Lou’s more logical self woke up to the sound of fearful screams ringing in his ear. It wasn’t until a moment later that he realized; the screams were his own. Gathering himself, he got up from the bed and hobbled into the living room with a bit of a pained limp. It was still dark outside, so he assumed it was early in the morning. It made him feel glad, less to explain and more time to consider his options. Sitting down on the couch, he picked up a bottle of rum from the floor beside it. He delicately pulled the cork with a pop, lifting it up to his lips, he figured it would help with the pain for the time being. Just as he was about to taste the spiced liquor, a hand from above grabbed his wrist, stopping him from taking a swig. The hand squeezed his wrist to the point that, had he been a normal person, he would have been crying for mercy.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the owner of the hand asked with a stern but worried voice. Lou tilted his head back to see that it was Scott, giving him an angry and partially exhausted look.
“I’m sorry. I should have asked before drinking your booze,” Lou said apologetically. Although he wasn’t entirely sure how his emotions would play into this conversation, he figured that the best way to avoid an issue was to just apologize. At least, it seemed like the easiest way to deal with the issue.
“That’s not what I care about. You were about to drown whatever feelings you were having in liquor. You can’t do that,” Scott replied. Although, anyone who knew him would call him a hypocrite for saying that. Lou just sat there confused as he was only trying to deal with some physical pain.
“Why not? You do it,” Lou replied with a melancholy tone. Scott’s free hand clenched into a fist before hitting Lou in the cheek, sending him to the floor. The bottle he was holding fell with him, pouring its contents onto the floorboards.
“I drink because my body can’t regulate itself without it. Maybe, when I started drinking, I used my sadness as an excuse. But now, my body is the only reason I continue drinking. Now, let me tell you, what you’re bottling up can’t be solved by drinking it away. The more you bottle it up, the more likely you are to lose your sanity,” Scott said empathetically. He truly seemed to care and wanted to help, even though he knew he had no right to speak.
“I’m perfectly fine, I just needed a drink,” Lou stated as he got back up and returned to the couch. Being the logical part of Lou’s psyche, he was desperately trying to give himself some semblance of feeling other than pain for the time being. If that meant drinking, so be it.
“No, you aren’t. You put on an act yesterday for me and Elysif. Whether it was to make us less worried or to make yourself feel better, it doesn’t matter. No person, after being tortured for as long as you were, would be okay. Right now, your emotions feel distant, when before, you seemed happy and well off,” Scott said with a worried look. He truly looked to be appealing to Lou’s trauma, but as he was, Lou could not relate to nor understand his appeals.
“So what? I’m dealing with it just fine as I am,” Lou said, hoping that response would discourage Scott from continuing. After doing so, he picked the bottle of rum back up and drank some of the contents.
“No, you aren’t. You’re just trying to cover it up with rum. Eventually, you will be unable to keep the cap on the emotions that you’ve bottled up. When that happens, you may lose your sanity, or worse, your humanity. I’ve been there, so I speak from experience. Don’t just bottle it up,” Scott pleaded with the same manner that he usually spoke.
“I’m sorry. You’re wasting your breath on me. I am nothing more than a splinter of Lou Barrett, a small piece of his psyche. When he returns, then you can say that to him,” Lou replied honestly. He knew that Scott would not understand the situation if he didn’t explain it as straightforwardly as possible.
“What?” Scott asked with a befuddled shake of his head. He was starting to believe that Lou had actually lost it. Scott didn’t want to think about that possibility but he was still capable of accepting it.
“Lou Barrett is currently trapped in a cage of his own making and Sela, the time god, has asked me to take over while he regains the missing parts of our psyche. I am nothing more than his logical thinking. I don’t have emotions and I can’t relate to what you’re saying. So wait to tell him that, until he’s actually able to hear it,” Lou explained. Though, his explanation was a bit difficult to understand, so Scott nodded slowly as he wrapped his head around it. Part of him felt as if Lou had absolutely lost his mind.
“I see, do what you want then. Just don’t get yourself or any of us killed,” Scott said, before meandering back to his room.
“Are you going to tell this to Elysif?” Lou asked. Explaining this to Elysif, though, would be a lot more challenging. Not because she wouldn’t understand, but because it would make everything way more complicated than it already was. Scott, upon hearing this, stood still, refusing to look back.
“I don’t know yet,” Scott said with a sigh.
“I feel as if Lou would want as few people to know that he isn’t okay, so please, don’t tell her for his sake,” Lou requested.
“I can’t promise that,” he responded before continuing to his room.
“Of course you can’t. You know it’s logical, but you have emotions that say otherwise,” Lou said to himself before laying back on the couch and taking another swig from the bottle. “I think this cheek might be bruised,” he thought to himself. Though it quickly healed over, as if he had never been hit.
***
I sat next to my depressed cellmate, who has yet to even acknowledge my presence. The silence was starting to get on my nerves, and his lack of care was not helping. No matter how much time passed, the tears kept running down the edge of the mask, causing a small puddle to form under him. How anyone could cry that much was baffling to me. I didn’t know what to do, so I just started patting his back. As I did, he stopped crying and raised his head to look at me.
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“Where did you come from?” he asked with a quaking voice. I didn’t know how to answer that since this was, as far as I knew, a part of my mind... or a part of the Realm of Stars, I guess.
“The door?” I replied cautiously. Pointing at the door to the cell, the man who I had realized looked starved and weak, looked at the door before shaking his head.
