He claimed there was nothing wrong with him. His fingers kept finding holes in the therapist's logic. He claimed that it was probably best for him to seek treatment with a psychiatrist and take some new medication. Down the medication would go. Down his throat. Like a serpent.
He touched the ridges of his chair. Maybe he rocked back and forth. The program was getting uncomfortable with the things we said. He claimed we never existed.
Oh, to be said that you didn't exist when there was clear evidence that we kept the program alive and not at all disturbed! He moved his feet impetuously. Never nodded at a single therapist statement that therapists make. He said he was full of shit and he had never seen him in his life. Then he pointed to the crayon pictures. Then the little stuffed velveteen rabbit that he gave to Tim the Timid. The different handwriting and signatures he collected. The program denied it all. Said he made it up. That he was just another case of "Sybilism". Except the therapist didn't invite him to his house and made him cook breakfast and even slept with him. Sybil was bad. Very bad.
He drank the coffee, swallowed it like a serpent.
We even believed he hissed like a serpent when the therapist kept making claims that he had many personalities, and that he had talked to him before. He was just like mother. Being a serpent himself. Like mother, like son.
He tried to show him the paperwork, the things the other personalities said. He denied that too.
Sonic was sick, torpid, and we had tried our Goddarn hardest to appeal to him! But we weren't blessed! He kept denying us! He kept saying his mother was a good person! That she was just a sweet little thing! And father was a bastard, but may have just hit him a few times, that was it.
We were thinking Elvie wanted to cut again. Just learning the truth from her and finding out that it meant nothing was what hurt her. She wanted to tell him everything. She still kept that big black book, still charred from the fires of salvation that would've saved him the Godfearing truth about the mother.
We prayed to God that he would soon learn. But as per usual, God wasn't there.
The program left in a hurry, saying he needed to piss. Probably all that beer he drank before he came here. We swore he was about to become an alcoholic. Elvie never did well with alcohol. She could cut up a storm and cut Sonic up something fearsome.
The children were playing in the attic above us. They were playing with their little metallic toys, their little Fisher-Prices, and they shouted and made a din and made us restless. The crinkling of the little balls inside the little machine toys. The ringing of the playphones. Sasha told them to shut up and got out her broom and hit the ceiling with the pole end of it, but the children don't care for rules and Sasha. They said she was an ol' wicked crone!
Tim the Timid, as usual, brooded in the corner of the room. He played with the plastic phone's cords. He gummed them with apprehension. He was afraid of Sonic. He was afraid of the program finding out about him. He always chewed on the cords of phones when he got nervous. They were his own little toys, as if he was only a two-year-old. Child never really grew up when the program grew up. He looked at his fingers and imagined how sticky they used to be. He wanted to cut them off, but unfortunately, was stuck with them. They were as sticky as the mother's juices.
Sticky sticky sticky sticky sticky sticky yucky little fingers.
Have his gums chew on the cords. They were his little comfort. His little escape from all the dark little scary things.
He saw the white yucky stuff on his fingers and started to get scared that he nearly wet himself.
The attic was old and crumby. It was where the children played and slept. We lived here for many years. Mommy told us it was where we all belonged. Along with the basement with the dead baby dolls.
I tried to play with Tim, but he kept saying stuff about sticky fingers. I told him he should just accept it was in the past. And he said no, he was in the past right now. He felt sick. He wished the gumminess went away.
I told him to wash his hands, but there were no sinks. Tim said if he went to a sink, only the program would wash his hands. Not him. Not when he could see the Beast in the mirror.
The Beast was him.
It was him.
His denial was the Beast.
His fear was the Beast.
Sonic Sonic Sonic...
The voices vociferated inside his head. We kept talking. He still tried to brush us off as he peed and then washed his hands. He could see nothing in the mirror. Just him. Tired. Old. Dead. We weren't sure if he would see us. Or even know we existed.
