He had a beer. It was cool in his hand, seeped of amber ale, and he chugged it into his gullet, as if he had been thirsty for a long time. He watches the waves curl up at the shore, touching his toes, while Tails made a sand castle. Something like that. We think he was having a good time, despite the baby.

We can't tell you about this baby. It lied in its nursery that Amy found in one room (possibly when he was born, when he was a shell before he grew into us) and cooed, wanting some warm milk and lunging towards the breasts Amy had. She wasn't sure where the infant came from. Sonic couldn't have given birth to it. He was a man. Men never gave birth. Inside him, there were women. There were men who had a uterus. Children who can split us apart like stars. God was inside all of us. And God had multiple personalities. DID. Dissociative Identity Disorder.

He denied it. He said what happened back at the hospital was something straight out of a nightmare. He gripped the beer tightly in his gloved hand. He took another swig of it. The Beast never existed, he said. It all was a lie. Misconstrued. He made it up just to get attention.

"That isn't true," she said.

The baby lied in its hangar, sleeping so peacefully, so sound…

We tried to let Sonic know. He felt yucky. He felt yucky for a long time. His organs were dead. His heart stopped beating, spreading love to his body. He drank that alcohol stuff and he told that lady about the story of what happened to him in the hospital. We all knew what it was. We knew it. The Beast was real. He was real. And he felt yucky too.

In his words:

"I remember that hospital. It was piss-colored. It was colored with white and green and yellow pipes on the building. It was dark. And I couldn't have a beer in the place or even cigarettes cause they apparently weren't therapeutic. I met Shadow, and he was…angry, but I think he cared. He cared about me. And the doctors seemed to treat him like an outcast. They diagnosed him with sociopathic tendencies. Psychopathy. And Silver, I don't know what his deal was. He never seemed to give me much of a reason to why he was there. He was kinda shy and reserved and pretty naive. I remembered once he went inside my head and seemed to talk about my mother. I don't know. I don't remember much of my childhood. I remembered a few things when I was like, a baby and then a one year old, but after two everythin' just seemed to disappear. Doctors gave me these pills after the hospital visit, when Shadow died. I take 'em, but I'm not sure if they really help, Amy."

Her glance was brief, before her attention was distracted to the little child. She asked him why his medicine didn't seem to work. Took another swig of beer. He was never an alcoholic, but he seemed to enjoy a good beer a lot. It still felt cool to the touch. We can feel it in his hands, gripping tighter, tighter.

We heard him speak, and he continued.

"They made me take like this Risperdal or whatever it is. I don't think it works. I get muscle twitches and all sorts of wonderful symptoms." We saw him roll his eyes at that. "I take it everyday. Honest. I do. They also make me take some Ambien to go to bed at night. That never helps. I still sleep walk and have a hard time sleeping. And Ames?"

Silence filled the room, like stifled air. She confirms that the infant is asleep and she walks up to him, hearing him. The mother unit believes that Sonic is sick, and needs help, and her digits go near the telephone, about to call her doctors, if it wasn't so late at night. She sighs. Her shoulders relax after heaving. Her breasts bounce. Her breath smells like red wine and pasta. Her eyes are dutifully unaware of how we seem to dash through Sonic's ocular sinister. Fingers twitch. Tails come back from the beach in that late night. No one is at the beach. No one is. And we think everything is so fine, so still, the stars continuing to stay in their field of gravity when he finally states the ugly truth, the thing that can send you back to that mental illness hospital that he never took pleasure in or wanted to partake in ever again.

He said:

"I hear voices in my head sometimes. Please don't think I'm crazy. Cause I'm not. I get a lot of headaches, feel dizzy…the doctors didn't seem to help much of my problems. It's like…an apartment complex in my head. Hearing guys, women, children, all talking at once…It's ridiculous. I never heard anything like this before in my life. Even when I was in that damn loony bin."

The mother unit folds her arms across her chest, listening. Her feet sway to the right. Child unit listens in intently, but not sure what to think. The entire house is quiet. Sonic was in the need for a cigarette.

I brought out a fine hookah (a cigarette) from my purse (bag) and I smoke it, delinquently and listening to what this woman with no fashion sense had to say about us. God, what is she wearing! A Jane Jetson type dress while she wears those ridiculous earrings and her hair all curled up like some sort of doll's face from some thrift store and that head band? Seems like something you get out of a dollar store. I swing my cigarette back and forth, it burning right out of my fingertips, a goddess of fire, if I do say so myself.

