by Anna Ferrara
Black Dr Clark took in a long, deep breath and scratched his eyebrow for a good few seconds before speaking. “Lane’s diary is gone forever, Miss Thompson. After I told you she killed herself, you ripped all the pages apart with your bare hands and flushed every last piece down the toilet.”
Ah. So I was nothing but a book-flushing twin who went on a vivid psychotic trip as her own dead sister? Was that what everything I had been through really was? It would explain the flying objects and super speed and all, wouldn’t it?
Great. I sank down into the comfortable white armchair and felt my muscles properly relax for the first time in a very long time.
At least I now had a logical answer to the question of who I really was. At least now, everything made sense, I thought.
Chapter 28
Dates Unknown
Three days after I snapped out of my vivid psychotic episode, I began self-mutilating again. I found myself screaming my lungs out within seconds of waking because my left forearm had been thoroughly burnt to a crisp.
The real Dr Clark revoked my in-room cigarette privileges and removed the lighter I burned myself with but a week later, I managed to dig a hole in my right calf with just my nails and in the two weeks that followed, I dislocated every last one of my fingers on both my left and right hands.
One month on, I was covered in bandages again and had hands that were so tightly bound, they became no different from unusable blocks of wood. I never remembered having done any of those awful things to myself but Dr Clark said the CCTV cameras in my ward caught me red-handed. Every single time. Apparently, I was sleepwalking and physically enacting my dreams in a very agitated manner every single night. I had nothing to say against that because I did remember the nightmares. I had many nightmares in those days. More nightmares than I ever had in my life. I dreamt a lot about the injured and dead individuals from my vivid psychotic episode—the raging security guard with only one hand, Arden Villeneuve unconscious with that ginormous red bump on her head, Gemma and her body full of misshapen skin, and of course, always, the other, imaginary and very much dead, Dr Clark sitting in a patch of his own dried blood. In my dreams, I was always screaming and trying to fly away from those people but it would never be possible to get away from them. They were always just there. As was Paul, the woman. I dreamt of us kissing and sleeping together a couple of times but at the end of every sexual encounter, she would always tell me she was really a man with superpowers and I would run from her, screaming at the top of my lungs.
One day, Dr Clark got me taking a single pastel yellow pill with breakfast. Subsequently, a yellow pill always appeared in the little plastic cup of pills that came with breakfast. The yellow pill should sedate enough to stop the sleepwalking at night which should consequently stop the self-mutilation, he said.
He was right. Once I began taking the yellow pills religiously, I stopped self-mutilating. I woke up perfectly fine every single morning and as a result, slept better and had fewer nightmares at night too.
The only problem I had with the yellow pill was its one side effect—it would make me violently sick within the hour. Every morning, after taking the pill, I would throw up four or five times in quick succession, always while shaking uncontrollably. I always felt horrendous during that hour and to this day, haven’t yet experienced anything quite as awful as those stomach-churning shakes had been.
Dr Clark and I weighed the pros and cons together. Was not self-mutilating worth the daily sickness? I decided ‘yes’. I hated being bandaged—hated the way bandages restricted my scope of movement; hated the way I looked with bandages—and decided I would do whatever it took to save myself from having to be bandaged ever again.
As before, Dr Clark would come in once in the morning on weekdays to do physical tests and again after lunch for an hour of therapy. During therapy, we would talk about my memory of my vivid psychotic episode—where Paul and I went, what we did, how we moved about, how we got money and food—and Dr Clark would make me tell him my thoughts on everything that happened in great detail.
The real Dr Clark was way more of a joker than the imaginary Dr Clark had ever been. He often cracked jokes in the most inappropriate of circumstances so I grew to like and enjoy his company. When he told me talking would help me heal, help me see my psychosis for the vivid hallucinations they really were, I told him everything. I told him what Paul said about CRO and shared what she could and couldn’t do. I told him everything that happened with Arden Villeneuve and gave him all the details concerning the murder of the imaginary Dr Clark. I told him all about the ‘secret’ places we lived in and shared all the fun moments we had. I told him all about Gemma and Dustin. I told him everything because I wanted very much to heal. I wanted to put the whole vivid psychotic episode behind me and feel like the person I truly was again. I wanted to genuinely feel like Blaine and not keep thinking I was Lane.
