Are you awake? Is there breath in your lungs? Could you check for me?
--
[ Here is where this continues from, almost three years ago. The Lodger now, finally, finds himself awake in our new beginnings. Or, at least, as awake as he can believe himself to be. ]
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There's this student in my history course, Guillotine. Has sharp teeth, but I think that's just because she likes the aesthetic? I heard she runs a fight club on the roof after dark, that she's the one you want to talk to if you need something to defend yourself.
I help her with homework sometimes. She has a habit of not remembering people's chosen names. Every time I see her she calls me by the colour of my sweater, or shoes, or once my piercing.
I saw her, after class, handing a baseball bat covered in cold-forged iron nails to a frail-looking kid with a nasty scar across his cheek. She was grinning with her horrible sharp teeth. One of them shined. He looked like he was ready to cry. She said, explicitly, that it was a gift freely given. He hugged her. I think her tooth was iron, too. How does she keep it from rusting?
I was surprised she isn't gone yet. You'd think they'd want to get rid of her fast. I asked.
Yo, reminder that you are loved and appreciated regardless of your work, and also unrelated your work is wonderful and we all love you. I just wanted to give me two cents, because, well. I have two cents and why not. I genuinely think you're doing very good work and have the impression many other poc and lgbt+ people in your audience agree. it's important to listen to opinions but it's also important to remember that listening doesn't always mean agreeing with.
that’s very kind (and I’ve had a lot of responses to this whole thing that are similar) but I don’t want to blinker myself, it’s important that I can listen and see things that even if I didn’t intend, are there and could be negatively interpreted/affect people in a bad way. that said there’s been a huge outpouring of love and affirmation that, on the whole, tpoh is doing what I want it to do- which is communicating a message of love and tolerance, and that’s what I’ll strive even harder towards.
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Why should light be any safer than the dark? Why do you insist on those little candles and bulbs of yours? Sit in the black and listen.
Its whispers are oh so much more pleasant that the screaming of brightness.
Foolish! His mind screams. Insolent thoughts, bothersome...things you were! Clogging his mind with such nonsense, how often must he repeat this to himself? The light does not protect one from what lurks in. No...he knew better. And by extent you should know better. The light does not ward off what lay within! It merely shrouds them--No! Hush yourself! Too loud of thoughts, of phantoms twisting at his brain--you'll draw the Guests nearer!
No...no your voice...it wasn't his own. Not quite. It was wrong. You're wrong.
He knew that voice. The voice that took up so much of his mind on restless nights and foggy days spent alone in a withering forest. It was the only voice he knew. But it was...off. High pitched like a fork against a plate. You sounded much like him but if it had been filtered through layers of dense fabric. He could feel his heart pounding in his throat. You...
There was a boy who joined our theater class in the middle of the year, and had no idea what he was doing.
He has a scar across his eye, that stiffened his skin, and pulled at his features, so that every look he'd give would be slightly off balance, every stare both penetrating and dumbfounded, depending on which side of him you saw.
He tried to introduce himself with his name, at first, and we shushed him before he went beyond the letter D.
"You need a nickname," we said, "That They will not take."
"Alright then," he laughed, "call me Ceph, then."
The boy went straight for the main roles, and seemed wholly uninterested in any of his other, mandatory studies. All he cared for was the stage, and the eyes upon him. He would force them onto him, obsessed with being seen.
His voice was full of life, acting his own persona out even when the curtains were shut tight.
When asked about his scar, he'd smile, reminiscing.
"Mother would not let me meet a friend," he'd start, then laughed. "So I snuck him in."
He never bothered to elaborate.
They seemed to avoid him far more than he deserved. And he seemed to know when it was Them who were staring at him, and loved every second of it.
There were rumors, floating about, of how, when he'd sleep alone in his room (He was never given a roommate, and we all wondered how he was still with us), sounds would rattle the floor.
About how he'd paint the walls every night, and the ink would disappear by morning.
About how he'd whisper secrets and lies to the air when he thought none were hearing.
He couldn't have been one of Them, we thought at first. He didn't know enough to suspect us when we tested him, and he passed every check.
But he couldn't have been one of us, either.
