A vivid nightmare tinged with crawling black veins and blazing blue eyes flashed across his vision. The demon’s stare was relentless and sent shivers down his spine.
“I slept fine,” he returned noncommittally.
“I know that tone…”
“Of course you do. You are, after all, a hallucination my sick mind likes to torture me with.”
“How many times–”
“I’m not doing this with you today,” he paced and ran his fingers through thick black hair. “Fuck! I’m not doing this withmetoday. Just get out of my fucking head.”
If only it were so simple as to demand a disease to rip its claws from your mind.
“I’m sorry,”she whispered, an edge of hurt in her voice.
He felt the need to apologize, but what did it matter? That was the definition of crazy, he supposed. Having a complete argument with yourself.
Instead of facing his hallucinations, Brooks turned to something he was more than capable of dealing with.
Most of the time.
He returned to the watch and stared at the broken face as flashes of his recurring nightmares flitted through his mind like old movie reels.
When he lay in bed every night, he may as well have parked his ass in a one-man theater, the wall to wall screen rolling films starring the one and only paranoid schizophrenic, Brooks No Last Name.
Sometimes he was a monster with black fingers and shining eyes molding the planet to his will, other times he was a mass of shadows light as the wind gliding through the darkness.
The one constant through it all was the terrifying ruthlessness of his dreams. The sick crunch of bones breaking in his grasp had become so common that he no longer flinched. Would he be too desensitized to feel horror if it happened in real life?
That was the shit that kept him up at night. Could nightmares mold you into a monster? Or did a kernel of it have to already exist inside to sprout?
“I can feel your anxiety. It’s making my heart flutter. What’s happening? Talk to me.”
Brooks took a shuddering breath and answered reluctantly, “I just wonder sometimes. About my nightmares, I mean. What if they aren’t fake? What if that monster is just a part of me biding its time until I’m too weak to hold it back?”
“Even if there were a monster lurking somewhere inside you, Brooks, it wouldn’t matter. I know you, and your kindness exceeds any darkness you’re capable of.”
She, his mind, whoever, struck a sensitive chord. How could he trust what he was or wasn’t capable of if he was only a passenger in his own mind?
“You don’t know that,” he whispered.
“Trust me. Brooks. I know what a monster looks like and what ink stains his hands. You’re not one of them.”
His chest warmed a bit and a small smile crept up his face. Sometimes, he didn’t care if she was an illusion his sick mind created– she never ceased to illuminate the darkness within.
“That’s not the tune you were singing when I told you I sleep with socks on,” he teased. Maybe he was deranged for talking to himself, but what did it hurt if it could turn his mood and fight away the monsters?
“That’s truly atrocious and only psychopaths are capable of such debauchery.”She giggled and the serotonin burst through his veins like heroin.
“Debauchery, huh? Stick around, Siren, and I’ll teach you the definition.”
He swiped the pad of his thumb across the watch face and waited for something to happen but, like every other day, his ritual was fruitless. The analog arms refused to budge just as the gray lens shrouding his vision refused to lift.
“What are your plans for the day?“ she asked.
“Oh, the same as usual. Look at the color brown, sit around with people who either drool on themselves or talk to walls, and find a way to deal with the fact that I’ll never get to leave this place.”
“Wow, such an optimist.”
