"What if fear takes control of everything?" Tim asks.
"All Riley's decisions will be conditioned by fear. She will doubt when it comes to doing something bold, she will think twice about every action. Then, she is going to hold herself back more and more. She will become more insecure, more fragile."
"Riley, my dear," Dad says. "We need to go out with Mom. Can you stay home alone for a while?"
"Yes, I guess," she says from the bed.
"If you need anything, call me on the cell phone. Okay?"
"Okay."
Riley is hidden in her bed. She feels threatened by the shadows of the sunset and the surrounding buildings. Suddenly, she is scared of wall stains.
"Mom? Dad?" Riley calls from the bed, but she gets no answer. Fearful, she opens the door of her room. The hallway seems grayer than ever; the screech of the stairs frightens her. "Mom?" Riley whines. She gets to the kitchen. Outside it is raining heavily. A lightning paralyzes her.
"The real problem," Phobia continues, "is that if Fear takes control of everything—and I mean, everything—, Riley can be simply paralyzed. She can just panic, become unable to make decisions or find any answers."
Fear has already become a true mountain of muscles. The rest of the emotions are crouched in a corner of the Headquarters.
"We gave him that strength? Isn't there a way to solve this?" Tim asks desperately.
"Hey, Joy," says Sadness quietly, "I think there's a way to fix this."
Joy has no strength to answer.
"There's something called Trauma," Sadness explains "I read it in the manuals of the new control panel. It is a button to reboot the machine."
"Trauma?" Oblivion urges. "Doesn't it have some side effects?"
"If they activate Trauma, they can erase Riley's memory," Phobia says.
"Would all her memory be erased?" Joy asks startled.
"No," Sadness says to appease Joy, "it would erase just these moments. Then everything would go back to normal."
"She would have a gap in her memory," Phobia says.
"I can't let that happen," Tim assures.
"We can't do that to Riley," Joy says.
"I don't see any other option," says Sadness.
"There has to be another way out," Tim says, "because, if they press that button, if they erase her memory of these moments, it is us who are going to be erased, for good."
"We are hundreds of meters from the nearest exit, bro, buried deep in the subconscious," Lapsus says. "Getting up there is like climbing the moon, I mean climbing a dune."
"What did you say?" Tim says eagerly.
"Dune?"
"No, moon. You said moon, Lapsus, you're a genius!"
YOU ARE READING
Deeper Inside out
Fiksi PenggemarA year after moving to San Francisco, Riley is better than ever. Her hockey team (The Foghorns) is in the finals, everything is going well with her boyfriend Jordan and with mom and dad too. But when everything seems perfect, something happens to mo...