“But how? I locked it.” the masked version of myself asked in confusion. Each word he spoke, although clear and precise, sounded to be spoken out of fear.
“I don’t know. Sela told me to go through the door and the next thing I knew, I was in here with you,” I replied. An awkward silence rose between us for several long seconds, before the man shifted around, his worn clothes rustling against the cold stone floor of the cell as he did.
“You can’t trust Sela,” the masked figure said as if I already didn’t know that.
“I don’t trust Sela,” I replied, before sitting across from him against the hard cell wall.
“Yet, you are now trapped here… because you trusted Sela,” he said, as he finally sat with his stomach exposed, revealing that the masked figure was dressed just like me. Was he a part of me? If so, I’m a smartass piece of shit. Is this how everyone else feels around me? Mildly annoyed and awkward?
“Well, don’t you have the key? You can just let me out,” I said, hoping that I could get an easy way out. He thought for a moment, but quickly shook his head in fear before pulling his knees back up to his chest.
“I could… but if I open the door, they will come,” the man replied with a frightened, shaky tone. If this was a part of me, then I didn’t want it. There was no way that I was this terrified of anything… right?
“Who?” I asked curiously. Just what were these people that my other self feared so much?
“The one who wears the mask,” he said, as if he were too scared to even mention his name. If this was what Sela meant by me being broken, then how in the hell was I supposed to become whole again...? With this?
“The masked man is gone. We escaped from him,” I tried to rationally explain. Could I even be rational without the rational part of myself that Sela sent in my stead? Did I still have my rational side? I had no clue.
“No, you believe you are free from him… but he is always here. He lives within us, as a memory we don’t wish to remember. We do not feel the pain anymore, but we remember what it felt like. It will haunt us, and no one can rescue us from it,” he said, as he began scratching at his arm until blood poured from the scratches. Each scratch he made soon healed, like my wounds have, before he would scratch open another part of his fragile, skin-and-bone body.
“Then, we have to escape from it ourselves,” I replied, hoping to pep-talk myself out of this. He stopped scratching and looked at me. The intensity of his stare made me question my logic and the process that led me here.
“Do you see that we are in a cell? We have built it to keep others out, and to keep us safe within. Even so, the pain is here. It lines the walls and sticks to our skin like maggots on a corpse.” The walls changed to fit his description. Flat cell walls began to morph with a layer of spikes, and maggots fell from the ceiling. I got up quickly, trying to knock the organisms from my body in disgust while the small masked piece of me sat wallowing in pity and fear.
“You are a rather morbid part of myself,” I replied in disgust as the bugs and spikes began to disappear from the cell.
“Who said I am a version of you? We are one and the same. There is no difference between us. You have just cut ties with all of the emotions you don’t like, so you could ignore the truth. You even separated yourself from logic, because the ignorance seemed so blissful,” he said, in what I couldn't make out whether was disdain or self-pity, as he began to weep again silently.
“I won’t just sulk here like you. I am not you. Now give me the key!” I demanded, getting progressively louder with each word before standing above him like an enraged parent.
“No!” he shrieked like an arrogant child.
Grabbing him by the collar, I lifted him up with a threatening look. “Give me the key.”
“No. You will not let them in here!” he yelled in defiance, though he did nothing to fight back. It wasn’t like he could do anything to stop me if he tried. His body was skin and bones, with little to no muscle left on him.
“Too bad,” I said, before throwing him against the wall. When I did, I saw a key clatter to the floor. As I stepped towards it, the corpse-like body of a man lunged forward, grabbed it, and stuffed it into his shirt. From the impact of the wall, his mask was now partially broken on the top right, revealing some of his bloody forehead, which quickly healed back up.
“You can’t have it!” he bellowed as fearful tears streamed down his mask, and then curled into a ball. I had forgotten this feeling… this fear. This part of me is so afraid of being tortured by that masked freak, the same as how I felt when I was captured.
“I’m sorry,” I said, sliding my back down the wall opposite of him until I had returned to my resting position on the floor as well. “I forgot that you are a part of me, whether I like it or not. We were scared and unable to change our fate. I hate that we’re weak, but all we can do to change that is to get stronger.”
“Well, you can become stronger without me,” he replied with a broken voice.
“No, we cannot get stronger unless we are united. Sela probably knew this. They weren’t talking about me destroying myself because of time travel, but because we’re so unstable. You need to be a part of me. We can’t stay separated forever,” I said as if I was pleading with him. I didn't know how else to solve this.
“You can, and will. Now, stop bothering me,” he said, before turning away.
“You’re a dick,” I replied.
“Well, so are you,” he countered.
“Touché.”
“Are you going to try to take the key from me again?” he asked whilst peeking at me from across the cell.
“Yes, we need to get out of here,” I replied with the truth.
‘Well, that’s too bad,” my masked counterpart said with my usual sassy tone. Arguing with him was leaving me fatigued as a result.
“Let me guess. I’m going to have to fight you for it?” I asked with a defeated sigh.
“No, you’ll have to kill me for it,” he said, before taking the key from under his shirt, lifting up the mask enough to expose his mouth, and swallowing the key whole. I didn't have time to comprehend what he was doing, before the cell echoed with a loud gulp.
“Oh… fuck.” There was a mix of shock and confusion on my face. It was as if my entire body froze up without warning, and I began to feel an emotion that I could not identify. Hatred, fear, desperation, disgust, intrigue, natural instinct, this was none of these. Perhaps it was all of them at once. All I knew was that I hated this feeling, and that I may have just lost my last chance at freedom.