#imaginary-friends

A girl bicycling with her imaginary friends.A teddy bear and a doll.

October wind scraped bare branches against Dr. Sarah Chen's office window. She pressed fingertips to her temples. The headache had started at dawn—twenty-three years since the accident, and her mind still fractured every Halloween. A floorboard creaked behind her. "You're working late again." Sarah's breath stopped. The voice drifted from the corner where shadows gathered between filing cabinets. She recognized that voice. Knew it like her pulse, though decades had passed since she'd last heard it. "Hello, Sarah." She turned. Her rational mind cataloged explanations—stress, overwork, anniversary triggers activating dormant neural pathways. There he stood. Eight years old. Gap-toothed smile. Wearing that ridiculous superhero cape their mother had sewn from an old bedsheet. "Tommy." His name escaped like a prayer. Her twin brother tilted his head. The gesture ached with familiarity. "You look tired, Sarah. You always worked too hard." The office temperature plummeted. Sarah's breath misted. "You died in the car accident when we were eight." "Did I?" Tommy stepped closer. His bare feet made no sound on hardwood. "Or did you stop believing in me?" Sarah's hands shook as she reached for her phone. 11:47 PM. She'd worked for hours without awareness, lost in patient files and research papers. Classic dissociation. An episode. "Remember our game, Sarah? Hide and seek in the old house?" Tommy's voice carried that sing-song quality she'd forgotten. "You excelled at hiding. Even from yourself." Office walls pulsed. Breathed with rhythm matching her racing heart. Sarah closed her eyes, employing grounding techniques she taught patients. Five things visible. Four things tangible. Three sounds audible. Tommy sat in her patient chair when she opened her eyes. Swinging his legs like during their mother's therapy sessions after the accident. "Doctors said I was your coping mechanism," Tommy examined translucent hands. "Your imaginary friend replacing your dead brother. They were wrong, Sarah." Memory surfaced unbidden. The night before the accident, she and Tommy had fought over a toy. She'd wished—God help her—wished he would disappear forever. When the drunk driver ran the red light the next day, taking Tommy while leaving her with only a broken arm, she'd known her fault. "I created you," she whispered. "After the funeral. I couldn't accept your death." "Wrong, Sarah." Tommy's smile faded. "You trapped me." Office lights flickered. In strobing illumination, Sarah saw her reflection in the window—accompanied. Tommy stood behind her, hand on her shoulder, mouth moving in unheard words. "All these years, you've kept me here," Tommy continued. "Your guilt, your grief—chains. I can't move on while you hide from truth." Sarah's vision blurred. Her trained mind—psychology and trauma therapy—recognized symptoms. Auditory and visual hallucinations. Dissociative episodes. Anniversary reaction stronger this year, probably triggered by recent divorce stress. Temperature kept dropping. Breath came in visible puffs. Frost formed on window glass. "What truth?" she asked, though part of her already knew. Tommy approached her desk. Small fingers trailed through scattered papers. Where he touched them, documents curled and blackened at edges. "You weren't in the car that day, Sarah." Words hit like physical blows. Sarah gripped desk edge. Knees threatened to buckle. "I was there. I had a broken arm. I remember the hospital—" "You remember what they told you to remember." Tommy's voice gentled, the way it used to during nightmare comfort. "You were home, Sarah. Sick with fever. I went to the store with Mom and Dad alone because you couldn't come." Office walls dissolved, revealing their childhood home's familiar interior. Sarah saw herself truly—eight years old, burning with fever, watching from the living room window as her family drove away without her. "I begged to go," she whispered, memory flooding back with devastating clarity. "Mom said I was too sick. I was so angry. I said—" "You hoped we'd never come back." Tommy's hand felt cold against her cheek. "And we didn't." Guilt she'd carried for twenty-three years crystallized into something sharper, more terrible. She hadn't been in the car. She'd been safe at home while her family died. The broken arm, hospital stay—false memories, constructed by a mind too young to process survivor's guilt. "Doctors thought you were coping well," Tommy said. "Creating an imaginary friend to replace your dead brother. I was never imaginary, Sarah. I was real, and trapped here by your need to punish yourself." Sarah felt something shift inside her chest. A knot finally loosening after decades of tension. Frost on windows began melting. Temperature slowly returned to normal. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry, Tommy." Her brother smiled—the real smile she remembered, the twisted thing that had haunted nightmares. "I know. You have to let me go now. You have to forgive yourself." The office materialized around her again, solid and real. Sarah looked at her hands—steady now. The headache was gone. For the first time in twenty-three years, the weight on her chest had lifted. "Will I see you again?" she asked the empty room. Tommy was already fading, voice barely a whisper on October wind: "Only in good memories, Sarah. Only in good ones." Sarah sat alone as the clock struck midnight. Halloween gave way to November 1st. Outside, wind had stilled. Shadows no longer moved with malevolent purpose. She picked up her phone and dialed her therapist's number, leaving a voicemail to schedule an appointment. Time to stop hiding from truth. Time to stop punishing herself for surviving when her family hadn't. Time to let the dead rest in peace.

