“The corner.Now,” his passenger demanded.
Alarm flared as his anxiety deepened, his body as stuck as his mind.
“Calm the fuck down before you have an anxiety attack and we get the rubber heel. Get in the godsdamned corner, Brooks.” Each word was accentuated.
Brooks grappled with the rising fear and forced his body to move one step at a time. His darker hallucination sparked a fire of fear and anxiety, but not more than being caught out of bed.
The shadows engulfed the end of the hall. If he didn’t know better, he would say it was a portal into another world. The darkness bled so black that nothing was visible behind it.
When he was only a few steps away, the door swung open and two orderlies stepped through. Brooks took the final silent lunge into the void and closed his eyes as the shadows hugged him tightly.
“Atta boy, Brooky.”
“Don’t call me that, asshole,”he thought back.The irony was that he was scolding himself about a nickname that he had, in fact, given himself.
When the orderly’s voices drifted into nothing, Brooks took a full breath and collapsed.
“How many times do we have to go over this? You can trust me,”his passenger grumbled.
“I can’t trust anyone, and I definitely can’t trust you. Now shut the fuck up or I’m going to puke,” he answered out loud this time. Trusting his hallucinations was never on the table. Especially one who wrestled so aggressively for control of his body. That was what he feared. Not the voice itself, but what it was capable of.
When the shaking ceased and his legs were sturdy, Brooks pushed himself from the floor and stepped from the darkness.
His body guided him through the kitchen door, out the employee exit and up the access stairs to the rooftop while his mind numbed itself with useless, pitying thoughts.
He wondered how that situation would have played out before he was a broken shell of a man. Had he been strong? Steel willed? Or had he always been so riddled with fear and anxiety that one whisper from his passenger had him nearly pissing down his leg?
He would never know and that scared him more than anything. This bleak future that suffocated him slowly over time had the ability to crush him.
But, maybe it already had.
Like a soul separated from its body, he watched from above as his rigid form navigated through metal exhausts and ventilation hubs housed on the concrete roof. Puddles lay here and there from rainfall and leaves flocked to the corners, but it was otherwise empty.
His body sat and pulled its knees to its chest. They sat unmoving, both soul and body, as the brisk night air rustled his raven hair. His ability to dissociate so completely was alarming, but he was long past caring.
Brooks watched his body, and his body watched the stars. He didn’t have to look up to know what his dead eyes stared at.
The constellation Aquila was situated in the northern sky on the celestial equator, nestled snugly between Aquarius and Hercules. It was said that a great king was honored by the gods and placed in the stars as an act of eternal glory for his servitude, a reminder to all what can happen if your faith remained unmoving.
Christian bibles were littered in every dorm and stocked in the small stack of shelves in the recreation room. Texts like the Quran, Vedas, and the Tripitaka were kept as well as books filled with Nordic, Scottish, and Grecian lore. He had read them all thrice over and, even though the names of creatures and gods were different, it all felt the same to him.
Brooks thought it was all bullshit. If people really knew their gods, would they be so quick to act as sheep destined for slaughter? They put such blind faith into a deity whose only proof of goodness and morality was his word. Did anyone ever stop and wonder if it was a test? What if the true secret to eternal peace was doing positive deeds because it was the moral thing to do, not because some god was watching over your shoulder? What if worshiping their sacred texts as they turn a blind eye is what damns them all in the end?
Maybe that was just the paranoia talking. Or, maybe it sealed the coffin on the ideal of trust. You couldn’t trust the word of anyone, but you most certainly couldn’t trust the word of an immortal god. They’ve had too long to decorate the blade sticking from your back.
The sheep may be slaughtered, but at least their lives were easy.
He didn’t know how long he spent watching the man on the roof hold the broken wristwatch staring at the stars. His body’s gaze never faltered, and the constellation shone back just as unyielding.
As his body lost itself in the stars, Brooks turned his mind’s eye inward. Scenes from dreams and nightmares alike replayed and he was helpless to stop them. One in particular came hastily to the forefront.
He walked through a damp cavern, the air thick with moisture and a hint of soil on his tongue. Blue-green fields of grass surrounded the path and, though he didn’t know where his feet were taking him, his gut knew there was a destination. In the dreams, his mind was not in control of his body, rather a dormant passenger looking through his eyes.
The field of unique grass had a slight glow and illuminated a path through the darkness. Mist filled the cavern and instinct screamed not to enter it. The field ahead seemed endless and the illusion was too perfect to be real.
His body didn’t walk for long before the grassy runway opened into a larger enclosure. The mist cleared and the most magnificent garden a mind could conjure appeared.
Asphodel stalks grew from every surface, bioluminescent petals lighting up the dim space in an ethereal glow. They grew from the floor and attached to the walls like viny creatures and hung low from the ceiling. There had to be millions of blooms filling the domed cavern.
