“Well, you crashed your car trying to prove I was real, Finn.” Runo leaned in, a sparkle in those dead eyes. “Newsflash, I’mveryreal and you just damaged my body. Maybe I’ll take your idea and start up a board for you three. You’re definitely on my shit list. Killian is a close second and the other two…” He trailed off, looking to my right where they were. “I think I’ll keep them around for entertainment.”
“We need a fucking ambulance,” I wheezed.
“And we’re not really hurt that badly. Maybe a few bruised ribs. God, you’re such a wimp. If you only knew the shit that we used to get up to. Oh, right.You weren’t there yet.” Runo sat up and brushed himself off, waiting until I did the same. The painheightened and then turned into a sharp throb but a bearable one. “Good, good. Now we can have a conversation.”
Maybe not in the middle of the fucking road.
“Oh, come off that high horse of yours Killian. It needs to be said that you all did very well, just as you were supposed to, bringing our men together. They were always mine and yours, I suppose. They’ll figure that out if they haven’t already.”
My face twisted up in a mixture of confusion and pain. “We’re crazy. We’re insane, talking to ourselves in the middle of the goddamn road after crashing a car. We belong in a fucking straightjacket.” How had it come to this? This wasn’t part of the plan.
Runo’s laugh rumbled through the evening air. “I don’t disagree with you there, Finn. We absolutely belong in a mental hospital. But I’m not letting that happen.”
“You’re not allowed to be me. You were my best friend! None of this makes any sense. I remember—”
Runo shook his head. “Finn, you remember things but most of them weren’t real. They were manufactured by desire or apparition. We were best friends. After you came along, I finally had someone to talk to. Someone who understood me. Someone who could shield me from the ridicule of the public but you soon forgot who I was. The longer I let you take the wheel, the less you remembered. Until you thought that I was just a friend, in jail.” Hurt passes through those unforgiving eyes and then something dawns on me.
“Wait, Dad knows you exist?”
“Why do you think he was so fucking scared of me? We were born Runo Matthews, not Finn, not Killian but you won’t find those records anywhere. Dad’s hid them pretty well. When you came along, he was ecstatic. Thought that it would tame down our desire to destroy and to pull apart. You were just a ruse. So were the rest of you.”
We were just part of a game? So we don’t exist?
The cackle I cherished so much slipped from Runo’s lips, a villain’s sound if there ever was one. “No, we’re crazy, remember? You definitely exist in my head. There to comfort my poor soul from falling apart. However, it’s not because we have HMD. That was Finn’s diagnosis. One of the doctors at Primrose Medical or whatever the shit saw me but when Finn took over, he started seeing a therapist instead of a doctor like I had. Either way, my diagnosis was something entirely different.”
I frowned, scooting a little closer and realizing the pain was gone. Runo winced, his expression darkening and for the first time, I could almost see the switch as I was shoved into our head and he took over our body, well,his. With the pain gone, I could think freely, the other three suddenly sitting around like we were just having a conversation and not sitting in the fucking road.
“What did he diagnose you with?”
Instead of explaining, I was just hit with a memory, watching through Runo’s eyes.
RUNO
I twirled in the chair, grunting every time my father glanced back at me to stop being a nuisance. But how could I? He had dragged me into this awful office, citing that I needed a therapist or someone to help me understand right from wrong. My father just didn’t understand that the guy I strangled in our basement had had it coming.
He had laughed at my first love. My first love didn’t even know I existed but the pink stripes through his hair called out to me every time he passed through the halls. I loved staring at the wannabe chef with homemade meals that made my mouth water. He was everyone’s dream but he was mine.
At that time, my loveable cannibal had been Vincent Marshall Teller. Vincent was never a good name for him. Maybe Marshall but when he chose Aeron, I was partial to it. Especially when I left that letter, pouring my heart out to him, telling him that he meant everything to me and that I wanted him to know that someone would be in his corner. The letter came with a metal ring, a simple R engraved inside.
He started wearing it off and on, making me smile when I saw it as he passed through the halls.
“Runo?” Dr Harley sighed as he nudged my leg. “Is it the voices again?”
I snorted. “I don’t justhave people talking in my head, doc. Sure, there’s a couple of hallucinations and paranoia and—”
“Violence, aggravation, and mood swings,” my father added. “Don’t look at me like that, Runo. I’m terrified half the time you come into the house because I have absolutely no idea if I need to call the police, an ambulance, or try and have you admitted.”
I grit my teeth, swallowing back a snarl. It wouldn’t play out well for me in here. “Youarethe police. Whatever. Just slap the ole HMD diagnosis on me so we can go.”
Dr. Harley shook his head. “Runo, I’ve never actually met anyone with HMD. It’s a fascinating diagnosis and hearing that your mother has it, I would love to meet her some day. However, you don’t have HMD. Nothing even close to it. Your diagnosis is a little less rare—Dyskesia Manic Disorder or DMD. It meets all your symptoms and a few more that I would want to watch out for.”
“What the fuck is DMD?”
“Language, Runo.”
I threw the bird at my father before turning to Dr. Harley. Color me intrigued; I wanted to know what made me tick. At sixteen, I was a bundle of nerves and hormones and trying to figure out who I was. If this diagnosis could explain everything, I was 100% in.
FINN