That woman with no fashion sense noticed some lumps on Sonic's chest, almost like mountains of breasts, his quills curled back like I'm some sort of doll in a wealthy shop somewhere in this beach district, and my lips were full, plump. They were my best feature.

"Darling," I said, smoking yet more of my hookah, as the beach house looked so derelictly delicate for me, a place that I wanted to live, full of the seaglass marbles in the glass containers and the windows made of pure solid glass where the morning dawn hit, the light breaking through the window and me shining brilliantly like a martyr. I had to remind everyone inside me that we all were once an intact piece of glass. Until we broke.

"Darling," I say again, "You got to change that outfit and your hair. You need to change everything before we go out of here again." My face fluctuates. I try to stick inside the program. If she found out about me and the other losers inside this program's body, I and the others could very well end up in that posh hospital again. I and the others were now in California. It was possible that I and the others could be in a good hospital, but I and the others were sure they wouldn't be able to treat me and the others. And the program itself. The posh program that drinks that disgusting beer and smokes only Camel's. Sometimes I got Virginia Slims, despite whatever the program wanted.

"What did you say?" she asked, and I told her, quite simply, that she needed to be a bit more fashionable, a quality diamond in the rough, before anyone can notice you in SoCal. Her hands seemed to twitch on the phone, holding onto the handle. I tell her she couldn't do a damn thing about the program inside of us. And that me and the others were here forever, and she could just damn very well deal with it.

"Sonic, I don't know what's going on with you…you need help…"

Of course, my sister. The program needed help. But if the program went and got help inside this system, me and the others could very well disappear. Kaput. Gone. Extinct. I was a person too. And I wanted to live, damn it. You're not going to tell anyone about me and the other people inside this program, you slutty bitch.

The phone was hooked into her hands. I grabbed it, pulled it tight, and told her there was nothing she could do about me and the others. I scratched her face with my long claws, Miles telling the program to stop. I laugh. I laugh cause these people were so pathetic. The baby cried. I didn't care. The baby can cry all morning as long as it wanted to. I slap her several times in the cheeks and she slaps me too. A bitch fest.

I told her how dare she even smack my face, the great Mademoiselle Francoise, and I told her I was going out and I was going to take the car keys with me. I was going to shop. I was going to shop for some nice supplies and the bitch couldn't stop me. She threatened to call the police on the program, but I told her I wasn't responsible for anything the program did to her. I was another entity inside the system. I wasn't responsible for anything I clearly did.

The child grabs my legs, asks me what's wrong with the program, and I tell him that I didn't know him at all and I never wanted any goddamn kids in my life. I never wanted anyone to care for. Absolutely no one. Because no one had ever cared for me or the program.

I turn on the car, and I drive. It's a piece of shit, but it still had some gas in the tank. There were some nice stores that opened up at 9 am, and I waited for them to open up while I ate at a very fine diner, unlike that garbage macaroni grill the program went into.

I looked in my small pocket mirror, and oh, how lovely my face was! A heart-shaped face, with blue quills and green eyes and a lovely smile that is sure to swoon all the men. During the nights that both that bitch and the child had spent at the beach home, I drove off in the early hours of morning, looking for men who interested me, who I could expect to croon to my heart. They were delicious, delectable, the men who wanted me. I realized when we had our little nights under the red blazing sun I had no vagina, but it didn't matter to me. I was willing to use this program to achieve my duties, and if that was romancing with other men in a male's body, I was certain enough to do it.

I kissed his lips, and they felt like the sun's dew had collected on them. My legs entwined with his. I told him I loved him, and our hearts beat in our chest until they soon slowed down, and became more intimate, lovely, and I was sure they would be together too.

The sun came up, and I could see the sun's rays collect in his eyelashes. He kissed me again, tasting of it in his delicate lips. He told me I was elegant, divine, and I was a Goddess among so many people. I never wanted to leave him. I felt too comforted by his body, his clean-shaved face, his blond quills. I sat in wait for the sun to come up again at about 9 am, where he cooked me breakfast and I drink some sour coffee off his defunct coffee machine. He asked me where I lived. I told him I lived inside a program of a system full of many other people like me inside, and he laughed and thought I was joking, when truly, I wasn't.

