She turned that depthless stare toward him, her lips set in an unforgiving line as power pulsed around them, stirring the dried soil and lifting it to the air.
Brooks scoured the island for any clues as to why his dreamscape had changed. He was used to seeing the three women in the field of asphodels, but he’d never truly paid attention after the first time.
What was it they talked about? Sleeping? Gods he couldn’t remember.
“Just let me in,”his passenger rumbled.
“Not a chance. Your temper tantrums land me on wooden tables with a rubber heel in my mouth or in a goddamn coma! I’m not losing any more of my life to you! Now shut up and let me think.”
His thoughts were chaotic, grasping in the dark for something it knew was there but could not see.
Brooks imagined the recurring dream but couldn’t call forth the actual words. Only scenes. He was so good at dissociating that he was blocking memories out with no one else to blame but himself and that realization was like a sucker punch to the dick.
How many times had he been so angry at the asylum or his passenger for taking precious time away? How many grudges did he keep wrapped around his fingers like a rosary?
“Every slip of time… every moment you’re made to forget… You can stop it. You can take your power back. Let him in, prince. He will guide you.”
Every breath was an effort as the panic weighed his chest. He couldn’t let his passenger sink its claws in further, but he also couldn’t keep living the way he did– losing time of his life by his hand and everyone else’s.
“H-how?”
Atropos stared into the horizon as she said, “You’ve been led to believe that it is night and day– that you are the sun and that he is the moon, never to inhabit the sky together. Look deeper, prince. You are the stars, and he is the darkness between. You exist because of him and he because of you. Without light, there are no shadows. Without darkness, the light is blinding.”
Brooks sat on the sharp, black sand and held his head in his hands. To say he was overwhelmed didn’t justify the pure adrenaline flooding his pounding heart.
Was he really doing this? What if–
No. The fear and doubt stopped now. He had nothing to live for, so what could he lose?
“Alright, buddy. We do this my way, or we don’t do it at all. Got it?” He spoke out loud.
Brooks didn’t get a response, but he felt a presence stir in his mind. It scared the absolute shit out of him.
He relaxed, body and mind, and released one inch of control with every exhale. He had no memories of his life before the asylum. Maybe he had been more than a patient lost to the outside world – more than an orphan no one wanted. More, even, than a no-face man who would be lost to an asylum and forgotten forever. Maybe, he was more.
The denial was hard to let go of. Every slip of will made him flinch, and the memories of metal headgear and blinding pain stung him like a whip. He recoiled, his body tense, when something familiar brushed up against that denial.
“That’s it,”his passenger whispered.“I’m here with you.”
Rather than run, Brooks embraced the lurking darkness and it was like he took a full breath for the first time in his life.
His lungs filled, glutting on the energy his passenger fed him. He turned his hands over and around tracing the inky black that slowly wept like watercolor through his veins. He fought the urge to run, to lock his mind back up and return to the asylum, but determination for change flared from the dying embers that had been his soul.
It’s not real. It’s just a hallucination.He recalled the doctor and her taunting words and let the hate fuel those embers into a raging fire.
When next he looked up, he was surrounded by curling shadows. They were drawn to him, and he couldn’t help but feel their pull too. They mirrored his movements, dancing with each wave of his arm and curling around his legs.
He couldn’t possibly control the shadows… could he?
“Now,”said his passenger. “See.”
Brooks was thrown back into the dream where he stood underneath the woman encased in the tree like a dragonfly in amber.
He looked from her to Atropos as he said, “Life has begun to bloom throughout on its own. It doesn’t need my help, and I am restless, goddess. I seek solace in the void.”
With her head bowed subserviently she answered, “Yes, my king.”
Power flared in Brooks’ veins in answer.
