Alter

Light poured in through the gap in the curtains as the sun moved in the sky, waking me from my slumber. One lazy eye opens as I grimace in disgust at the notion of being conscious. The other soon follows, although reluctantly so. I can feel the leather of the couch sticking to my sweaty flesh on the parts of my body that are exposed; namely my back and my arms, which ache something terrible. Just like every other part of my body. My head feels heavy like a rock as I push myself up into a seated position, my eyes still barely open.
I stare across the room at the second brown leather couch – identical in everyway except for the locations of the various stains strewn across each one. But right now the stains aren’t my concern- I’m used to them, and anyway, my attention is more focused on the naked legs I can see peeking out from behind the second couch. Another victim? I’m used to them too.
I sigh and rub my face with my hands before looking at my watch – 1.36pm.
Derealisation sets in and this headache feels like a knife in my skull. Nothing is real, yet I’m sure I’ve been here before. I don’t remember what time I got in last night. What time we got it. He likes to stay out late you see. At least late enough for him to find some shit-faced, bimbo who he can bring back here and have some fun with before disposing of the poor bitch. And last night was obviously no exception.
Oh well. Same shit, different day I guess.
Bracing myself for the inevitable rush of agonizing pain that will swim through my head as soon as I do so, I stand. I squeeze my eyes shut as I wait for the agony to surpass me and gently fizz away back into the bearable type of migraine. Once it’s done I slowly begin to make my way towards the body. In the short distance between her and me I find myself wondering what this one looks like: blonde or brunette? Short or tall? Skinny or chubby? Pretty or… I freeze. My heart seems to stop, everything seems to stop as a chill runs down my spine and I realise that the girl on the floor isn’t just another airhead, but my own girlfriend.
Not this I find myself thinking, Anything but this.

I sit on the floor next to her body, leaning over her, staring blankly. She looks like stone: so still, so pale. I tremble on the inside but my exterior remains idle. My heart is barely beating. I urge it to stop just so I can lie down next to her. But it doesn’t obey me.
Without me even realising my arm begins to snake its way towards her face, her eyes vacantly staring at the stained white ceiling above us. I am just about to touch her, when suddenly a violent pang of pain tears its way through my skull – I imagine this is what it feels like to have your brain literally ripped in half. Of course, I’m no stranger to this pain. I know what it is and I know what’s coming. But it doesn’t always happen like this. Most of the time it’s much more subtle. One second I might be myself – plain old boring ordinary Thom, then I blink and after what feels like an eternity in a dark, musky room, but was actually no more than a split second, I’m him – Thomas as he likes to call himself – says it’s because its who he really is, because it was his birth name, that he was here before me. Well, one thing’s for sure – he’ll be here again soon.
After about half a minute of thrashing around violently and screaming all over the place as I hold my aching head in my shaking hands, I pass out on the couch.
My lover sleeps behind me.

I awake to what appears to be the sound of a fly buzzing around near my head. Only I don’t open my eyes straight away, instead I merely lie there in darkness, hoping that if I do it for long enough then I’ll fall back to sleep only to wake up again, this time upstairs, in bed. I’d smile widely and sigh a sigh of relief at the realization that this had all been a dream. But then I realise that even if all this were a dream, it wouldn’t matter, because every other day I’d woken up with a dead body in my house would still be real. I’d still have this leech, this fucking parasite inside me, gnawing away at my thoughts, invading them and sucking my life force straight from my heart, devouring any chance I have of living a normal decent life.
What feels like forever, yet no time at all passes before I give up and slowly open my eyes. I immediately wish I’d kept them shut, for staring back me, propped up on the couch I’d originally woken up on, hands at her side and that same vacant look on her pale face, is my girlfriend.
Bile instantly rises in my throat, yet I swallow it back as I sit up – it doesn’t feel like I’m moving. It’s almost as if I’m a puppet on strings, being controlled by someone else. Who am I kidding? I think to myself, I am a puppet. I let out a pathetic little whimper as I struggle to hold back tears that won’t come even if I’d let them.
I look into her dead eyes as I contemplate the nerve of Thomas. I see that he’s mocking me. He’s getting stronger and he’s mocking me. Trying to push me over the edge, run me out of my own body so he can take over. That motherfucker I think, I hate him. I can’t let him win.
After a couple of minutes I tear my vision away from my dead girlfriend and stand, turning toward the kitchen door as I do so. As I move towards it I can still feel her glare – I feel as though she’s watching me, judging me.
I leave the front room and enter the kitchen.