He made eggs and toast and pancakes. I chew the pancakes slowly, I smile embitterly over a man who didn't understand of where I truly came from. He asked me if I was a Trans person due to the irregular shape of my lumps on the program's chest, and I told him no, I was a woman, and he told me I was indeed Trans. I wasn't sure if it was the time and place to argue with him really of my origins and my whereabouts, and I asked the man if he wanted to be with me, shopping. He smirked, telling that I was like a really stereotypical queer but he liked me a lot anyways. I wasn't sure what a queer was used in his context, but I wasn't so sure of SoCal's lingo at times. I ask him if he's got a smoke and he gives me one and I press the cigarette between my fine lips and smoke it as slowly as I could. It was a long day. I knew I had to bring the program back with the bitch and not at all leave any information on what I did. The man lowered his head towards mine and kissed me again, each kiss being as tender as the last. Despite his confusion, I knew he loved me. I knew.

Soon, after all the shopping, all the usual hubbub I typically experience when I'm out of the system and program, and I come home, and the sun is glowing radiantly, so bright like a summer peach, the redness blazing so hotly against my blue quills that I wished were long blonde hair. I get the bags of dresses and clothes and other lavish things for myself into the nice beach home, where the tumultuous waves kick against the home, and I was met with that bitch, the bitch, who never let me be myself.

He apologized. The system had denied me. And he wasn't sure why the bags of clothes were there, why his ass felt tight, why he was gone for all of this time. He wasn't sure why he was smoking a cigarette either. I smoked one in the system, and the blue hedgehog just comments on how he seemed to pass out for several hours and come back in a wreck, without knowing what he did to hurt the bitch. Her look was disconcerting, ha! As if I actually cared for this bitch for a while! She told him to just sit on the couch and talk to her, and Sonic left the clothes on the porch, not even acknowledging my lovelies. His gloves were stained with the tar of cigarette's and he thought it was so strange, that he was a smoker for all what seemed to be a few hours.

"Why can't you remember anything in your life Sonic?" she asked. Oh, how stupid and naive was she. She didn't know of what happened. We tried to protect the children from what happened, but they were scarred. They were destroyed and decimated and their innocence just never was the same. Innocence was what The Core wanted, after all. What the Beast wanted.

The child appeared from the crevices of the room and he listened to him talk. He told him about ever since at the age of 2, most of his life was a complete blank. He remembered when he adopted Tails, yes. He remembered the loony bin. He remembered…the Beast, and he wondered if he would ever appear again. Because his presence never seemed to disappear. He was still inside him. Waiting. Protecting the children inside of him. He never knew he had about 125 of us inside. Oh, how wretched, how diseased Sonic was.

I could dissect Sonic's tears into 2 parts. Two parts, and Sonic cried, and I could divide those by four, by six, by eight…

I don't like seeing him cry! Talking about losing memories, being sad, thinking it had something to do with parts of his childhood…The girl named Amy told him that he had Dissociative Identity Disorder. The doctors were "skeptical" of his diagnosis after he got out of the hospital. I asked her why. And she shook her head and said she didn't know. That he had suffered from these problems for a while and never seemed to acknowledge them.

Were we all sick? Were we all broken parts of something bigger? Like, if I took a vase that was by that girl Amy right now, would that vase…

Break in a million pieces…

And we would see all of us in each piece?

Did Jesus take one single part of his mind and multiplied them by 125?

125, a big number. People have heard of other dissociated people having near a hundred personalities, she said. But nothing like this. Nothing like that.

"Sonic? Are you listening to me?" she asked.

I kept looking at her. I kept looking. I kept looking into her love-shaped face and her beautiful jade eyes and the parted hair and her wondrous dress and I told her she was beautiful and kissed her hand. I loved her. I truly did. I wasn't sure why I had that tingly feeling in my body all of a sudden, down there, but I wasn't sure what to do with that feeling. God gave you that feeling because you are sinful, full of pride, and you must rid of that feeling immediately, by repentance. Praying to the Lord is the only way you could ever redeem yourself for such filthy thoughts.

This program was a big sinner. He had sex with men and he admitted to being trans. Downright despicable! I clicked my prayer beads with the touch of his fingertips. Click clack. I told him he was going to burn in Hell. Click clack. I told him his mother was burning in Hell too. Click clack. I told him so was his father. Click clack.