His mouth moved, muttered, without his command. I made it move. The hands underneath his gloves were callused and some parts black. He tried to forget the bad parts. Wash wash wash. It never came off. He wore gloves all the time to keep the bad parts away.
I said, "Hello. We will be coming to you very soon friend. Do not be afraid. We will come and help you. The fear will go away. The pain will go away. That is, if you let it."
He splashed his face with cold water and walked out, without washing his hands completely of the soil on them. The dirt that he collected during the abuse. The mother vilifying him. Because it would remind him of us. Of Mommy and Daddy.
Did he learn we were there for him? That we wanted to come out of this crumby old attic?
No.
He returned to Mr. Therapist and said he was a quack. Mother was a goddess. Father was a shitty man, but soon quit the drinking habit in his life. Amy came and tried to calm him down, but these things, these things around him, they didn't matter much to him...
He wanted to rip my drawings...He wanted to tear up my rabbit named Hoppity...I felt bad for Mr. Sonic, but I also felt like he was being a real jerk. Mr. Therapist protected us. He said sooner or later, he will learn. He will learn that our pain was real, and he should listen. But he kept shutting his ears off to our cries and screams. He keeps drinking that beer stuff. He didn't want to see that we existed and our pain was too much and we wanted to reach out to him and tell him it was okay to feel this way. But the Guardian said if Sonic even feels a little bit of our pain, then The Core would be hurt. I wasn't sure what The Core was. But it sounded important. But my pain was important too. It was more important to me than anything right now.
It kept a hold on me. Its claws were on me. The Beast kept shouting at us in the crumby attic. He said we would be here forever, with the creaky floorboards and the old vintage toys and the tinkling of lullaby music. We wanted out. We wanted out more than anything. We believed in God and prayed to Him, but God never saved the children. He only saved the bad people, like Mommy and Daddy.
The program kept talking. We kept singing. The sounds in his head kept getting louder. We wanted him to hear our voices, as loud as possible. And Sonic soon couldn't deny it any longer, that maybe he was schizophrenic. Voices in his head. He kept hearing commands. To wash his hands. To check the door's locks. To kill Mr. Therapist even if he didn't do anything. Kept singing, kept singing...
Ring around the rosie
Pockets full of posie
Ashes, ashes
We all fall down
That song was based on the Black Death. Mommy and Daddy taught us the Black Death was bad. Because we lived through it. We saw men who wore crow masks. Roses and perfumes everywhere. Bad things happened to us back then, and we nearly died, if Mommy wasn't a nurse. Mommy made us feel better. She made us feel better with her sick little medicine.
I lie completely still, stiff, and I'm catatonic. I drank the tonic. Mr. Therapist claims Sonic needed to relax and let the voices speak. He becomes angry, belligerent. Amy grasps him, cries. Miles grasps him, cries. We weren't sure what was wrong with him or why he constantly said our pain wasn't real. That the Velveteen Rabbit's pain wasn't real when he was about to be burned for carrying scarlet fever germs.
We all were sick inside. Sick with the fever of mental illness.
Should we go somewhere, we asked? Should we go to that mental hospital way up north, with the heavenly glowing white lights at night, the insides cold and lonely, the nurses always attending to you even if you weren't important in this world at all? We could feel our hands becoming frozen, white, pale, and we begged for them to stop the A/C, to listen to our other voices, the other voices inside that were tired of being in this crumby old attic inside this hedgehog's mind...
The nurses swayed their hips, smoked their little cigars, blinked their little blue eyelashes wistfully. We never were listened to. They just said that the little hedgehog was schizo. That his needs were unimportant. We couldn't disagree more, especially when Mommy Dearest had hurt us so much.
We imagined being in that hospital in that cold December night. When Christmas was starting to go around the corner. Amy tried to tell the program that he needed to straighten up his act. That he had a child he had to raise. Amy back then didn't know what was wrong with us. That the Beast had forced him to become this neurotic.
