Hair billowed around her in the summer humidity, blonde strands contrasting with the fire in her dark eyes. Her lips pulled back in a snarl, her arm raised, weapon at the ready. An angry goddess prepared to strike. Her target likely had a less awe-inspiring view of her. Understandable.

“Sophie,” I cooed, as low and smooth as you should when approaching a raging force of nature. “Please put the bottle down.”

She leaned more of her weight into her left forearm. It pressed further into the throat of the man pinned against the brick wall that lined the sidewalk separating the high-end houses and perfectly manicured lawns.

The man gurgled a whimper. He out-massed Sophie, his midsection flab easily twice her own lean waist. But he was far from a fighter.

“Sophie.” I said again.

“He’s got a gun, Noah. He’s been stalking me, looking in the windows, watching me sleep. Now he’s got a gun.” She growled at him. “Going to have your way, huh? What about now?” Her weapon arm dropped, bringing the shattered wine bottle closer to the man’s neck.

I took a tentative step forward, hands reaching toward her, placating. “Sophie, this is Kyle. He lives next door. He and his wife brought us cookies when we moved in. You remember that?”

“Even friendly neighbors can do awful things.”

“He works all day. His family goes to church. He’s been gone all week helping with their church’s summer camp. How did he stalk us?”

She hesitated.

Kyle sucked in a breath as the weight on his throat eased. “Sophie—” he choked out.

“Shut up.” She waved the broken bottle. Kyle’s face went from purple to powdery. His hands shot up, palms out.

No weapon. No gun.

“What exactly have you been hearing?” I asked.

“Noises. Talking. Someone calling my name.”

“And it sounded like Kyle?”

“I….” She furrowed her brow. “I think so. I saw him.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“His car was gone, Sophie. The lights were out in their house. He and his family came home this morning, all together, with their car packed full of stuff. Don’t you think his wife or kids would have noticed him leaving without them?”

She grimaced. “Maybe.”

“Perhaps we should call and see?”

The color drained from her face as realization set in. The fire in her eyes turned to tears. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”

The bottle slipped from her grasp, hitting the sidewalk in a burst of shattered glass.

Kyle didn’t hesitate. He pushed past, sprinting faster than I’d ever seen him move, his hand scrambling to pull his phone from his pocket.

I watched him disappear behind his brick fence, the iron-wrought gate slamming behind him.

“He’s going to call the cops.”

I turned back to Sophie with a snort. “We’re lucky if he doesn’t call SWAT.”

She hugged herself, the vengeful goddess replaced by a frightened young woman in brand-name jeans and a blue tank-top. A tear slid down her cheek. “I swear I saw him… or I could have sworn it.”

“But now?”

“Now I’m not sure. It felt so real, before.”

I closed the last few feet between us, wrapping my arms around her as she held her face in her hands and sobbed.

“I thought I was getting better,” she said between sobs. “I haven’t… hadn’t seen or heard anything in a while.”

“That you know of.”

She shoved me away. “You’re supposed to make me feel better, Noah.”

“For attacking an innocent man? Even I have my limits. You need help. These hallucinations of yours nearly killed our neighbor. Please, listen to me this time.”

“Will you go with me to the hospital?” Her eyes grew soft, reminding me of our childhood, when she’d make the same face every time she wanted a toy I had. It worked every time.

“Of course I will. I’ll stick to you like glue, now and forever.”

She nodded, wiping her eyes on the back of her arm before offering a hand to me. I took it without hesitation, reveling in the smoothness of her skin.

We walked hand in hand to our car, a simple gray four-door with far fewer bells and whistles than most on the street. Well, technically, it was in Sophie’s name, but we went everywhere together, so it wasn’t like I needed a vehicle of my own.

I offered to drive as usual. She turned me down, as usual. The simple ritual calmed her down, and by the time we drove out of our driveway, she’d stopped crying completely. We turned off the residential maze of streets as sirens sounded in the distance.

Next came a blur of police, courts, tears, holding Sophie, and wishing I could. In the end, everyone around us agreed with me — she needed help, not punishment.

So we stood outside of a long-term treatment facility, staring past its long cabin walls at the tennis and basketball courts ringed by trees in its backyard.

“I think I see a pond back there,” I said, shielding my eyes from the rising sun.

“God, I hope not.” She forced a wane smile. “If swimming is part of my treatment, I quit.”