His uneven smile sometimes told two different stories, depending on where you looked.
I was awake far too late, and very much afraid. I knew better, and failed to follow through. I always had a hard time keeping myself still when darkness hit, head too full and loud when all else fell quiet. Too many characters, begging to be real.
I heard him hum as I turned the corner, and it snapped me out of my waking dreams.
He was sitting on the floor, his uneven grin plastered on his face, and his scarred eye open, looking at the ceiling.
And then at me.
He asked me what was wrong, and his voice was dull and quiet, as if he forgot what speech was.
I mumbled about thoughts and noises. His eye stared back at me blank.
He told me he could help, and I immediately resigned. I do not take deals from anyone, I know better. Especially that late at night. And from the likes of him.
I asked him what was he doing, and he sighed. "I'm sleeping," he said.
"No you are not," I replied.
He touched his one shut eye.
"I am, but it is a bother, so I do not participate in it. I always have the worst dreams."
He drew with his finger on the floor, and where he cleaned off the dust, dark water poured in to fill the trenches.
There was the smell of deep ocean.
I turned back and ran to my room. I knew better.
Next morning he did not show up at rehearsals. Nor at lunch. Nor anywhere at all.
But when I returned to my room, my roomie was standing out the door. She had a look in her eye that all of us knew.
"You have something on your bed," she said.
Did I have a choice but to look?
A red plastic cup of dark, dark waters, that smelled like deep ocean and did not let the light penetrate in.
It had my true name written on it with sharpie, in messy, loopy handwriting, and a message.
"If you ever meed help drowning the voices," it said.
When I poured it out the window, I heard a hum.
We never saw that boy again.
Where the salt water hit, so many floors below my window, there have formed a puddle, where everything would sink, but would never seem to hit bottom.
I was always restless, mom says. Ever since I was little.
"Can't you remember?" She asks me.
I remind her I cannot remember last week.
My mind isn't quite me, and neither is my body, I think. I could never pin down what is, though, so those two definitions will have to do.
I study animation, I find fascination in capturing thoughts in motion, more clear and expressive than I could ever be.
When I was asked for a name that wasn't my own, I did not know what to give. No name is my own, not really.
I gave one anyway, the name of a character I was once fond of. One of those who would tear the mind that was not me out the body that was not mine and run off with it, so that I would have to chase it down and trap it back in its cage of bone.
I think I chose Strix?
My affection was always quick to fade.
The fair folk scared me, sure, but I don't think it was in quite the way that was expected of me. I was never good at being afraid right.
I've been told by someone (a friend?) that I always stared at Them as if I was seeing them better than anyone.
Which is strange, because I could not.
They just always happened to stand where my eyes land, when my mind initiates a game of cat and mouse once more.
I've been getting restless again, going out at night to walk the hallways. A bad habit around here, I know.
I think it's gotten me into trouble.
Yesterday I caught up to the fleeing mind, and when my eyes regained focus, I found I could see what they were staring at.
They were a strange thing, certainly.
I was not certain it wasn't another layer in the chase.
They asked my name, and I gave them something I knew never to use again.
Another name I was no longer fond of.
Pecco, maybe?
It did not like that I would stare. It took me a little while to stop.
I explained that I was looking for a mind that ran away, and laughed as I tapped my head and claimed I put it back where it belongs.
They asked if that is where it should be.
I shrugged.
"Finders keepers."
"Is that so?"
"Only for that which is lost."
They frowned. Which is, of course, bad.
I didn't seem to mind. I was never that good at being afraid for the right reasons.
I saluted goodbye, in that way that I do when I am paying no attention.
"See ya," I mumbled.
"Will you, now?" They asked.
"Probably not, these eyes don't like seeing what I ask of them."
They said another thing, but my mind came loose, and I turned to give chase.
They caught it before me, holding it gently between ebony fingers.
"Finders keepers!" They grinned all too wide.
"It's not lost," I argued.
"Oh, but it is, isn't it?"
I couldn't argue with that.
I am no longer restless, now that I've nothing to chase.
In its absence, I think I found myself.
Sometimes I visit it, and my body. They make excellent art.
