There are days when he is almost completely normal, when the shadows don't play and the voices don't whisper, and the colors don't bleed. There are days when he is simply Leo, when his largest concerns are paying the rent and his graduate performance.
Today is not one of those days.
There is a girl with white hair, in a white dress, twirling in his living room. She is playing with imaginary toys, and flitting from place to place. At once she is a ballerina, a ballroom dancer, Alice falling down her rabbit hole. She is all these things, but she is also none of them; this girl does not exist. Leo counts from the moment she appears, to the time she twirls herself out of existence. Thirteen seconds. This time, she existed for thirteen. Next time, it will be thirteen again. She always lasts for thirteen seconds. He doesn't really know why he keeps counting for her, because she is actually one of the most consistent of his apparitions, but he still does. He counts for all of them.
The girl is not a problem. She is rather familiar, and she is happy. She never tires and she never angers, she simply dances and plays in perpetuity. She seems to dance more sometimes when he plays the piano, but never for longer than thirteen seconds. He thinks she's fond of a certain measure in Chopin's Etude in G-flat Major - aptly named nicknamed Butterfly- but that would imply she can hear him, and he is positive she cannot. He's sure the association is all on his part, but he does call her Butterfly.
None of them pay any attention to him. This is either because they don't care, or because they can't see or hear him. He leans more towards the second reason. There is some part of him that is positive that they are only visions. They aren't in his head, but they aren't really there either. They exist, but not in the same place he does. Leo thinks of them like memories, like midnight broadcasts, like static on recordings. Butterfly is his favorite. As it stands, she is the happiest.
There is another girl, but he doesn't know how he knows it's a girl, he just does. She is light, and sometimes dark. She is the kind of light that people sometimes point to on pictures, and claim they are ghosts. She is the kind of dark that people see on their photos, and think that there is something wrong with their camera. She is that sort of illusion, a flick of the eye and bat of a lash, a twirl of black hair that he never catches, but that he feels sometimes on his bare arms or cheek. She makes his skin crawl, but she is warmth -both light and darkness.
He doesn't even know how he always knows it's her, but he does. There is a particular melody that he remembers every time, and that's what he calls her, Melody. There is no rhyme or reason to her, she comes and goes, flips and turns in and out of sight and sound within erratic seconds. She is never around for longer than 7 seconds, though she can go for weeks without showing up, or come back five or six times a day. Melody exists -or doesn't depending on is mood some days- on no clock.
He sees her flitting across the piano keys as he wanders past the instrument on his way to the kitchen for a snack. One blink, two blink, three blink, gone. Leo doesn't even falter, keeps his pace even and uneventful.
Sometimes, when he looks at a mirror, it is not his own face looking back at him. In fact, it is no one's face, it is a mask of cracked porcelain, eyes gaping in horror, or crinkled in delight, or down cast in sorrow. The mask changes, but it's eyes are always black and empty. It is like the vastness of space, but without the stars to light the way. Only endless teaming darkness lurks behind the mask's hollow eyes, it's wide rigid, cutting cracks, the valley of its mouth spread taunt. The mask lasts a long time. He can go days without seeing his own face, and it cycles through its emotions every time his eyes look away, as if it can only change when there are no eyes to see it. But again, this implies that it knows about him. Leo is sure it does not. There must always be a mask on, or there will be nothing at all. This one, he calls Faceless.
The mask is there when he pours the milk, but he can only see the darkness laughing out at him from the white substance, before the cereal cascades into the bowl, and Faceless is now covered in coco puffs. When he finishes his bowl, Faceless is gone.
He moves back to the piano, determined to compose something worth listening to, to toil and struggle at the ivory keys for as long as it takes, but his mind wanders as his fingers simply take him away, far from worlds and sounds and noises, and things that don't exist.
Leo remembers, once, that there was another person like him. He was looking for someone, and had somehow been led to Leo's doorstep. He'd had a soft sinister smile, that Leo imagined had been the product of a trying life. His mismatched eyes had held a surprising amount of tenderness when they beheld Leo in his scruffy sweater, his hair a veritable rat's nest, and his eyes squinted and glaring.
They'd had peppermint tea, and talked of things that hadn't happened, of realities that did not exist, and of histories long forgotten. Leo had sent the man on his way with cookies, cause he made a damn good batch of ginger snaps, and the man was oddly thin, and Leo oddly cared.
As with most other things in his solitary existence, Leo let the man walk away, without a name a number a place. He thinks, in that moment of music and musing, that he shouldn't have. Thinks that perhaps that red eye meant something more, that maybe he should have pursued. As with many other things in his life, Leo lets it go, accepts what is and what will not be.
He wonders if the man will ever be back, thinks about how it has been years, and that the likelihood is not high.
That night, after playing and playing until his fingers ache, after looking at a blank sheet of music while his fingers sing the songs of his soul, does he stop. He takes a deep, solemn breath, and his eyes catch something red. It is new, and he looks. One of his C keys, is now a brilliant shade of red. He starts counting, but after five minutes, he give up, and retires to his bedroom for the night.
He know, with great certainty, that the man will never come back, but also will never really leave. Leo decides, in that single moment of clarity from the abyss that has engulfed his life, of the shadows and lights and flitting shadows, that he must no longer be alone.
He leaves the next day on a quest of his own. Leo hears voices at his back, and knows that he has made the right decision.