For a few brief moments I stand with my back to the door, breathing heavily and staring ahead, pressing my body against the wood as though trying to keep something out – something physical, something big.
What I’m really doing is trying to make like none of this is real. That the dead body of my girlfriend isn’t currently residing in my living room, that my alter ego isn’t the one responsible for her death, that Thomas doesn’t exist and I’m just another average Joe. Fuck! Who am I kidding? I dart forward and start to throw open drawers and cupboards, picking up and throwing down whatever’s inside in search of my pills. I know they don’t do shit. But I’m hoping that if I convince myself otherwise then the placebo effect might kick in and make me feel just that little bit better. Just that little bit less… insane.
I find them in the small drawer beneath the microwave, shoved in amongst a pile of papers and medical records. As I twist the cap of the pill bottle, a single line on one of the papers catches my eye: DIAGNOSES: DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER – it’s my psychological evaluation it seems. Ha, I’d been wondering where that had got to. Without a second thought I toss the bottle lid to the side and throw my head back before pouring half the contents of the bottle down my throat. I swallow the small pink oval capsules greedily, desperate for any kind of release. Depakote the doctors call them, primarily used for those with bipolar and depression – seems they don’t have any drugs to treat what I’ve got.
A loud, harsh bang disrupts my thoughts and I look towards the door I came through – it sounded as though something is banging against it. I slowly put the pill bottle down on the counter as the sound comes again. I scream for whatever this is to leave me alone, but to no avail, as moments later it comes again – I think I hear the wood inside the door splintering – it’s only a matter of time before they get in. But who are they?
Then suddenly fear turns to anger and I hastily move toward the door before pausing briefly and opening it. I stare into the living room. Nothing. The body has slumped in its seat slightly and all I hear is silence.
I turn back toward the kitchen wondering where I put my tools.

I find my tools in the boiler room, which sits abreast the cubical-like toilet of my shitty little house, kept in a large black sports bag caked in dried blood stains. I yank the bag from its spot on the floor and take it through to the kitchen, where I drop it down before kneeling and unzipping it. The sound of the zip tears through my skull like the steel blade of a knife – I grimace briefly before getting back to business.
I rummage through the contents of the bag – spanners, screwdrivers, pliers, a drill hammers, hacksaws, and of course my trusty hatchet.
I pull the hatchet from the bag and hold it in one hand as I look back toward the door that leads to the living room. I think about my girlfriend on the other side of it. I think about all of the memories we’d made over the last few months, memories that I’d always have but will now forever be tainted by the way she was taken away from me. I think about her smile, her eyes, her hands, her breasts, her soft skin, and how I’ll never experience her touch again. I think about the future, and how she won’t be in it. But I will, and that’s exactly why she has to go. Because I refuse to be punished for a crime that I didn’t commit. This pain is punishment enough.
Suddenly a thought enters my head. The notion that maybe I should be punished. Locked up, away from the world – safer for everyone, including myself. I contemplate this for a few seconds, but before the thought ends I’m already on my feet.
I’m already in the living room. Already dragging my lover’s corpse into the kitchen where the floor is tiled and easier to clean. Already undressing her. Already gazing down at her beautiful face, and her beautiful form one last time. And I’m already hacking away at her limbs with my hatchet, crying as I do so, snot dribbling from my nostrils and entering my mouth, sweat accumulating rapidly on my forehead and face. My stomach turns over and over, my whole body trembles; everything is a blur.
I am numb.

I cram the last of the overstuffed black bin bags into the big brown bin outside my kitchen window before closing the lid. I look up and stare blankly through the living room window at the spot where she was sitting. Where he propped her up with the intention of mocking me. Where I dragged her from before stripping her naked and chopping her up into pieces, wrapping her remains in newspaper and then putting them into bin bags. And now she’s in the bin, ready to be taken away tomorrow morning. This isn’t my usual method, and it’s a little risky. But fuck it!
I continue to stare through the window and then suddenly four words begin to resonate inside my head, what have I done? I ask myself this as tears begin to gather in my eyes.
Then I’m in the toilet, vomiting chunks of nothing into the bowl, heaving and coughing and wanting to climb into the toilet itself and swim away to another world where everything is good and all is well and life isn’t so fucking dark.
I think I hear the phone ring, but I’m not sure so I ignore it and carry on leaning over the bowl for several minutes more before retiring to my bedroom, where I twist and turn for what feels like hours. Laying there half naked in a cold sweat, feeling like I’m dying, drifting in and out of a disturbed sleep in which I see flashes of death and violence: me (not Thomas) standing with my living girlfriend, a knife in one hand, a clump of her brunette hair in the other. She’s crying, I’m laughing. All around is dark, like all that exists is her and me – the beauty and the beast, and there’s nowhere for her to hide, nowhere to run to, to escape my wrath. She is all alone. With one quick movement of my knife-wielding hand she is dead. And I stand over her, laughing, mocking.
I no longer know who or what I am. My dreams are filled with images of death and decay – images that excite me. I wake up in a lather of sweat, my heart racing and my headache worse than ever.
I get out of bed, put on a t-shirt and head downstairs.

