Me & Her

Me

I saw everything.

Last night, I saw everything she saw.

I couldn't siphon myself off. Couldn't look away. I couldn't control my eyes to close them.

I had to watch.

I wanted to, I realise. To know that there is someone else has brightened the untouched bouts of confidence hidden away inside me. Someone else. Someone else, just like me. But Dr. Light...

He became a completely different person. He was a monster. Is a monster.

Looking down, I discover that I'm halfway out of bed, with pins and needles in my feet.

Outside, the sun is rising dutifully in the sky. Stripes of memories from last night elude me, as if she's trying to make me forget.

'Not everything,' I plead quietly. 'I don't want to lose too much'. Just enough. Enough to forget the horrors of seeing Dr. Light, who'd always been so quiet, turn into a raving lunatic.

'Best psychiatrist ever,' Alyssa remarks, grinning. At least, to me, she's grinning.

'Why are you happy about this? He's a monster. And, we have a session with him in a few hours'.

'No,' she chuckles. 'We have more than that. We have proof'. She goads me into opening the drawer of our bedside table, where I can see it. A strand of metallic black hair which curls into a wave. His black hair.

'We have proof of Mr. Dark'. Frowning, I shut the drawer.

'Mr. Dark? That's what you've called him? Anyway, that doesn't matter. Why would having proof make any difference?' It won't matter if I have proof, not to Light. Not to anyone.

I am trapped with the knowledge that whenever I think of him, I think of a monster.

'Don't be so dramatic,' scoffs Alyssa. She approaches the subject of our psychiatrist being a reject from a horror movie with extreme calm. More than I can conjure up.

'You don't know what I have to say'.

'I don't think I want to,' I answer. My lips quiver and I have no idea what to do about the rising panic in my chest. I certainly can't go running to Light. But then I never did.

I don't need to because now I know who I am.

'Come now. We both know that's not true'. Unfortunately, she knows as well. Knows that I don't know and perhaps I never will. Perhaps Alice Callett is dead and I am the hollow shell left in her place.

'Tell me,' I sigh, too tired at this point to argue. In the end, she always wins. It's how it must be: she has to be in control. No matter what happens to me, she must have control. As I dig deeper, it's impossible to stop the gasp emerging from the pit of my throat.

Without control, she is lost. If she has no control, she is powerless.

I never thought of it that way before.

'Are you listening to me?' she asks, clearly irritable.

'Absolutely'.

'You weren't listening were you'.

'I was partially listening,' I tell her, my hand poised on the bedside table.

'What did I say then?'

'Something partially. I don't know,' I admit. 'I wasn't really listening'. Inside my head, I can sense her seething. She wants me to open the drawer, to examine the hair as if I'm some mad scientist.