to the rejection of reaching out and grasping nothing.

Then she opened her eyes and met my countenance. She faintly smirked before she stood and walked toward me. I would not fall for it this time. Her shirt was still raised and I watched her as she walked toward me. She appealed to my every sense. But I would not be duped into a delusion. An illusion of fantasy. A projection of wish. But she no longer flickered.

She was steady and stable as she slowly made her way to me from within the deep of the darkness. The smile had left her lips now, and she became aware of my desperation for reality. If it were this that brought her to me, then I thank you providence for my thoughts. Because now I heard her footsteps as well as I could see her nakedness.

She offered her hands to assist in my delivery. I reached out expecting my emptiness, but she was more desirable than the previous illusions, so my faith in her reality seemed more absolute. And I felt flesh. Her hands were soft and warm. And she pulled me to herself, bringing restoration to my conscience and hope to my soul. I had finally broken the barrier and stepped into my imaginative playground. With this profound revelation, I sealed off my passage back to reality, and joined her in a blissful walk to insanity. Nevermore will I return. Nevermore.

 

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