I’m in the bathroom staring at a stranger in the mirror – the unfamiliarity of the face looking back at me fills me with fear. He apes me in everyway, yet whilst I wear a frown, he sports a smile. I feel the panic setting in and I know that if I let it take over then I’ll be back on the floor again, waking up God knows where having done God knows what to God knows who. I can’t allow that, so using all of what little strength I have left, I look him straight in the eye and speak: “What do you want from me you piece of shit? You’ve ruined everything. Look at what you’ve made me do?”
There is a tremble in my voice, a fear I cannot deny. And he sees it, and he loves it.
“I was just having some fun” he responds smugly, “Got carried away is all”
“She was my girlfriend you bastard” I yell, expelling tiny flecks of spit from my mouth and watching them land on the mirror in front of me, specking Thomas’s ugly features.
“She may as well have already been dead if she was happy with a pussy like you!” he spits back – I watch as more flecks cover the mirror.
The anger builds up in my gut like bile as I stare back at the monster within, “you’re gunna die” I threaten him.
He smiles a dark smile and then replies coldly, “You’re already dead”
His response sends a chill down my spine, which is soon followed by the panic that I so masterfully avoided only a few moments ago. Almost at the exact same moment, that unbearable brain-tearing pain returns, only this time its worst it seems, and it isn’t long before I am lying on the cold, hard tiles of the bathroom floor.

I wake up on the floor of my bathroom one last time. I don’t want to move yet still I struggle to my feet. I feel myself looking around the room and I am staring at things like I’ve never seen them before. I feel a certain distance from everything around me, even more so than usual – I feel… disconnected. The pain in my head is finally gone, but still I am dizzy and want to lie back down. But I can’t. Instead I remain stood in the centre of the bathroom, turning slowly to take in every last detail of this grotty little room, finding intrigue and wonder in everything. I turn towards the mirror and stop – I see myself, and I see that I am smiling. But this isn’t like before, because I can actually feel myself physically smiling this time. And that’s when I realise: when I woke up just a few minutes ago, I wasn’t alone, something woke with me, and now that something else is controlling my body. I have been condemned to the far corners of my own mind, unable to control my own physical self or influence Thomas in any way whatsoever. He is stronger than me. He doesn’t want to hear me, so he doesn’t. I cry out for help, but I can’t even hear myself for I no longer have a voice. This is it – he’s won.
The doorbell sounds and Thomas turns toward it. He stares at the bathroom door for a few seconds, before it the bell sounds again and pulling the bathroom door open, he heads towards it. He moves through the house swiftly, yet still glancing around at every little thing with awe. He is a newborn baby getting ready to explore this exciting world with his new physical self. And I am the one who birthed him. If I had control of my stomach I’m sure it would be turning right about now.
He reaches the front door and opens it slightly, then peers through the small gap at the person on the other side. It’s a woman, slightly older than myself and dressed smartly – I recognise her, and I wonder if he does too. And in seconds my question is answered, when excitedly Thomas swings the door open fully and utters her name, “Janice!” he smiles.
“Hey Thom” she responds, unaware that it isn’t me she is talking to but a crazed psychopath who has lived in me for the last few years, and is now free to reek whatever fucked up havoc he wishes to upon the world, “I got those papers you needed” She hands him a large black ring binder full of documents in plastic wallets, “You get my call?” she asks. And then suddenly I remember, when I was in the toilet, puking my guts up, I thought I heard the phone ring – I did hear the phone ring! Fucking idiot I think to myself, you could have stopped her from coming round. I could have, but I didn’t. And now I must watch as fate takes its course. My imaginary stomach turns once more.
I realise that Thomas has been staring at Janice with a somewhat strange expression on his face, and so concerned she asks him, “Are you ok Thom?”
He realises that normal people don’t act this way, and so smiles back politely.
“I’m fine”, he says.
“Ok. So should we go through this stuff now and get it over with, or do you wanna wait until tomorrow?”
Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow
“Now’s fine” he replies.
Fuck!
“Ok” says Janice, moving forward to enter the house. Thomas steps aside to let her pass and she does so, “I’ll put the kettle on” she calls back as she enters the living room. Thomas stands at the door for a few seconds more, seemingly coming to terms with his new found freedom. He smiles and then shuts the door.
It seems that after years of living in the shadows, Thomas found his release. And all he had to was to take away from me the only thing that I truly cared about. And now his reign of terror begins, and Janice will be the first of many.
And the worst part is, I’m going to have to watch them all.

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Tags:

alter, disorder, dissociative, full, identity and split personality