It took him a moment to realize it was his scream.
“Hold him down!” a gruff voice yelled as rough hands forced him to the floor.
A sharp pinch to the abdomen vaguely registered through the fog and his muscles ceased reacting to demands as he slumped forward.
The voices around him slurred as time slowed.
“We have to give him more…”
“...figure out what to do with the girl.”
The girl? The one crying in the hall?
“Dr. Kore said to give him enough of the song to make him forget…”
“...keep an eye on him and dose him again.”
It’s like they were waiting for me to wake up just to throw me back under.
His mind raced with the thought as his awareness prickled. A powerful but familiar essence surrounded his own as they both watched his body struggle from above.
“They’re afraid. But we are inevitable,“ his passenger whispered.“Sleep it off. We’ll need our strength.”
With that, the vice gripping his mind eased and Brooks relaxed into the sedation, a sigh of relief ushering in the darkness.
***
Soft murmurs lapped at his mind, dragging him back to the surface with every wash of the waves upon the shore of his conscience.
“Ah, Brooks. So glad to see you could make it today,” a too-happy tenor rang out.
He knew that fucking voice. Hated it, too.
Brooks forced movement through sluggish eyelids to clear his foggy vision and mustered the strength to swallow the saliva that was dangerously close to escaping through the corner of his lips.
What was worse than being slipped sedatives during an explosive episode, you ask? Waking from said episode propped in a wheelchair, drooling on yourself, and being forced into psychotherapy.
“Roger,” Brooks slurred in greeting.
Brooks couldn’t see Roger’s face yet, but he knew that happy motherfucker was smiling so wide that you could see your face reflected in his molars.
Roger continued his positive affirmation bullshit while Brooks focused on bringing his body back up from the depths of sedative hell.
“You gave me quite a scare there,“ the Siren said. After a beat of silence, she tried again.“Brooks?”
He didn’t bother to answer.
It was never more clear that she wasn’t real than when he was strapped to a wheelchair and in front of a therapist.
His hallucinations could fuck off. It was their fault he was here.
“How have you been feeling, Brooks?”
Brooks scoffed and looked pointedly at the wheelchair. “Not so hot, I’d say. How about you Professor Optimism?”
Rogers’ tone was reprimanding, but still annoyingly happy as he said, “Brooks. Sarcasm masks honesty, and we are all here to help. So why don’t you take that mask off and tell us what you’ve been feeling.”
He sighed but decided a sliver of the truth would probably get Roger off his back faster than sarcasm.