Days turned into months. More time passed than I have things to say about it.
I grew bored of the VRM entertainment system eventually—yes, bored of the billion movies, games and music tracks—and actually began reading some of the books on the shelves. When I grew bored of those too, life became a blur of activity that wasn’t really happy or sad or remarkable in any way. I developed the habit of going about my day without thinking—food, vomit, vomit, vomit, shakes, vomit, vomit, tests, space out, food, therapy, space out, food, space out, sleep, space out; repeat, repeat, repeat and repeat—and stopped feeling all that excited about all the fancy items and services my Wonderdrug ward had to offer.
I worked really hard on becoming Blaine—told myself I was Blaine every single morning and tried to recall Blaine memories every night—but yet... I remembered nothing of being Blaine. I remained with Lane’s mind, with Lane’s thoughts, with Lane’s memories.
No amount of talking or pills ever changed that.
Chapter 29
Date Unknown
“Lane, wait!”
I froze while seated at my ward’s bar table, with my little plastic cup of pink and blue pills propped between my two bandaged hands. I turned and checked behind me.
There was no one there; no one in the ward but me.
Yet the voice had sounded like it had been right behind me, and it was very familiar too.
“Don’t take the pills. Pretend like you’re taking them of course but find a way to get rid of them without the cameras noticing. Shit! I’ve got to go! I’ll see you tonight—don’t take the pink pills! I won’t be able to wake you if you do.” It was Paul’s voice.
I gasped. It was Paul the woman’s female voice! Back in my head right after dinner, even though I had been taking all pink, blue and yellow pills just as my doctor instructed! What was this? A relapse? And what the hell did ‘I’ll see you tonight’ mean? Was the voice I heard a prodrome? A sign that another long, vivid psychotic episode was to come?
“Paul, where are you?” I asked in my mind. I stared at the little plastic cup still between my hands and couldn’t help but wonder if eating the pills in them would make the voice stop.
In the end, I found out I didn’t even have to eat the pills to make the voice go away. Paul’s voice never appeared again that day.
Not even when I willed it to.
I got the two pink pills down the toilet by holding them in my mouth for a good ten minutes before pretending to vomit and pulling on the flush before removing my head from the toilet bowl. It wasn’t pleasant to do but it got the job done.
That night, for the first time since snapping out of my vivid psychotic episode, I found myself unable to sleep. I tossed and turned for hours in the darkened ward, waiting for Paul to appear in my head or in front of me and eventually got frustrated when she didn’t. I had been convinced her voice had been nothing but a hallucination and had been about to try to get to sleep when something warm and heavy materialised next to my legs, above my blanket.
I sat up at once.
It wa
s Paul. The woman. In my ward. On my bed. Next to me. She was in the same blue gown I was in and looked almost as I remembered she did, except maybe a little sadder. There was also a couple of inches of red at the roots of her mostly-brown, long, curly hair. She was still slim and her frame could not be considered large by any definition.
“Hi, Lane,” she said.
Lane. With Paul, I was always Lane and never Blaine, wasn’t I? My hands were incapacitated so I used my forearms to touch her instead. I ran my forearms over her cheekbones, ears and chin, just to make sure she really was there.
She felt like flesh against my bare skin. Warm, solid, human flesh.
“Again, yes I’m real,” she said. Her lips moved in sync with the words I heard. “And yes, I really am female.” Her eyes twinkled as she took in mine, in the same way they used to do all those times before. “There’s a good reason my mother gave me a male name but we don’t have time for that now, we’ve got only four minutes so... Are you okay? How do you feel?” She took my bandaged hands into hers and stared at them as if trying to see through all the layers of cloth.
