Murdersphere Mosaic [ManXMan] [BoyXBoy]

Chapter 3 Part 3 Here's Your One Chance. Fancy Don't Let Me Down.

The door whisks shut behind me and locks. I check the standing locker: empty. The bed is hard and firm and the lavatory has running water. A handful later, I'm no longer hungry. I am also losing my “thank God I'm alive” feeling, it being rapidly replaced by a crowning feeling of violation coupled with the mourning that should have happened two months ago but did not.

I wasn't going home. Atlantis had sunk into the sea. I stop. No, that’s not home. I squeeze my eyes shut trying to think of home, but I cannot envision no other home except Atlantis. Even though I know that’s not right. I can't remember “home.”  Atlantis is home

I put my hands over my eyes and try to stop thinking of home. I cannot though. I manage to elevate thinking of "home" while trying to think of the "home" the new home supplanted into an exercise of psychological self-torture.

I break out of the loop and try to satisfy myself with the extraneous things I do remember: the sound track of my life, even if I do not remember the context.  I remember movie soundtracks, television show themes, stage musicals, and commercials. I also remember the scenes and material attached to them.

I take a long cold shower and blank my thoughts, which lasts for all of five minutes. Think thinking about soundtracks and being miserable sucks something appropriately depressing to mind.

"I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserable. Not the soaring rendition from stage musicals and talent shows, but the bitter, spare, self-mocking arrangement by Anne Hathaway's during her turn as the fallen Fantine.

Under the stream of water, the grief and anger break, safely contained to the tiny stall. Only the cameras for an audience.

I am mourning a death of my nameless self. Someone who cannot even be recalled without creating swelling painful dissonance, thus discouraging the very act of memory that dares to deviate from my role.

The tears come in waves, accompanying each half-remembered verse. My voice is ugly and harsh and I pray the shower is hiding it from the people in the hallway.

When I am mostly cried out, I get out of the shower, absorbing the water on my skin. I freeze in the lavatory’s doorway. Titus is standing in front of the closed or a folded parcel balanced on one forearm and a pair of boots in his hand. He is wearing a green exercise paints, a textured white T-shirt with the Lotus logo on the upper right pectoral, and matching white and green flip flops.

"Uh, hi." I say, resisting the urge to cover myself. "How long have you been waiting?"

"I got here at ‘There was a time…'" He said.

"I can't sing." I say. "Sorry... I just…"

"I'm gonna hug you." He says. "Therapy's over."

I shake my head. "If you hug me Titus, I'll go to pieces again. I need to go to sleep."

"I'll stay with you." He says.

I would have known he was here if I hadn't battened down my hatches so, I open them up. He is genuinely concerned, professionally and personally. He also knows we cannot talk about what happened openly so telepathy is the only option for semi-privacy and he's hoping I am listening.

"Fine." I say.

He puts the clothes on the bed and kneels and envelops me. He smells damp, of fresh soap and water and he's so warm, and when I hug him, he hugs back.

I register his surprise, as he thinks. "You're stronger.  you know how much stronger?"

"No." I think. "I..." I consider telling him about Orai, but it seems like a very bad idea. "I have only been on the ship less than an hour, nothing has been tested."