Dr. Sarah Chen hadn't thought about Marcus in fifteen years. The name surfaced during her Tuesday therapy session, unbidden and unwelcome, like oil seeping through concrete. "Tell me about your childhood friends," Dr. Reeves had asked, pen poised over her notepad. Sarah's throat constricted. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting everything in harsh relief. "I didn't have many friends." "What about imaginary ones?" The question hung in the sterile air. Sarah's hands trembled against the leather armrest. Marcus. She could almost smell the chalk dust from their old apartment, hear her mother's voice calling her for dinner while she played alone in her room. That night, Sarah found herself standing in her kitchen at 3:17 AM, staring at two coffee cups on the counter. Steam rose from both. She only remembered making one. The second cup was exactly how Marcus used to like it—three sugars, no cream. Her reflection in the kitchen window showed someone standing behind her, but when she turned, only shadows greeted her. The coffee grew cold in her hands. "You remember now," a voice whispered, familiar as her own heartbeat. Sarah's breath fogged the window. In the condensation, small fingers traced letters: M-A-R-C-U-S. She hadn't written them. The next morning brought no relief. Her colleagues at the research facility noticed her distraction, the way she glanced over her shoulder during meetings, how she flinched at sudden sounds. Dr. Martinez asked if she was sleeping well. "Fine," Sarah lied, not mentioning the child's laughter echoing through her apartment walls, or how she'd found her childhood drawings scattered across her desk—drawings she'd thrown away decades ago. That evening, she called her mother. "Mom, do you remember Marcus?" Silence stretched across the phone line. When her mother finally spoke, her voice carried a weight Sarah had never heard before. "Sarah, honey, we've talked about this. There was no Marcus." But Sarah remembered. She remembered the games they played, the secrets they shared, the way Marcus knew things he shouldn't know—like when her father would come home angry, or which days her mother would cry in the bathroom. She remembered the accident. The memory hit her like cold water. She was eight, standing at the top of the stairs. Marcus beside her, whispering encouragement. Her baby brother crawling toward them, chubby hands reaching for the colorful blocks Marcus had scattered on the landing. "It'll be quick," Marcus had said. "He won't feel anything." Sarah had pushed the blocks aside just in time, scooping up her brother as he teetered at the edge. But Marcus had been furious. His face had twisted into something that wasn't quite human, wasn't quite child. "You ruined everything," he'd hissed. "I was trying to help you. Now you'll have to share forever." That was the last time she'd seen him. Until now. Her apartment felt different when she returned. Smaller. The shadows seemed deeper, more purposeful. On her coffee table sat a photo she'd never seen before—herself at eight, standing alone in their old living room. But in the reflection of the window behind her, another child stood watching. Marcus hadn't aged a day. Sarah's phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number: "I've been waiting." Her hands shook as she typed back: "What do you want?" The response came immediately: "What I've always wanted. For you to remember who you really are." The lights flickered. In the brief darkness, Sarah saw him—standing in her hallway, exactly as he'd been fifteen years ago. Seven years old, with knowing eyes and a smile that promised terrible things. "Hello, Sarah," Marcus said, his voice echoing from everywhere and nowhere. "I've missed our games." The temperature dropped. Sarah's breath came in visible puffs as Marcus stepped closer, his footsteps silent on the hardwood floor. "You tried to forget me," he continued, "but I'm part of you. I always have been. The part that knows what needs to be done." Sarah backed against the wall, her rational mind screaming that this wasn't real, couldn't be real. But the cold was real. The fear was real. And somewhere deep in her chest, a familiar darkness stirred—the same darkness that had whispered to her as a child, that had suggested solutions to problems no eight-year-old should have to solve. "I'm not a child anymore," she whispered. Marcus tilted his head, considering. "No. But you still need me. You've always needed me. Especially now." "Now?" His smile widened. "Your brother's getting married next month. Starting a family. And you know what that means, don't you, Sarah?" The realization hit her like a physical blow. Her brother's fiancée was pregnant. They'd announced it last week, glowing with happiness, talking about the future, about children. About children who might need protecting. "No," Sarah breathed. "Yes," Marcus whispered, and his voice was her voice, had always been her voice. "It's time to play again." The lights went out completely. In the darkness, Sarah heard the sound of small feet running through her apartment, and she knew—had always known—that Marcus had never really left. He'd just been waiting for her to remember that some games never end.

And in the silence that followed, Sarah finally understood: some games never end. They just wait for you to remember the rules.

you like tyler and troye therefore i like you 

5-year-old: No, I haven't... I just hear him sometimes. I'll have to sneak up on him to catch him and bring him back to bed...