We had a flashback to the hospital and the program kept driving. Kept ranting that he had nothing to do with Mr. Therapist. That everything he told him about the others was a lie, despite being proved that we existed to him just a few weeks ago. We thought he was a little bit drunk. Like father, like son. Like program, like serpent. Like Satan.
She showed him the baby. He said it came from her, not him. He couldn't be pregnant. His sudden denial was astonishing. She wanted to slap him, tell him he was wrong, he was wrong! He was just like Daddy. Drinking a beer and watching a baseball game. Sonic didn't even like baseball.
"Sonic," she said.
There was the entire case of beer. She lifted it high in the air, in the sun and stars of the beach house. Miles joined her. He joined her in the rebellion that Sonic had to realize that something was making him sick. Was it the beer? Was he drunk? Then you're denying my existence, denying that the stars and moon and universe were real! God made me in his own image! And that was a multiple. As after all, God had three.
(The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.)
"If you don't accept this little baby as yours, I'm going to get rid of every single one of your beers. There will be no more drinking tonight until you can accept that you have a problem."
Why was he too blind to see us? We spoke to him even. He continued to shut us out. The little baby of Sonic's babbled and cooed, unaware of the serious nature of this battle. And then we remembered this was like with our Mommy and Daddy. Mommy once did the same thing to get Daddy to pay attention to the program. It soon failed, and Mommy didn't try again. Instead, she turned her anger inwardly at the babies inside her.
One beer went. The yellow liquid snaked inside the drain. Sonic was dragged with Amy's leg, him claiming that there was no point in ridding the alcohol. But truly, we knew the program was just like Daddy, that he needed a drink just to deal with things. We screamed in his head. We kept telling him that he was just like his bastard father. Drained another beer. The yellow snake slithered out of the bottle. The program wanted her to stop, else he was going to leave his mother's beach house and go back home without them. A shallow, hollow threat. We knew he wouldn't leave Amy. He loved her too much.
"Then accept you have a problem. With these other personalities and your drinking."
He said he never had a drinking program, and he would never end up like his father.
"Sonic, you don't seem to realize that, right now, you are your father. He drank to ignore you. He drank to ignore your mother. He drank to ignore the abuse. He drank to ignore your hate. He drank to ignore your love and affection and needs and wants. And right now, you're ignoring yourself. You're ignoring your wants and needs, what the others want, what Miles wants, what baby Sonic wants. Look at him, wondering about this little drink that could turn any sensible man insane. That could kill you like it eventually killed your father when he had diabetes complications from drinking. Little Sonic doesn't know about the drink. Eventually he'll learn more about it. And as he hears your story, he will grow to detest it. And I'm surprised that didn't happen to you, when you hear about your father dying and he refused to acknowledge you as your son, that he denied ever having a wife. Sonic, you are becoming him, and I never ever want this to happen to you again."
The phonecall. The father saying that he never had a son by the name of Sonic. Never had a wife by the name of Stormie. None of those things had happened to him. Sonic's existence was all meaningless to his father.
He wished he could do the same to him. Just tell us our father never existed. He even clenched his eyes shut and tapped his feet together, trying to be rid of his memory like Dolly Parton thought that she would go home so quickly in her little red shiny shoes laced with diamonds and rubies. But home was in her heart. All that other trash that fairy godmother had told her.
We wanted Amy to be our fairy godmother. But she was too preoccupied with taking care of Sonic.
We told him we could change all that.
We could change it and make it that Amy took care of us instead of Sonic.
Sonic didn't...
SONIC DOESN'T DESERVE THE HELP. WE ARE ALL AS REAL AS HIM, AS DAMAGED AS HIM. WE WANT TO BE TAKEN CARE OF. WE WANT TO BE LOVED. SONIC CONTINUES TO DENY US, AND SO, WE WILL DENY HIM.
INCISOR, IT'S TIME FOR YOU TO SEPARATE ALL OF US INTO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT HALVES, MAKE THIS PLACE INTO A BUILDING THE MOTHER ALWAYS WANTED US TO BE IN.
