“Excuse me?”
“I’ll pretend you’re real, and you’ll pretend you don’t hate me. Then we won’t be alone in the dark.”
His words and the depth with which he spoke them made her throat bob. She didn’t want to be alone in the dark anymore.
“Okay. Let’s pretend.”
Hewokewithanodd sense of calm. Odd was the only way to describe it because no one was ever calm in an asylum without sedatives.
As he lay in silent contemplation, a soft patter caught his attention. Brooks’ ears perked as the sound resonated from above his bed.
Was it coming from the window?
He stood on the bare mattress to look through the pane and froze.
Rain.
It was raining. Every soft splash of the droplets rang through his ears in the most beautiful of harmonies. In all of his time in the asylum, he had never heard the rain. The constant dull buzz that filled the halls drowned out most sound. He had assumed, too, that the asylum walls were built thick to keep any upsetting noise from the patients.
Brooks stared in awe and reveled in the rhythm of rain as he replayed last night over and over in his mind. He hung on every word that left his Siren’s lips, and he fucking hated it. Her voice was so tender and sweet.
So incredibly… broken. Just like him.
It made denying her existence that much harder. But the facts were indubitable.
For starters, he was in an asylum because he suffered from auditory hallucinations. He’d never seen his Siren, only heard her. Therefore, she fit the definition of a mind-fuck.
Her appearance was inconsistent and usually when he was feeling the most vulnerable. He was no Roger, but it made sense that his brain would send a slice of comfort when the anxiety was too hard to handle.
The first night he’d ever heard her voice was, in fact, one of the hardest nights of his life. He was questioning his will to live and so was she. Would it not make sense that she was a projection of his pain?
The facts were there as solid as stone.
So why, then, did he question them so often? Why did he feel the indescribable need to believe her when she said she was real?
He knew the answer. It was just hard to face.
Because he was lonely. Fractured. Looking for a familiar companion that didn’t live in this shithole asylum.
Maybe that made his mind more brilliant than the average person’s.
Maybe his mind recognized his needs and provided them in more advanced ways. When others sought community they were assaulted with social anxieties and petty dramas.
But Brooks?
If he just accepted the Siren and their friendship he could avoid the political schemes of socializing altogether.
Not his passenger, though. Accepting that darkness resulted in a loss of control over his body and blackouts with extreme consequences.
The Siren was harmless.
She was a companion.
She was… more.
When they agreed to pretend, he lived in bliss.
Fuck it,he thought.