I grinned back. Sophie hated water, hated getting wet. Nearly drowning as a child would do that to you. “Just tell them you’re part cat, or maybe part gremlin. You can’t get them wet, right?”

She laughed. “Right. But, hopefully, I can still eat after midnight.” She turned toward the homey oak door leading into the facility. Her face fell.

My arms were around her in a second. “Don’t be afraid,” I whispered into her ear. “I’ll be here every day. If they don’t let me visit, I’ll bang on the windows until they do.”

“Thanks, Noah.” She leaned back into me. “Really. You’ve always been there for me when no one else cared. I appreciate it more than you know.”

“No matter what I know, I’m staying.”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Sophie spun out of my arms, finally flashing me a genuine smile. “Just don’t rile up the police, okay? I think I’ve done that enough for both of us.”

With that, she disappeared into the building, and my troubles began.

As the door shut, something moved in the corner of my eye. Dark, formless, it floated near the pond in the distance. A cool breeze blew across the water, bringing with it a raspy whisper. Noah….

*****

“One med messes with my stomach, the other makes it hard to sleep.” Sophie sighed, pushing off with her feet as the chair swing we were in swung lazily back and forth.

We sat under a gazebo in the treatment facility’s spacious lawn, as far from the pond as we could get. The shade of the gazebo came as a welcome respite from the heat of midday.

“I thought hallucinations while awake were bad,” she continued. “I take forever to fall asleep, wake up an hour later, but not really. There’s someone with long arms and a knife standing at the foot of my bed, and I can’t move. The doctors say its ‘sleep paralysis.’”

“These medicines are supposed to help, right?”

“Supposedly. They say it takes a month or two for them to truly work. Until then, I just have to deal.”

What if they don’t? Is what I wanted to ask, but the glimmer of hope in her eyes made the words stick. No way I’d be the one to squash it.

“DId they just give you medicine? Seems like all of this is a bit much for a pharmacy.”

Sophie laughed. Maybe it was just me, but it seemed to come easier to her than it had in a long time. “No, of course not. There are classes, activities, meditation, therapy.”

“Therapy?” I tried to hide my wince. Sophie’s grimace and shrug told me I didn’t do a good job.

“You know, it’s not near as bad as the last time, or the time before that… or the time before that.” Her frown deepened. “Anyway, I’m trying to keep an open mind. I really want this to work.”

“It will,” I said, immediately regretting bringing up her past failures in therapy.

I scooted closer to her and threw my arm over her shoulders. “This it the one.” I swept my other arm toward the vista in front of us. “The place that will show you what peace really means.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

Know… know… know….

The words echoed from all directions. High, low, smooth, coarse. I sat up, whipping my head around to find the crowd who had snuck up on us. The voices fell silent. A single person entered the basketball court, way too far away for what I’d heard. The voices had sounded as if they were right beside us.

“You okay?” Sophie chewed at her bottom lip as she watched me.

I’d brought up terrible memories, and now I was worrying her. I mentally kicked myself. My issues, whatever they were, could wait. I had to get it together for her. “Uh, yeah, fine. Just heard something. Probably that guy over there.” I jerked my head toward the basket baller.

“Really? I didn’t hear anything.”

“Just a bit jumpy today, I guess. Haven’t been sleeping as well without you in the house.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve been talking about me so much, I haven’t even asked about you.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m fine. You’re what’s important, anyway. Focus on getting better. Let me deal with my separation anxiety like a big boy.”

I’d meant it as a joke, but Sophie merely leaned in to study me closer. “You sure?”

“Positive.”

Positive… positive… positive….

I gritted my teeth and smiled, pointedly ignoring the surrounding cacophony.

I didn’t deal with my separation anxiety like a big boy. In fact, it only grew, pushed along by the sudden appearance of a voice in my ear, a shape in the corner of my eye. Scent and sound soon joined the line to torment me, the scent of popcorn when there wasn’t a kernel around, the sound of a waterfall when I couldn’t even say how far away a large body of water was.

I pushed it all away. Pushed it down for her. Perhaps it was the truth, too long in the reveal. Maybe I’d been just as sick as she was all along. Two ill people drawn to each other like moths to a flame. Maybe Sophie had been my rock, and without her I’d been set afloat to sink.

We could end up going to the same treatment facility. It seemed nice enough. After Sophie had finished her treatment, of course. I’d promised to keep the focus on her, and I kept my promises.

But it got more difficult.

