Damn, he was right.
Where was I expecting him to go when my body was his home?
“Go fuck yourself!” I snapped in a burst of frustration.
In a fog of confusion, I made my way over to the bed to retrieve my pack of Winstons and got myself a cigarette, bringing it shakily to my lips with my trembling right hand. It had been shaking for a while now.
What time was it? I had no idea.
The only thing I knew for certain was how profoundly unstable I was. With Selene, everything was way too difficult, way too demanding, and way too much for me.
Why the fuck hadn’t the clinic freaked her out? Why hadn’t she yelled in my face about how disturbed I was? Why hadn’t she been disgusted and vanished from my life for good?
If she had turned around and walked away from me right from the start, she wouldn’t be in Player’s crosshairs now.
She wouldn’t be a part of his game.
We’d had some good times in Detroit and even here in New York, but that didn’t mean…
What if she was just too softhearted to abandon me?
Fuck.
That’s what I hated more than anything: the pity…what a noxious feeling.
“Stop thinking about her,” the Boy advised me, as I paced around nude like a lonely beast in his empty cage. “Call Jennifer,” he went on coaxingly, determined to make me give in. I didn’t want to hurt myself; I didn’t want to violate myself again. I didn’t want to suffer as I behaved like a man with no morals. “But you are a man with no morals, Neil. Why else wouldn’t you stop Kim sooner? You’re a sick, twisted person,” he said challengingly. That was how he always acted when I wasn’t listening to him: He turned to strong-arm tactics, dredging up memories of the past to make me feel guilty.
“Today, you abuse yourself. What if, one day, you abuse your daughter?” he demanded archly.
I froze with my cigarette between my lips and stared at him. I felt cold down to my blood and bones. That was one of the reasons I never wanted children, especially daughters.
“Maybe I ought to get my revenge; what do you think? If you abandon me, I’ll just come back and hurther.I’ll turn big and strong like you, and then I’ll show you who’s boss,” he challenged me.
By then, I was blind with rage. I stalked toward him and took him by the throat. I slammed him back against the wall before sliding him up to eye level with me. At first he kicked and struggled against me, but then he realized that was useless and just smiled smugly because he understood that, really, he was the powerful one.
He manipulated my mind and contaminated me again and again.
“If you keep living in my head…” I whispered to him a hairsbreadth from his face, staring hard into his eyes, “I will kill myself,” I finished resolutely. Finally, just doing it would be the only real way to free myself from him.
Never…never would I put another person through what I had been through.
Least of all some hypothetical daughter whom I never even wanted to have.
“Your mind is torn in two, Neil,” he replied. “Today, you think of yourself as the hero, trying to save everyone from yourself. Tomorrow, you might become the villain. You might hurt someone and not even remember it because…” He paused to laugh again before continuing, slowly and clearly so I could read every word on his lips. “I am the monster, and you are my victim.”
I released him and turned away in shock.
The Boy was a part of me that I had to kill or suppress completely if I ever wanted to be free.
If I didn’t succeed, I would have to follow him and die along with him.
“Get out…” I murmured, staggering back again. “Get out!” I yelled, and he walked through the bathroom doorway, vanishing into thin air.
“Neil…” It was Logan’s voice this time that called out to me. I whirled around to face him and caught him staring slack-jawed at me. “What are you doing?” He was probably trying to figure out why I was chain-smoking buck naked while talking intensely with…
“Having an argument,” I answered, taking another drag like this whole shit situation was completely unremarkable.
“With…with whom?” Logan asked, looking through the clear glass window in front of me.