Incisor didn't believe in any gods. He didn't think we need a prayer as Sonic lied on the marbled floor and we brought out those surgical instruments for him to toy with...
I can cut Sonic into 125 different pieces. All with different quirks, different likes and interests. They will become alive. People told me this was voodoo magic, but no, this was science. Multiple personality disorder was a science, a miracle of psychology that is still questioned to this very day, but today, we're going to show them that it was a real thing. A real, ugly, terrible thing that God could only have made for some of the most broken and gifted men in the world. Sonic wasn't gifted in any particular talents, but was he gifted in heart? Yes. Yes he was.
As, after all, he still loved his mother, despite this soon to be overwhelming evidence that she was a cruel, wicked mistress that changed her ways for the worst.
I put him under anesthesia, and I made intricate cuts on his body. About 125 different pieces of his body. Of course, Amy was unaware, and so was the baby and Miles. I cut Sonic into different carefully measured square as if he was a birthday cake ready to be served to 125 different children, and the veins have oozed out of his skin as I pulled each piece out, and left to them to lie in the sun, slowly imbuing with life...
The heart beat in each section of his skin. I can see the veins no longer red and blue, but gold, as the blood courses through it, and I wasn't sure of which part had his heart, but maybe, I thought, Tim the Timid did. The blocks of his body were all beautiful in their own way. They were pale, I could still see the alcohol swimming deep underneath the cuticles, and I examined each organ of each personality. Some had parts of the stomach. Some of the biggest parts of his brain, which I'm sure was what The Core had, along with the Guardian, and the Beast. As even the most irrational of people had a brain. It was why they were irrational in the first place. Because they were brilliant. And brilliance often leads a man to madness.
And people like me had to delve into it and see if I could fit the missing pieces of his brain like a jigsaw.
Multiple personalities was a lot that way. That all of us were a puzzle piece, soon to be fitted unto Sonic. But we didn't want to be on Sonic. We wanted to be in our own body. And this is what I was doing. Making each personality have a different serving of his body, becoming alive. See the translucent vessels underneath Sonic become devoured, the veins that became black with the spilling of blood on the tongues and teeth, and I said, you can have your cake and eat it too, Sonic.
Hello.
I'm the nurse, ready to wake you up.
Do not be afraid of the mask on my face. It is here to protect you.
On the count of three, you will open your eyes, and you will see us, and you will understand that you have a problem, and Mother admitted us here in this building to get better. As after all, Mommy Dearest wanted us all to get better.
3...
Beer is prohibited here, sir. And no, you're not in a "traditional" mental hospital. This isn't even a hospital. Just a beach house. A beach hospital. Full of people like you.
2...
Have you ever heard of those private beach hospitals somewhere in like Hawaii? Yes sir, they're very nice. I know sir. I want you to keep closing your eyes. You will be affixed unto your own area soon. You will meet Mr. Guardian and Mr. Beast. They both know how to treat patients like you right. Very right...very right...very right...
1...
Very right...very right...very right...
Now, open them.
The program took a brief glimpse around him. There were many different hedgehogs. Ones with scars, ones with sticky fingers, ones with breasts and plumped lips, ones with anger inside them, one with black and red quills, one with silver quills, one with light blue quills who was peering at him curiously. He wanted to kiss him. And ask him what was going on.
Amy answered him.
"This house is home to 125 personalities now Sonic. Now we get to know what it's like in your head. And I have to take care of every single one. And it's all because you denied everything I said and denied the truth about your mother. Now do you feel sorry?"
She poured the last beer in the snatch of the sink. The brown bottle broke and the light oscillated through the room. It was a glimmering gold from the sun's rays.
Sonic tried to lap up the final juices of the beer, but his fingers were cut. Red poured along with the yellow. He didn't want to take off his gloves in fear of the marks he constantly pushed away.
Even, if now, the stories behind those marks were staring truculently in his eyes.