Hero to Zero
There he is.
"I was a hero… Once."
The white room was cold, cold as ice, cold as his eyes. There was writing; he heard the pen move, he saw the words slide on the paper. He was sitting in front of him, his brown desk and blue shirt too white, eyes too white, room too white… He was tapping his pen on the side of his clipboard. Tap one, tap two, tap three… He couldn't stop swaying back and forth.
Back, and forth: Back, and forth: Back, and Forth…
"I went to heaven. I fought side by side with the death-gods. They were there. They were my friends. I fought with them, for them. I fought for everyone. They were just like my family. Once."
Back And Forth, tap fifteen, tap sixteen…
Did anyone else see them?
A chuckle escapes from your lips. See them, they can't be, "Seen, not by normal humans; they are death-gods."
Why were you able to see them?
Why? "Mom saw them. And dad, and my sisters… My friends saw them too!" He nearly jumped from his seat and leaped at him. Tap twenty-three, tap twenty-four… "You can ask them. Call them, they must be at school right now… They came back from heaven with me, a few months ago."
When exactly?
"17 months."
Seventeen months of loneliness and desperation and guilt and hopelessness and there you are! Sitting on a chair in front of a doctor... You are lunatic. You are insane. You are just like me!
You said you hear voices…
He sat back on his chair. Voices, two voices inside his head... Surely the death-gods heard them too. It was normal. They said it was "normal, of course. Those guys are a part of my soul; I should be able to hear them. They talk to me, they tell me what to do." Without them I wouldn't be able to win most of my fights, "I owe a lot to them."
You are insane!
Tap thirty-eight, tap thirty-nine… Do you see those people?
"Only when I can reach my inner world..." Swaying, back and Forth, Forth and back, Back and forth… "It doesn't happen that much. Sometimes they don't want to speak to me, sometimes," we fight; fights I try to win, I still don't know if I ever won them, and sometimes we just "talk, about everything, about how my life has changed" ever since I met those death-gods, and them, the guys in my head, "and if it's a good thing for me or not…"
Do you think it's a good thing for you?
You have gone insane, because of us: Because of ME! Do you think it's a good thing for you? Do you think it's okay for us to be there; you know we're not even THERE ANYMORE!
"It's normal. It's just like how you're sitting in front of me; I don't think much of it and you're still there." back And fortH. Tap, tap, tap whatever number, tap; tap endlessly.
He sighed and put the clipboard on the desk. He looked at the swaying figure with white eyes; white hands and white lips with a tight smile filled with blindingly white pity. He said,
I think you have some mental issues.
He stopped swaying, looked at him dead in the eye. The eye didn't even feel white anymore. It was somehow darker, blacker, deadlier…
Swaying, backandFortH BacKandFortH bcakadnfotrh, he was home again, the sideways world.