As unnervingly silent as it is here, I think I can work some positivity into this situation. The Doctor says that positivity is the first step towards gaining a healthy mind. While I’m here, I might as well make some attempt at following his advice. So let’s see, thoughts come easy, undistracted, and unlikely to be snatched away before they have the chance to settle. This room does that; any form of noise, even the slightest cough is eaten by these white-washed walls.
I can’t feel anything, not anymore, because any form of it is seen as dangerous. The Doctor put me in here because I had another meltdown during our session. It comes back in a haze, something to do with me lashing out at him, I might have scratched him. I can’t be sure, all I really know is that it resulted in an extra pill being added to my morning medicine. My attention wanders in the direction of where my wrists might be, concealed by the leathery white of the jacket. The pain has gone, but they still hurt whenever my heart beats. Other than that, I don’t feel much these days.
Nothing comes to mind for what feels like hours, until a slight prickle in my head makes itself known. As if something is just itching to get loose. Feeling slightly dizzy, I make an effort to sit, and I do mean effort, arm restraints don’t make the task easy. At last, accompanied by one face plant into the floor resulting in a bloody nose (a personal record), I manage to sit on my knees and prop myself against those bleached walls. For a moment, I start seeing red poppies in my vision, and it feels like a firecracker went off inside my nose. I prefer to stand, I hate being still, plus, no one, especially me likes it when their legs cramp. The prickle in my mind has evolved into a stabbing sensation, my vision is getting a bit fuzzy, and the blood from my nose is dripping into my mouth, tastes like rust. Ugh, it hurts, I think I broke it. In that moment I’m pulled back as if falling… Before I feel my subconscious fades out into the darkness of unconsciousness, I can just sense his mood, he wasn’t happy.
Looks like Lady Grace broke the nose…Again, swear to God, that Doctor should know better. Judging by the haze I’m in the middle of, he might have been a bit over zealous with the prescription meds, and what was with the jacket? Lying fuck, sorry, that’s the defensive side coming out, can’t afford that. The staff is watching, and they aren’t exactly the nicest bunch. I run the tongue against the teeth; they taste, eh, just eh. Nothing to be said about the way blood tastes, you’ve tasted it once, and you will taste it always.
Pulling the knees out from under the body, I rest against the padded walls. Glancing toward the two way window, I stare, taking in the reflection. We’re a mess, she’s cut herself again, I know she’s remembering, and that isn’t good. Rowan, dearest little Rowan, how you suffer in this body, they’ve cut your strawberry locks; your skin has paled in the months of confinement, and you’ve taken to decorating your legs with spider webbed lesions. You’ve been refusing food too, that skeletal jut of the hips cannot be hidden under that scrap of dress, or that jacket.
He’s watching. We’re a freakish curiosity to him, a rare breed of sorts. If anything we’re the promise of fame in the psychological field. During sessions I see his fingers itching to get to that type writer, just dying to add more to that book of his. I caught sight of his title during one of our first session. “Werewolf” Ha! How clichéd, how crude, I may be the animal, but Rowan is a lamb among wolves, and I am the wolf in her clothing. Call me what you will, but Rowan is innocent. Of most things, she is a teenager after all.
Still, some of the burden has been lifted by the Doctor. He doesn’t know them in great detail, but he has deduced their nature, well, the courts have in any case. The good Doctor wants me gone, he thinks that letting her know will result in a recovery, but he’s wrong, she’s too fragile to know, she needs me, my existence has a purpose and it keeps her from shattering.
Glancing towards the window, with a somewhat playful snarl I make a request. “We’ll be needing food Doctor!”
The stench of a steaming plate of roasted potatoes and cubes of what, I assume is chicken is what I wake up to, that and the absence of the jacket.
I managed to convince him that the jacket wasn’t needed. As for the food, it isn’t much, but you need to eat.
These quiet exchanges are never verbal. Wolf is always there, always ready to say something. At his words, I feel every single nerve go on edge. The Doctor says I shouldn’t trust him; he’s an “anomaly of the mind.”
You know he’s full of it right, we’ve functioned fine in the past, without his help.
Well, I don’t know anything about functioning, I wasn’t even aware of him until I came to the Institution, I just thought those gaps in my memory were caused by Mama. Mama. Red, so much red, everything was wet with it. I can feel my insides seizing up. This keeps happening in the sessions, the Doctor says I can’t pull away from it, that I need to embrace the memories. But there’s screaming, and I think the screams are mine, my head is ringing with them. Whimpering, I clutch my ears, rocking back and forth on the balls of my feet. “I can’t do it, I can’t do it!”
Again there is that sensation of falling; it feels like my head is being engulfed in flames. Something is coming; it comes whenever there is a memory, whenever they become too real to stand! My fingers tangle into what remains of my hair, and I start pulling. Oh God, I don’t want to remember! I can see her coming at me, her arm raised and ready to strike. I understood that right now, I was going to relive this memory, like it or not.
There are so many like this one, it’s always dark, as if I had been locked somewhere. My fists are always beating against the confines, I want out; my throat feels raw, as if I had been crying for hours. Finally, a door is thrown open, but there is no light, just a figure bringing down their fist, and all I can see in this memory, is red.
The room isn’t so silent now, there is too much noise for the walls to absorb, and the wails cascade like water from the padded interior. I try to pull away, but I can still see the red, there is too much of it. Unable to control myself I make a ditch attempt at beating the memory out of my head, as if it would ricochet around my brain, and coming shooting out my ear. I can’t take it anymore!
Rowan!?
For a moment, the sensation of letting him gain control, and hide what I know I need to know, is a God send, and I find myself letting go.
