L'Appel du Vide (Nocebo Effect P3)

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Under all of the layers of self-hatred I've detected in Dallon, he's somehow back, and not even a suicide attempt could silence him. He absolutely abhorred himself, and he never even looked in the mirror because he didn't need to. Other people's reactions were enough. Are their mouths wide open? They're stunned by him. Are their brows pinched with a clothespin? They're disgusted by his presence here. Are they rushing up to hug him because they haven't seen him in a while? He must've forgotten them, forgotten their impact on his disposition because not once did he glance at the reflection of himself, and that's where he went wrong, because now he has no idea who the hell he is, and if I was such a grand part of him then he's forgotten me, too.

I'm grateful, at least, that he's complied with my wishes to bring him home to have him explain what in the world is going on with him and his brain and why I'm so pushy all of the sudden towards the millions of answers I've amassed inside of my head and on the index cards I've drafted to him that he will never read, and though Dallon is hesitant, he's here nevertheless, plunging his black Converse sneakers into the bricks of my front staircase leading towards the house where he will provide me with the closure I never thoroughly received by thinking that he was dead.

He's confounded. Of course he is. Who wouldn't be confounded when someone you don't know rushes up to you claiming to be your best friend? Yeah, it's from amnesia purposes, but I'm still a stranger to him, but I'm praying that by the time I'm finished with this visit like it's one of our old tutoring sessions that he will be my companion once more.

But I'm still nervous about it all, because Dallon doesn't know me — not really, only in the depths of his mind, the depths that he cannot access — but I know Dallon, and I know everything about him that there is to know. I know that his favorite animal is an otter, that he hates cheese, that when I was awake and scared in the night he looked angelic in rest, and I also know that I never want to forget these things like he did.

Therefore, it is my duty to remind Dallon of every detail that was once his, because he deserves to understand the most essential part of him, an essential part that he himsef has been developing since birth but has now been halted due to amnesia. Square one is the worst place to be, and I'm digging Dallon out of that pit.

"Brendon," Dallon says, just testing out how my name wriggles on his tongue, how the r catches in his throat due to his mellifluous accent of Bordeaux, how he's never said it before while being in this amnesic state, how it meant so much to me before in the terms of love but now only shrivels between narrowed eyes like a flower that hasn't been watered in the month that Dallon has been gone, in the month that left me to my own spiteful devices, and all throughout that time I was running away from danger when the danger was in my shadow, running away from me because of the monster I had become.

"Yes, Dallon?" I respond, still as timid as I was in the shadows of the lockers, but my old friend drops his words like he wasn't going to say them at all. "Anyway, Kara (that's my sister) isn't home, so we can talk privately about what the hell is happening to both of us and what we used to be."

Dallon acknowledges me tacitly, completing his journey through the door as he warily glances at me to make sure that he did the right thing, but I clap him over the shoulder and guide him towards the living room, where he settles into the chair directly across from me like he's a client and I'm the therapist he definitely needs but won't dare to admit his thirst for.

Silence sweeps fidgeting silhouettes across the oxford walls, painted in silence and chipping with each second we wallow in the quietness of being friends without reciprocation, of being amnesic and clear headed, of being estranged from the ties we once gripped so tightly like they would fly free if we didn't, but they eventually loosened, and we were thrown into a void, so now we've been resting in hushed tones for thirty-seven seconds, and Dallon decides that it's time to speak.