Strangers

Eye

Paige was in her first therapy session. She wanted James there but he wasn't. She sat next to Theresa like it would help.

"Okay I see some new people here today. Let go over introductions. Tell us your name and what your here for. You can even say your age or a fun fact about yourself if you want. Kayla, you start."

"Kayla from Wichita Nebraska. I'm have severe OCD that I'm told is because I had a funny uncle. Who's next?"

It dragged on, dragged on for what felt like forever. She was in a haze, out of it enough to avoid reason, lucid enough to be horrified. She was just confused and scared and guilt. Guilt hurt the most. So much guilt she was even here. Why was she even here?

"I'm Paige. My heart stopped. They think I'm at risk for seizures."

"Paige?" The doctor said with an arched brow.

"What?"

"Your in this group to help you. Let yourself be helped. Admit it."

"Admit what?"

"What you did to yourself, why you did it."

"I'm not sick."

The doctor, a frail woman with beady eyes and a harsh hairdo bore herself into Paige's soul.

"Were about healing. This facility, we want you to heal! So admit it, admit it and you'll get better."

"I don't know what you want me too."

"Just say it Paige." Theresa whispeed, kicking her in the skin with her good leg. "A girl like you wasn't meant for a burden."

"I want to go home."

"Is that a problem you have Paige? Are you scared of leaving home?"

"I'm not, I just don't want to be here."

It was strange the way that the doctor and Theresa communicated, if they were at all. The give and take, an impatient child tugging on their mothers hem. They would flip flop between whose hands were rubbing her back or crushing her throat.

"We all want to go home sometimes." Theresa said sweetly. "But home isn't your family is it?"

"No." Paige said curtly. "It might have been. Once."

"Where's home now?"

"I can't go there."

"Why?"

"Because its not real!" Paige found herself yelling. The room was quiet and foggy. It wasn't that she hated, that made the floor rumble beneath her. "It's not real."

"Where is your home Paige?" The doctor said more strongly.

"I have a lot."

"Its where ever you can escape to isn't it?" Theresa said. "All those stories you lose yourself in."

As Paige knew and James would take note, she lost herself in stories. She was a reckless fantasist who was frustrated by nothing more than endings. Stories were like gossip to her, they were sticky and warm and you relished in the secret as your guilt ate you alive.

"Why is it so bad? Why can't I read those books or talk about stories?" She weakly defended herself.

"Because it's selfish Paige." She count tell if it was sincere or accusatory. "What's happened to you, to give you the compulsion? This gradious allusion that your existence is so reprehensible you felt the need to escape it?"

"Nothing. I don't deserve it."

"What don't you deserve Paige?"

She felt all the eyes on her, half baked meditations on the stories they'd told and the wounds they carried. Paige wasn't like them, they deserve things. Paige was wasted and privileged.

"For pain to be real, to me. I've never been in pain in my life."

"So, your delusions are unjustified, your illness?"

"Yes." She said quietly. Theresa nudged her to speak up. Her eyes watered and she felt the need to yawn.

The doctor leaned back in her chair, finally looking proud.

"Congratulations," She said, "On taking the first step."

***

Paige was more lucid than she had ever been when she tore her books apart.

They were neatly stacked on the bedside table that had the tuft of someone else's hospital gown snug deep into one of its corner trenches. She started with the last in any series, because she always hated the endings.

She had four books in total, gifts from no one like she'd come to expect. Sacrifices to be laid at her feet. But she wasn't a deity, she was a liar and a fool, she should be taken as such.

She ripped out pages by the dozen and watched as her world fluttered towards the floor.

"This is all you get" she thought, "This world, these walls, those eyes."

It was like being haunted by yourself. She watched the girl she was melt away, then she swallowed what she could. It was a tricky game, how much was she willing to give up? How much could she pretend.

Paige didn't cry. She wasn't the type withholding a silent tear or two as she fell asleep. She wasn't sure if she could even fall asleep anymore.

"Paige what did you do?"

She saw a nurse storm inside. She wasn't sure of this ones name, but her head seemed to melt right into her shoulders.

It's disgusting.

Paige felt guilty again for thinking it.

"I couldn't have them, I don't deserve them! Just take them away!"

The part of Page that expected to be coddled had been promptly dismissed. It was running a tad late anyways. Paige was given more drugs, the kind she had been given weren't enough to make her sick mind better. She was also put in a neat little room, and told to stay put. There she had no need for eyes.