I took a deep breath and tried to calm my nerves. I felt shame when I saw how funny my bandaged hands looked next to Paul’s perfect ones. “Why four minutes?”
“Security reboot. Wouldn’t have been able to get in here otherwise.”
Those words—‘security’ and ‘reboot’ together—triggered a surge of energy within my muscles. I felt as if I were Frankenstein’s monster in the very moment of being electrified into life; eager all of a sudden and a tad reckless. The thought of jumping out of a stairwell window now sounded like a great idea to me. I thought about getting to do things out in the real world—actual tasks and activities—and found myself more thrilled than I remembered I could be. I didn’t even care whether or not it would all be real. I finally understood, there and then, why Gemma had run with every ounce of energy she had that day. She had been bored. She had been empty. She needed more once she realised there actually was more. I felt the same way that night. “Let’s do it,” I said. “Why not?” I flipped my blanket off my legs and tried to jump out of bed but Paul put both hands on my shoulders and held me down.
“We can’t today,” she said with a smile that was most definitely sad. “CRO fixed all security loopholes after all those things we did. I haven’t figured out how we’re going to get out yet but I just... I just wanted to see you. See if the yellow pills they’ve been giving you caused any damage? Those pills are poison, you know? CRO’s trying to see how long your body can defend itself from poison. Their plan is to keep at it till your body breaks down, you know.” She looked like she was about to cry after she said that, even though her smile never once went away.
The superhuman energy I had been feeling just seconds ago fizzled out and mutated into a dull ache of disappointment when I took in the look on her face. There was something different about Paul’s demeanour that night and on top of that—
—on her temples, under her hair, there were two circular reddish and bumpy splotches. It looked like skin had been ripped or burnt off in those places.
“What’s that?” I reached out and pushed her hair aside to get a better look but Paul flinched and backed away at once.
“Don’t. It... hurts.”
“Where did you get those?”
“From here.” She pursed her lips, looked away and shrugged. “‘Brain tests.’ They found out about my telepathy somehow and now they really, really, really want to know how my brain does it. I don’t know how they figured it out. Maybe Mr Anderson’s home was bugged and he didn’t even know about it? Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut? I don’t know.”
But I did. And I knew it would be best for everyone if I said nothing. A heaviness came over my heart and I felt it sink and swirl amidst the most awful of sentiments—guilt. Suffocating, all-consuming guilt. With a touch of fear.
Paul turned to face me and turned to stone the moment she caught sight of the look on my face. Her eyes became wide and I saw her shoulders rising and falling faster than they had been doing before. She turned away a few seconds later and the sadness on her face changed into a look of sudden realisation.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered right away. I got the feeling I was going to be in danger. Paul would kill me now that she knew I had betrayed her, wouldn’t she? There were consequences to everything—I got kicked out of Aunt Mary’s home because I hadn’t woken up in time to save Uncle Tim from dying, I got a lifetime of hardship because of my poor grades in high school, I got no love because all I ever wanted were women I was in no way good enough for—and my betrayal of Paul would be no exception, I knew. I backed away and prepared myself for the worst.
I never expected Paul to let it go, but she did. Paul didn’t follow up with rage. She simply sighed, showed me the body language of a woman defeated and eventually even smiled a little. “Don’t worry, it’s not your fault. CRO’s just way too good at getting stuff done, I guess.”
Her voice was gentle and her beautiful brown eyes remained more disappointed than murderous. She did not look psychopathic or dangerous in that moment, just... sad. So very, very sad. Seeing her that way, a wilted version of the woman whose tenacity I once admired, made me suddenly want to cry. What hope was there for the rest of us if even brave, fierce, invincible Paul could be broken like that? “What are you even doing here?” I whispered. “Did they catch you? Did you break in again? Or…?” Am I hallucinating again?