I was accustomed to taking the wheel when the beatings were from an external source. This, this was exhausting. I was made to bear the burden of terror and pain when Rowan couldn’t handle it. Now, now she was beginning to fight me, she’s had been trying so hard to gain back her memories, but she can’t handle of truth of them.
The body took it worse this time, I feel a bit dizzy, might be a concussion. The head lulls a bit, and there is blood in the eyes. There might be a cut on the forehead, but how? Turning, I notice what looks like a sharp piece of wiring, growling I yank it from the wall and hold it towards the window. “Safe room my ass!”
Apparently I am bad for her mind, but the Doctor feels that observing Rowan’s fits are a primary source for ‘curing’ her. He keeps telling me, telling us, that we need to wean off each other. Yet, he can’t be bothered to check the solitary rooms for loose wiring in the walls to ensure the safety of the inmates. I can’t leave someone as fragile as Rowan in the hands of someone so…well…so stupid, no, more along the lines of out for themselves. Not to mention someone so careless with such a fragile spirit.
Sneering at the glass, I throw the bloody wire to the other side of the room. I saved her, from her mother, from herself, multiple times. The best he could do was to strap her down to a bed or in a jacket. She hates that, though she doesn’t understand why that is. Her mother liked to lock her in the hall closet for hours on end. When Rowan would grow hysterical, I would pull her away, and take the brunt of the punishment. I was like a security blanket that she hadn’t been aware of.
Making my way over to the plate of food, I start to force it down; she would be back at the helm soon, so it was best that I get something in this body before then. While chewing on the undercooked potatoes, I find myself glancing around the room, squinting up at the florescent lights. The way they shine makes this room look so maddeningly sterile, and I know Rowan agrees with me on that. She hates this room, and I can’t say I blame her. It practically screams to the occupants “You’re an insane piece of shit that society doesn’t want.”
The potatoes are like chalk going down, I take back what I said about them being undercooked, these are severely undercooked. And burnt how do you burn something and not cook it all the way through? Christ, this place, this is not the place that Rowan belongs in, she deserves better, especially a better me. We’re here because of what I did, something snapped, and logic dictates that it could happen again. I’m dangerous, but her mother nearly killed her, and I couldn’t let that happen.
I’ve tried explaining this to the Doctor, but I don’t think he understands, and arguing with him is exhausting, for both me and Rowan. From time to time, she’ll defend me; sadly, that trust is constantly waning. Her fear and mistrust is the thanks I get.
I suppose I could just dissolve, given the time, but I’ve asked the Doctor: Would you give up your existence, especially when you knew that in doing so, that at some point the person you took care of would suffer? Not now of course, but down the road a ways. Where someone would say an unkind word, or raise their hand in anger and it would result in the person’s resolve crumbling, leaving her remains to play on the wind.
I’m tired, so fucking tired of playing the punching bag when she is hurt or about to be. I don’t have any control, her mind just pulls me up by the ears and I become the shield, where is the justice in that? If anything I am far more fit than she to man this body. However, I know this body isn’t mine. Rowan was here first, but I just can’t stand the idea of going *poof* and leaving her bare to the world, leaving her at the mercy of memories that she seems incapable of facing. Maybe the world wouldn’t be so cruel if I wasn’t in it, maybe if I just made an effort to dissolve, she’d somehow be strong enough.
Oh, who am I kidding? Sending her out there would be like sending a soldier devoid of armor into battle. Her subconscious made me out of what little strength Rowan had. She and I are one, just not the same.
I can feel the tears carving canyons in the cheeks, as they go to dribble, almost pathetically from the chin. Rowan, why did you have to go and create me?
“Wolf?”
Oh no, no, you shouldn’t being hearing this, you should be resting!
“Wolf, are you crying?”
Pushing the heel of the palm into the eye socket, I make a weak attempt to expunge the tears. Pulling the hand away, I catch a glimpse of diluted blood; it’s gone from a hellish red to a pinkish roan,
“You’ve never cried before.”
The eyes roll for moment. “Well, you’ve never spoken to me directly before.”
It feels as if she is unfolding in the mind, somewhere between consciousness and mental limbo. Something similar to what I do when she is as the helm of the body. “Is what we’re doing, talking?”
I shrug the shoulders, letting loose a sigh. “I don’t think the good Doctor has a term for what this is.”
For a moment I can feel her pushing the boundaries, as if fighting to occupy a very cramped space. “Am I making progress?”
There is a slight twinge of annoyance on my end, so self-centered to think that this new development is all about her, for me, I suppose it means a step closer to me being nothing but a wisp of smoke in her mind. “It’s a possibility.”
It feels as if she is beginning to take up half the body, not in the way that she has control over the physical, but in a way that makes her presence known. “You don’t sound happy about it?”
She’s irritated now, I can feel her bristling, Rowan wants to make progress, and I can’t exactly blame her for that desire. For second, it’s like I’ve been gripped by the shoulders and pushed aside, and I am flung back into the midpoint of her mind. She managed to establish control of the body, and it wasn’t by accident. Perhaps this is what the Doctor would refer to as progress?
It felt as if I was sitting up after lying back in a tub full of warm water. This was so strange, I had never taken back my body like this before, and usually he would have to relinquish control in order for it to happen. I don’t know whether I should be happy or not.
I wasn’t given much time to think through everything that had just happened, the door to the room opened, and two male orderlies walked in. One was holding what looked like a wet rag, and the other was holding the horribly familiar jacket. The one with the rag came up and started to bloat the blood off my face. Without warning, he grabbed my nose and with a snap the pain muted. Still hurt, but not as badly as before. The other advanced on me; God knows I didn’t want anything to do with that jacket. “No, no, I don’t want to wear that.”
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