Psyche

Chapter Nineteen

By the time we had arrived at this house, I was sound asleep. In my half-slumber, I heard all of Phoenyx's bone-chilling thoughts, and yet, I could do nothing to stop them. I was weighed down, pinned by misery and sadness and loneliness so deep was eating him alive. But sleep dragged me down. Still, the dreams pursued, so my soul seemed to follow Phoenyx as he left me, left my world, to go back to his. I think that was the only comfort to him. That he could still remember. Even if he was hurting himself to remember.

There was something wrong about his power. I didn't know how hard it had been for him to hold it together, to keep the facade of cool serious discipline wrapped over the chaos inside of him. He was unraveling at the seams, in front of my very eyes, stumbling to a bedroom at the end of the hall. I quickly followed him inside, my insides churning, telling me something serious was going to happen.

Phoenyx was weaving as he entered the room, slumping against a bureau, yanking a drawer open and pulling out a bottle. The label was in Spanish, so I knew it was good stuff, probably tequila (what else?) and he slid down to the floor, unscrewing the cap and drowning in himself. There was something wrong as soon as he gave up. His eyes-it was in his eyes. He became a whole new person.

Darker. His aura was so much darker.

He was drunk as a skunk after chugging the whole bottle, sprawling on the floor, content in his obliviousness. I was sucked into his memories as he traveled centuries, through time, space, through his life: he wandered in the woods with my ghost watching helplessly, across battle fields that didn't matter, since he'd already lost the most important one. All his life, after the Cleansing, was marked from one black period of depression to another. The rest-just fell through the cracks. Finding myself engulfed in his dreams, or rather, flashbacks of his traumatizing past, was enough to make me insane.

 He tried to kill himself . . . fuck . . .

He passed out peacefully on his bedroom floor, and let me go through his miserable life.

***

Nick was sitting there, confined in a padded cell and constricted by a straight jacket, back to a puffy wall, eyes blank. There was no life in them.

The doctor standing outside his box of insanity with simplistically styled haircuts and nurse short, prim styles gave me a frame of reference; it must have been the 1920's. I glanced over the their clipboards, the letterhead of the place at the very top: Campton Insane Asylum.

What the hell was he doing here? I briefly listened in on a conversation between the doctor and  nurse.

"Old boy's back again?" The doctor sighed like this was a huge pain in the ass.

"Tried to commit suicide . . . again," The nurse replied coolly, without feeling. Her voice could have frozen fire.

That was all I wanted to hear. No more! My mind was screaming.

I tuned them out and stepped out of the cell where they were holding him. I wanted to go to him and hug him and tell him things would get better. But by the time I had a hand on the knob, I was whisked away, Phoenyx's consciousness visiting some other moment.

***

I found myself out in the street, facing the asylum. I watched as Phoenyx stepped out on the roof, dressed in light white clothes, looking like an angel, though his eyes were still very, very dark, his mind in other, worse places. I didn't know. I didn't know what he was going to do. Could I have helped if I did? I was but a ghost in this land of death.

He stepped up on the ledge of the roof, and spread his arms wide, eyes blank, dark, like when he'd been drinking. Nick breathed deeply, closing his eyes, the muscles in his body rippling as he braced himself; that was when I noticed it: scars. Lots of them. On both of his wrists, showing through the thin cotton of his white uniform for the insane, his back . . . everywhere.