CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Weeping. Quiet, strangled weeping.
It greeted me within seconds of entering the apartment, my bag dropping to the carpeted floor as I followed the sound. I knocked on my bedroom door, silence swallowing the soft sniffles from inside. There was a pause, and then a barely audible ‘come in’ that granted me entry.
My heart shattered. Auden was curled up in my bed, knees drawn to his chest, rocking back and forth as silent tears trailed down his cheeks. He was trembling, uncontrollably, and I pulled him into my arms, whispering soothing words that failed to silence the sobs racking through his thin frame.
You did this to him.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, voice cracking. “I didn’t realise the time and…and I got trapped in the library and my phone died and–”
“You forgot about me,” Auden cut me off.
I lifted his chin, expecting to see anger or hurt, only to be met with resignation. He looked as though he had been waiting for this moment, as if it were inevitable.
“No,” I shook my head. “I didn’t. I could never forget you. I tried to call you but my phone died and I didn’t have a charger and security took forever to let us out.”
“Us?” Auden sniffled.
“I was trapped with…another student,” I explained. “I would never abandon you, Auden. It was an accident. It will never happen again.”
With tears glistening in his bright blue eyes, Auden studied me for a long, long moment before nodding his head and wiping at the tears that flowed down his cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I was just wo–worried,” Auden hiccupped. “I thought maybe…you didn’t need me anymore.”
“What? How can you think that?” I asked. “Auden…I’ll always need you. You’re my brother. You’re…my everything. Don’t ever think that, okay?”
Auden shook his head. “One day you won’t need me anymore. I know that. But I just didn’t want it to be today.”
"That's not true."
A sniffle was Auden's only response as he adjusted his glasses.
“Come on,” I sighed, rising to my feet and pulling him up with me. “I’m starving. Let’s have some noodles, yeah?”
He nodded.
We ate. We talked. We went to bed.
Everything was okay. But I couldn’t get his words out of my head: One day you won’t need me anymore. Why would he think that?
***
With what little sleep I managed to acquire the night before, I stumbled into the lecture hall with a yawn and slow, tired blinks. My head throbbed. All I wanted to do was curl up in bed and forget about the world, but attendance was mandatory, and I did not want to risk falling behind.
Dr. Elsbeth Lay bid us all a good morning before proceeding with her lecture. Each week focused on a particular psychological disorder—symptoms, the diagnosis process, and treatments. According to the PowerPoint slides, this week’s disorder was schizophrenia.
“What is schizophrenia?” Dr. Lay read off the first slide, her long black hair swaying as she moved from one end of the platform to the other. “It is a serious mental health condition that can change the way people think, feel, and act.”
I rested my chin on my hand, gaze resting on the projector. The words on screen all seemed to blend together—a mere blur of black text. I blinked. Once. Twice. Three times. The words were moving, letters abandoning their post in favour of a word three paragraphs over.
“One of the most common symptoms of this disorder are hallucinations—such as seeing things that nobody else can, hearing voices that only you can hear. This is what is usually portrayed in film and television,” Dr. Lay explained.
My throat went dry. The mirror, the Devil’s voice in my head, the words moving around on screen—these were hallucinations, were they not? Nobody else had seen the mirror and no one else seemed to hear the Devil’s taunts. I straightened in my chair.
“There may be delusions,” Dr. Lay went on. “These are false beliefs that a person may feel are undoubtedly true.”
My mind then shifted to my mother. She believed that Auden and I were possessed by the Devil, and that the only way to save us was an exorcism that ended in flames.
Nausea danced in my stomach, and I wrapped one arm around myself as I listened to Dr. Lay go on to list disorganised thinking, lack of emotional expression, agitation, memory problems, disordered behaviour, and inappropriate reactions as other symptoms of schizophrenia.
“There is a lot of debate around what causes schizophrenia,” she said.
“CT scans sometimes find abnormal functioning of neurotransmitters, like dopamine, can cause these symptoms. There have also been cases where brain shrinkage or circuitry can cause the disorder. One of the big ones is heredity. It tends to run in families. If a parent has the disorder, their offspring are more susceptible.”
I almost brought up my insides then and there. My mother exhibited symptoms of schizophrenia. As did I.
“To be diagnosed with schizophrenia, you will undergo a physical exam, blood tests, an MRI or CT scan, and a mental health evaluation. Since drugs may also cause similar symptoms, you’ll need to be tested for those as well.
If you have symptoms of delusions, hallucinations, or any of the other symptoms mentioned previously for a minimum of six months, you can be diagnosed with schizophrenia. ”
I needed air. I gathered up my laptop, swung my bag over my shoulder and stumbled out of the lecture hall with an arm around my stomach. The cool breeze did little to ease the panic spreading through me.
My hands trembled, vision nothing but a static screen as I swayed, losing control of my own bodily movements.
A siren went off in my head, ears ringing violently as I heard a muffled ‘you okay?’ by a faceless student who stood a little to my left.
I opened my mouth to respond, but the darkness swallowed me as I collapsed to the ground.
***
I couldn’t remember how long I was blacked out for. One minute I was struggling to breathe and the next I was seated upright, back pressed against the trunk of a tree as I chewed on a banana handed to me by a student First Aid Officer.
“Are you sure you don’t need me to call a paramedic?” she asked as she crouched in front of me, worry lines creasing her forehead.
“I’m fine,” I assured her in between bites. “I didn’t eat breakfast and I think my blood pressure just dropped. The banana is helping.”
She nodded, satisfied with my answer. “Take it easy now, okay? Go home, eat, drink plenty of water, and if you continue feeling weak, go to the hospital.”
I gave her my assurances and waited until she walked away before climbing to my feet, a little unsteady but strong enough to walk toward the bus stop.
Just realised you’re crazy, huh?
A lump lodged itself in my throat and I swallowed it down quickly. It wasn’t real. The voice wasn’t real. The Devil wasn’t real. It was all a figment of my overly active imagination.
I am real, the Devil corrected me with a playful chuckle, you have never questioned my existence before, so why now?
He was right. I never questioned it. Why? Did I think everyone had the Devil whispering in their ear? No, of course not. So why then did I never ask myself why I heard his voice? When had I just accepted that the Devil spoke to me, taunted me, and that there were no explanations?
Work Song by Hozier hummed in my ear as I slipped into a window seat on the bus and watched the world pass by.
I blocked out all thoughts of my mother, of the Devil, of the symptoms of schizophrenia.
Instead, my mind wandered to Nathaniel Carrington and the assignment we had to work on.
I ended our last encounter rather…coldly.
Disordered behaviour.
I shoved the Devil to the back of my mind, imprisoning him in a cell along with my mother. There was nothing wrong with me. My mother traumatised me with thoughts that the Devil was inside of me, and I conjured him from that trauma. He wasn’t real. But I wasn’t insane.
You don't really believe that do you?
The prison was not strong enough to hold him, and I turned my music up louder, managing to drown out the world but not the cruel chaos in my head.
If I was easy to kill, you would have done it already, little monster.