He prayed fervently. He prayed on the bed while the slut got ready to wear her lingerie. I could feel that this sinful program wanted to touch one of her supple nipples, as she stood breathing against the ceiling, her breasts puckering, back and forth, and the program was sick, depraved, as he told her that he wanted to have romantic relations with her, but felt he didn't have the energy. His breathing felt like his rib cage would collapse, a little hollowed out shell for all of us to live in. His heart. His brain. When he should be giving that to the Lord and not having sex with this slut and those queers. I found myself growing sick as he reached over and touched her vagina, inserting his fingers in. I wanted to protest! I wanted to scream! But somehow, I blacked out like him, as if I had no power, no energy to stop him, and I told him that he betrayed the Lord, and he was going to burn in Hell for all eternity.

My children can attest to that. I was a born again Christian when I very uncomfortable thoughts about the father figure in the program's life. I imagined him as a snake, swallowing me whole. Satan's snake.

He was coated with yucky stuff. His finger, I mean. I thought it was familiar, like I've seen it before. The lady said Sonic's eyes changed, and I wasn't sure what she meant. I said I felt yucky and I told her if I could go to the bathroom and pee. She said that the program didn't sound right and she wondered if he was becoming "sick" again. "Sick" is her word for us. That we're the sick people. Not mommy who made me do all of those yucky things. Not daddy who hurt us. Yucky, bad bad bad things. I told her I felt bad, and she came in, and I wanted to say no! I didn't want her to come in! I wanted to be alone! I didn't want mommy to come in and hurt me!

I ran the bathwater and told her I was going to drown in it and I was going to cut off my fingers. But it was the program's fingers, and I thought that would be mean. She said she really wanted to come in. I was really scared and curled near the pee pee toilet and cried and I kept rocking back and forth like a rocky horse. She came in and she was wearing something a little nicer, not something I remember the mommy wore. She said she wanted to pick me up and hold me. I wanted her to. I wanted her to love me for the rest of my life. I wanted to be happy with her and grow old with her. I wanted to rescue her, and not have everyone seem to rescue me so often.

Was I always so afraid? Maybe that's why they call me Tim the Timid.

"Is that what they call you?" she asked, my head in her lap. I tried to be calm and okay. She pet my hair and kept whispering nice, babyish things to me, but that was okay, cause I liked it. I liked it when she sung about the black sheep, and the baby in the tree tops, and the mockingbird that I always imagined was so scary and not at all a nice thing to give to someone like me.

Something sweet happened to me. She gave me a kiss on the head. And I've never been kissed by a girl before.

He was shy, reluctant, yet never wanted to leave Amy. He felt he loved her, more than the program did, and the child never wanted her to stop singing lullabies to her, even when he fell asleep!

It's hard coaxing Tim out of his little nervous breakdowns, but treat him like his actual age and he'll go to sleep faster than the child that woke up from the crib, crying and yearning for milk, the tasty treats in Amy's breasts.

She was taking care of her husband. She was taking care of children. She was taking care of someone who's as selfish and egotistical as Francoise, and she had to see the strangeness in that is Incisor, chopping up things to several individual pieces. Why he did this, we were never sure. I guess he wanted to be a surgeon. A surgeon that wanted to see how everything worked as a unit.

Soon, Incisor was going to chop all of us up, and see how we reacted to being sliced. With surgical instruments. Tools. Bloody instruments that were rusted and hurt even worse when that needle went inside the palm of your hand, twisting the dead, necrotic flesh and make your pain something awful…

Incisor was going to learn a lot from the program's momma. He already knew too much. And I can't protect him any further.

I can't protect these personalities further from discovery. Not all of them had been found, but it's imperative I don't show the rest to Amy, his wife. How can I tell his wife that he had been sleeping with men while some of the more seductive Others come out, like Francoise? Even Elvie had a few men around her finger at times. I had to shut down everything, make sure that he couldn't completely know about us until the time was right. He seemed to forget about the conversation he had about his wife, about the DID diagnosis. Can doctors be skeptical about something that appeared as clear and as white as the stars in the sky? How could I protect the Core when it had been scarred too much by the actions of his mother and father? How could I be so foolish to let them hurt that part of his mind?

Sticky things were on his fingers when he was two. She told him to come to her room when he was two. She told him to pull out his penis when he was two. He was two. He was two. He was two.

He sat, watching the waves filter the light on the ceiling. He tried to listen to the waves produce their musical magic, falling asleep at that 4 AM morning, after burning out another cigarette and looking at pictures of France on his phone. She sighed, laid down her body where breasts seemed to grow like hard milky lumps that reminded me of the grainy meatballs his mother would make, and she fell asleep, before she would sneak into the dawn and seduce more men into her fake shell, her fake body that would flake and break slowly, into 125 pieces.