“They didn’t catch me and no, you’re not hallucinating. I chose to get myself admitted. To get you out. Until I realised I couldn’t.” She looked right at me and sighed again.
Paul, trapped in the tasteless world that was Wonderdrug all over again, all because of me? And me, guilty of screwing her over because I refused to believe she existed, even though she had been right in front of my face showing me kindness so many times before? I shook my head and felt like the most stupid and selfish horrible person in the world. My heart pounded furiously, I gulped and a cascade of tears came down both eyes. I found myself heaving, hot in the face and hating myself for not being smarter, more observant or more kind.
“Hey. Hey?” Paul took me into her arms. She pressed her chest up against mine and brought my head to rest against her shoulder. A shoulder which was warm and thoroughly solid. Not imaginary at all. “Don’t blame yourself. You’re just very confused because they want you to be. Anybody else in your situation would have done the exact same so stop beating yourself up over it.”
I felt her heart beating fast against mine, got a whiff of her unique bodily scent and my face crumpled and poured forth even more tears.
“You’re so stupid,” I choked, in between sobs. “I’m nobody, I can’t do shit, I’m so dumb and gullible, I screw up everything all of the time, you shouldn’t have come back here for me! I’m not worth it.”
Paul shook her head many times and tightened her hold of my body as if she wanted to make sure she was not going to drop me. “You are to me,” she whispered. “It was my fault CRO found the ‘safe house’ anyway. I should have been paying attention to Dustin. I should have noticed how unhappy he was and realised he was planning on running back to Wonderdrug, ready to tell them everything. I should have been watching him but... I didn’t. Because all I kept thinking about was…” She sighed. “You.”
I pulled away from her at once, did my best to look for the truth in her eyes even though mine were blurred by tears, and found her smiling right at me. “Why didn’t you just say so before?”
She shrugged and tears dropped right out of her eyes too. “Because you didn’t love me back? I thought if I stopped myself from wanting you, it would pass, but, who knew? It didn’t. I tried doing what you would do in the same situation—I tried to ignore you, pretend I didn’t like you—but it didn’t work either. And when I saw what you drew in the concrete, I just knew I had to—”
I took her cheeks into my bandaged hands and kiss
ed her firmly on the mouth—a move I now realised I would have made many times before had I not been so preoccupied with Arden Villeneuve and all the crap Wonderdrug personnel had been shoving into my mind. My tongue found its way around hers and spoke how I felt with tender, ardent manoeuvres. My bosom came together with hers and our stomachs and thighs followed suit like magnets.
I heard Paul’s breathing quicken and felt her tongue and hands reciprocate. I felt my body tingle and burn with excitement as we meshed like dancers doing the most perfect sensual dance but, as abruptly as we had begun, Paul pulled away.
“I have to go,” she said, suddenly flustered and suddenly more beautiful than ever before. She looked all over my face as if trying to commit my features into memory while simultaneously trying to smile at me while looking into my eyes. “I’ll come back and see you next month and I’ll try to find us a way out of here, I promise.”
“Paul, wait—”
“I love you,” she said with that sad, sad smile that was now thoroughly hers and the next time I blinked, she was already gone.
I was all alone on my bed again; the only person in my ward in the dark. Nothing around me had moved or changed but, somehow, I felt as if I were no longer the same person.
I wasn’t Lane trying hard to be Blaine any longer. I was just... Lane.
Lane who was in love with Paul, the woman.
Chapter 30
Date Unknown
Paul did not come back. I waited four whole months and willed her voice to appear in my head over a hundred times but it never did.
By the end of my first month of waiting, I was on edge. My mind went through all possibilities on loop. Had something bad happened to her? Had she changed her mind about being in love with me? Had she decided she never wanted to see me again? Had she gotten out without me? Or—the worst possibility of all—had her presence in my ward been nothing but a hallucination? A blip in my otherwise salvaged sanity?