Chapter 32: Thirty - Whole Story

Whole Story

October:

I blinked.

And blinked again. And again. I didn’t really know Darren that well, but I was assuming that what he’d done just before he’d left hadn’t been very characteristic of him. His words echoed in my mind for a few seconds after the door had closed behind him.

I didn’t let myself dwell on them, though. I had more important things to deal with. Like the boy on the other side of the wall that was probably dying to know why I’d jumped out of a window.

Shaking my head as if the action could throw the confusion from my mind, I dropped down to the floor. I was trying to figure out how to initiate the conversation – assuming that Parish would wait for me to speak first – when he piped up,

“What’s going on with you and Darren?”

Damn it.

Suddenly I was more comfortable talking about jumping out of windows.

“Nothing.” I replied. It was the truth, wasn’t it? There really was nothing going on. Darren was just my doctor, I was just his patient. He was just being concerned about me.

“Right.” Parish scoffed. Rolling his eyes at me, no doubt. “Don’t lie to me, October.”

“I’m not lying.” I insisted. “There’s nothing going on. He was just being his usual concerned self.”

“He’s nowhere near that nice or concerned about me. I’m his patient too.”

“Maybe that’s because I’m easier to be nice to.” I retorted, knowing fully well that I was probably crossing a line with that comment.

“Yeah, maybe.” He agreed, not taking the jab too seriously. “But you and I both know that he didn’t sound like someone who was just being nice. He was practically begging you to open up to him. How many doctors do you know that do that?”

I bit down on my bottom lip. As much as I hated to admit it, Parish had a point. Darren hadn’t spoken like an objective therapist. The plea behind the words was too intimate for that. Parish was right. Darren had been begging me to trust him.

But why would he do that? His begging me to trust him implied that he thought I wasn’t being honest; that I was hiding something from him. I felt like someone had just dumped a bucket of cold water over my head. “He doesn’t believe me.” I muttered under my breath.

“What?” There was an edge in Parish’s voice that my mind attributed to the unfairness of Darren being more concerned about me than for him.

“That’s why he wants me to trust him.” I spoke a little louder this time. “He doesn’t believe me.”

“About the voices?”

“Yes.” I nodded.

“Did he tell you that he believed you?” Parish asked.

“No.” I conceded, “but he once said that he didn’t think I was schizophrenic. So, I assumed that maybe he’d believe that the voices weren’t in my head.”

“October,” Parish’s voice suddenly adopted a gentle quality. That was new. If the past three days were any indication, Parish didn’t do gentle. It wasn’t his style. “believing that the voices are real wasn’t even easy for me; and I’d gotten all scratched up by them. Darren’s a doctor; he probably doesn’t believe in anything supernatural like this. His main interest is helping you get better. If you want him to believe you, then maybe you should just give him time.”

“Maybe.” I mumbled, lying down. I huffed.

He let a few beats pass before he spoke again. “Question?”

“Shoot.”

“Why did you lie about the nightmares?”

I thought about it. Why had I lied? I honestly hadn’t really thought about my response; it had just come out of my mouth. Maybe I wanted him to think I was getting better. Maybe I didn’t trust him. I didn’t know the reason.

“I don’t know.” I answered after a while. “It sorta just came out.”

“Okay.” I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but something about the way he’d said that made it seem like, even though I hadn’t given him a proper answer, Parish had understood my reasons anyway. I didn’t question him about it though. “Another question?”

I frowned. Another one? I considered telling him no, but then realized that he’d answered every one of my questions about his session. It was only fair. “Go ahead.”

“What was it that you weren’t telling Darren? About what the voices were making you do.”

I cringed. The reason I hadn’t offered this particular information to Darren even when he’d asked was because the answer terrified me. Just thinking about what they’d done sent violent shivers up my spine.

“They possessed my parents.”

“what?” Parish hissed. “Can they even do that?”

“Apparently, yes.”

“Jesus.” I could almost picture him running a hand through his hair. “What did they do.”

“At first, nothing much. They just made them walk around the hallways in the middle of the night, bumping into things to wake me up.” I wrapped my arms around my body, hugging myself as if to protect me from the memories. “After the second night, they made them do strange things. They would make my mother crawl over to my bedroom door at night and whisper things like, ‘you killed them. Their blood is on your hands’ through the door.

“My father would fling himself at wall outside my room. I’d lie awake listening to the regular thumps of his body colliding with the wall. They didn’t remember a thing in the mornings. It drove me insane. I’d walk into the kitchen every morning and they’d be surprised by the bags under my eyes from the sleepless nights. I couldn’t eat because I couldn’t stop thinking about the things they’d done in the nights.”

Parish didn’t interrupt me, so I continued. “In some ways, being admitted to the psych ward was a blessing. I was finally able to get some sleep, the nurses made sure that I ate, I didn’t have to worry about my parents tormenting me…” I paused. The unbidden memories of the week of torment the voices put me through via my parents made it hard to continue.

“You weren’t being chased by the voices, were you?” Parish asked, after a few seconds of silence. “Your parents pushed you, didn’t they?”

I sat there in shock. He was the first person to ever realize that. True, I’d never actually told anyone the truth about the window incident, but still. There was no reason for him not to believe the lie I’d told Darren about being chased by the voices.

When I’d finally gotten over my initial shock, I shook my head. “Yes, and no. I was being chased by the voices. One of them. The other one was in my Dad – he’s the one that was made to push me out of the window.”

“Where was the other one?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “They never show up all at once. Usually they take turns and pop in one at a time. Sometimes it’s two of them.”

“Oh.” He said. “I can’t believe that you went through all that. It must have been hell.”

“It was.” I nodded.

“What are they going to do to you?” He asked quietly. “Now that you’re telling me all this stuff?”

“I don’t know. It definitely won’t be good.”

“Hmm…” I rubbed my eyes wearily, trying not to give in to my imagination and think about what they would do. “They’ll have to deal with me too. We’ll get through this.”

Despite all the horrors dancing through my mind, I couldn’t help but smile. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For not flipping out on me.”

He laughed. “I only do that when they’re around, remember?” He joked. Despite its bad taste, I couldn’t help but laugh along with him.

A couple of minutes ticked away before Parish finally broke the silence. “This blows.” He said. “What do we do now?”

I racked my brain trying to think of something to do. I didn’t want to resort to talking about our pasts. Parish and I had had enough memory swapping for now. But what could we do to pass the time? We were locked up in solitary confinement indefinitely. Besides sleeping and talking, I couldn’t really think of anything else for us to do.

“How about a game of categories?” I asked after a few minutes. It was a dumb suggestion, but the only one I could think of.

My words were met with silence.

Followed by a frustrated groan.

“Fine.” Parish’s resigned mumbled echoed unhappily through the vent. I couldn’t help but grin at the disdain in his voice. “How do you play?”

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AN: This chapter is dedicated to the lovely chucbass28, because she's one of the two awesome creatures that decided to make me a facebook fan page.

If anyone's interested, you can check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/SilvrStake

Yes. That was a little shameless self-promotion. Don't judge me. I don't do it that often :P