After a month of treatment, Sophie invited me to a celebration picnic on the facility grounds. Well, really it was a planned picnic for all the facility, but it was a nice gesture, anyway.

I brought her favorites — cherry cobbler and vinegar chips, with lemonade to wash it down. She hadn’t touched any of it. The wind blew her golden hair back in waves as she chewed her bottom lip and stared into the distance.

“Aren’t you hungry?”

A peal of laughter covered up half of my question. Other people, both those undergoing treatment and employees, sat scattered across the freshly cut front lawn on plaid picnic blankets. Some murmured to themselves, casting darting glances over their shoulder. Others talked loudly to open air. Plenty were having perfectly normal conversations in small or larger groups.

“Gives you hope, doesn’t it?” I said.

No one interrupted that question.

Sophie glanced at me and smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Yes, it does. Some of these people come in worse off than me, and now… now they know how to deal with it all, how to have, if not a normal life, then a life worth living.”

She spoke low and quiet. I leaned in to catch each word. “How are you ‘dealing’?”

“Good, actually. The doctors were right. The stomach and sleep problems have stopped.”

My stomach cramped as if on cue. It had been doing that a lot lately. “So, the medicine is helping now?”

“Yes… they’re getting there.”

A dull pounding grew behind my eyes as whispers floated by. “So what’s wrong?”

“What do you mean?”

I looked at her and raised my eyebrows. “Really? We’ve been together forever. You think I can’t tell when something’s bothering you?”

“Right…. It’s… not important.”

Three simple words shouldn’t have hurt so much. They dug in like glass, cutting ties I’d thought eternal. She’d lied to me. She’d never lied to me. I broke out in a sweat. I couldn’t tell if it was from the pain in my gut, my head, or my heart.

My heart still hurt the next time I came to meet her, out-competing the pain in my body which had spread to my muscles and bones.

The voices, smells, sounds, had all become louder, more frequent. I didn’t care anymore. I wanted to know why she lied to me, and I’d finally worked up the courage to ask.

I brought her a bouquet on a whim. White lilies, her favorite flower. Even if she’d hurt me, I still desperately wanted to see her smile.

She met me outside the facility a short distance from the front door.

“Hey beautiful,” I said as I offered her the flowers.

She looked past me, chewing her bottom lip so hard I saw a bead of blood.

“Sophie?”

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then let it out. “I’m almost done, Noah. With the treatment.”

A thrill passed through me. “That’s great —”

“I’m sorry I haven’t thought about you much lately. Part of the treatment and all.” A tear rolled down her cheek, and my heart fell with it. Her white lie to me suddenly felt so meaningless. “But Lucy says it’s time. Time to let go. You’ve been my anchor. Kept me afloat when I should have drowned, but….”

Hair prickled on the back of my neck as my stomach roiled. The smell of tar lay thick in my nose. I tried to speak, but no sound escaped.

“You seemed so real….” Sophie choked back a sob. “But she’s right. All these memories of us together. Just my mind doing what it does best. Can you believe I made up my own best friend? Leave it to me to have an imaginary friend in my twenties, right?”

The more she talked, the more my skin crawled.

Fake… fake… fake….

This time, the voices came with bodies.

Blurry and distinct, long-armed and short, glowing eyes and empty sockets. They crowded around me, all gazes locked on Sophie as she cried.

She wiped her face and gave a short, clipped laugh. “This is harder than I thought it would be. Talking away a sleep demon wasn’t so bad, but this….”

Sophie continued to look past me. No, I realized as my legs trembled, she looked through me.

“I loved you, Noah. I truly did. As weird as it sounds to love a figment of my warped mind, it’s the truth. But Lucy, Ashley, Matthew, they have all shown me the light at the end of the tunnel, and as hard as this is, I know it’s what I have to do. It’s right.” With a sniffle, she stood up straight and squared her shoulders. “Goodbye, Noah. You’re not real, and it’s time for me to accept that.”

If a hammer had fallen from the sky to smite me, it would have been better. My legs gave way. The white lilies spilled from my grasp, scattering across the gravel like Sophie’s tears.

I wanted to yell, to scream about how wrong she was, how real I was, yet deep down, I knew. This was the truth she had hid from me at the picnic. The sickness taking root inside me.

All around, the other hallucinations collapsed, spasming as they melted away in the summer heat. Mirages. Like me.

I looked once more into her face, the face of my creator, my goddess. For her to heal, I had to die. My sight faded, but I held on long enough to see her smile. This time, it reached her eyes.