allwellendwell

[allwellendwell]

Christopher

Prompt: ENTOMBMENT

He has lived many lifetimes in only a short few years: as a Misaya once during a three-year dream of Japan and cherry blossoms, as Georges three separate times in three different French colonies in three different centuries (if you really had to ask, Louisiana, Vietnam, and the Seychelles, but he wasn't inclined to be picky about that), and as a Mikhail twice, once during the reign of the Bolsheviks and once during the reign of Tsar Alexander. He had seen men far greater than him rise and fall in their stride, one hand reaching out as if to grasp for something better, the other pressed against their chest, trying to clutch memories of their wives and children as their hopes bled out through bodies riddled with bullet holes and missing limbs and the sickly sores of illness.

He can no longer remember what his name was before, though the people that come to see him every week on Friday afternoons often call him Christopher. He tries to insist that he is not Christopher, that he has never been Christopher, that he will probably never be a Christopher because he despises that name, doesn't find it elegant or special, doesn't think the name deserves him.

He has tried to tell the woman who usually wears purple this every Friday without fail, and, every Friday without fail, she ends up leaving the white room in tears. He simply cannot comprehend how she can bear to sit there for a whole two hours every week and tell him the same lies time and again. It gives him a type of queasy feeling in the base of his stomach when the door clicks shut behind her, not unlike the feeling he gets when those dreadful people in white step in to check under his tongue, making sure he has swallowed all those colourful ovals and cylinders. Sometimes they get stuck in his throat, and he has to cough and ask them for water, which comes in a tiny paper cup perhaps suitable for a child, but certainly not for him. He doesn't ask what the ovals do, but he's heard the people say that they aren't working, but there isn't anything else they can possibly do to make him normal again.

He doesn't understand what the problem is; he is normal.

This is what he tells himself those nights he becomes too afraid to sleep, when Georges and Mikhail and Misaya are screaming harshly in their own separate languages at each other; it is what he tells himself when he tries to reach over and scratch at an itch on the inside of his left wrist only to find his right arm unable to move for the thick leather holding it down; it is what he tells himself when the voices in his head, deep, dark voices he has never heard before, tell him that, "No, Christopher, you aren't normal."

He thinks that if he believes it for long enough, it will become true and he can leave this horrid white room. The lady in purple will smile happily again and stop twisting that shiny ring around on her finger worriedly whenever she sees him. He won't have to swallow those colourful shapes anymore, and he can stop feeling so uneasy in the pit of his stomach.

He tells himself that to get rid of the voices, he probably has to get rid of Christopher first. After all, he's the one they're talking to, not him.

#hourlywritingprompts #writing #mental illness #mental health #schizophrenia #medicine #multiple personalities #suicidal thoughts

[allwellendwell]

She tells me that she loves me, but as she lies with him that night and whispers the same words, it always occurs to me how bitter it is that love and lies can come from the same place.

#sad #love #i love you #i love you except when i don't #writing #angst