The Dawn of Darkness (Part 26)

Looking down into the hole, he stared hard at the ruined head. The eyes were gone. They'd been ripped out by the blast. There was nothing left but a mangled nose mouth, both of which were drenched in blood. He couldn't turn away from the sight of it. The girl who had lasted the longest.

Why? Why, why, why, why, why, why?

"Oh shut up." He started for the door.

Cover her up. NOW.

"Whatever...." He pushed on the door and then stopped. Frozen in his tracks. I was doing it. I pushed against his brain as hard as I could. The palm of his hand flew to his forehead and ground into it hard. "Stop that! Stop it! Stop!!"

I said cover her up. Do it now.

"Fine." He turned back into the room and went to close the hatch door.

No, I mean cover her. Get the blanket and cover her.

He scanned the room and sighted the blanket on the ground. It had gotten shoved into the corner in the struggles. He folded it in half and kneeled down to drape it over Dawn's body. I pressed on him to touch her neck. She was still warm. I managed to get him to lift her hand to his lips. I kissed her goodbye.

"Are we done now? Jesus, she wasn't anything more than..."

Fuck you. She was a hell of a lot more and you know that.

"I've got shit to do."

What? She called the cops you know.

"Yeah, I saw that."

They'll be coming.

"No they won't."

The call went through. I know the call went through. It HAD to have gone through.

He pushed the door open and wordlessly stepped out into the night air. He walked toward the house. His feet crunched on the shattered glass from the sliding door.

The phone was laying on the ground where Dawn had dropped it. He bent over and picked it up. The display screen had gone dark. When he pushed a button, it lit back up again.

Call connected. 911.

He put it to his ear. There was nothing on the other end.

What the fuck?

"Do you remember where we are, Patrick? Does it look familiar to you?" He looked around the room. There were pictures of the family on the wall. Flowers on the table. It looked exactly like I remembered it.

Yeah, this is Mom and Dad's place.

"Look closer, Patrick."

The room was perfect. There wasn't a thing out of place. Not a speck of dust. Not a picture askew on the wall.

I looked harder at the pictures. They were all about 6 years old. Me as a junior in high school. That stupid dork. That pussy-ass loser. Everything was dated for around the time that Katie was killed.

"Oh, we killed her. Katie is dead. But it wasn't Dawn who got through on the phone. It was Katie. By the time we'd dragged her body out into the backyard, the house was surrounded by cops. They'd been waiting outside for the longest time. That was the most ironic part. They never suspected me of doing anything like this, so they were knocking on the front door first. They were using their manners. All the while, I've got her in the shower. They could have saved her if they'd been more suspicious. Funny."

He shrugged and huffed out a tiny laugh.

"So she was the only one. When those guns were pointed at me, those cops all screaming, and I've got Katie by the arm, dragging her across the grass, I freaked out. Just collapsed. The doctors thought that it was from the shock and blood loss from her attack. But my mind never really returned to the body.

"You know where we are, right? We're not here. We're not in this house. We haven't been in this house since that day. We're locked away. In a psych hospital. We've been there for 6 years, supported by IVs and various meds. Katie's parents have been trying to have us pulled off for years. Hell, even Mom turned on us. Everyone wants to see us wither away and die.

"But there was this group of students who started coming around recently. They said that a lot could be learned from studying our brain patterns. Every week we've been wheeled down the hall into the elevator. We're put through a battery of tests. They do CAT scans. They even submerge us in water and take notes about how our system responds. They claim to be doing all of this to understand what might make someone turn homicidal.

"They watch our brain patterns when we sleep. They show us images. Everything from bunny rabbits to porn. We've been registering high with skateboards and tattoos. I think that's where some of the visions came from.

"And there IS a Dawn, you know."

What?

"Yeah. She's been coming more and more frequently. You see, half of our brain lights up when she comes in the room. Goes absolutely bizerk, they say. So what started off as her coming in with a partner for some project has turned into a daily thing.

"She reads to us. Sits next to the bed and reads. Sometimes she falls asleep here. Lets her head rest on the bed, right by our hand. She claims that we moved once. Touched her hair. No one believes her, though.

"The best part was the one time that she came in and closed the door behind her. They trust her now, so she can get away with the privacy. The room is monitored with cameras, but she got the guard to look the other way. She stripped down. Stood there all naked.

"You should have seen how nuts they went over the brain results from that day."

I'll bet.

"She's in love with us. Seems to think that people can't be defined by a solitary action. Thinks we're redeemable. Has been petitioning to get more work done. But those who want us dead have more power than she does. They're winning the battle over what happens. Unless..."

I should have know this was coming.

"Unless we can wake up voluntarily. Then there's problems. They can't condemn someone to certain death in that case."

So wake us up then.

"I've tried. I tried when they had that one skanky nurse. You turned her into the coffee girl. I wanted to play with her. But it wasn't enough. I can't do anything without you."

Ah. Keep talking.

"You refuse to meld with me. You're insistent that we're unique personalities. But you're just another part of me. I created you. I created the Bryan that you know.

"Without the parts of the whole in agreement, we're just going to sit here in this purgatory. That is, until they pull the plug on us. Then it'll be sink or swim. You're aware of it. You made up the pool scene the day that they doctors said that phrase. They were standing by the bed, explaining it to your dear Dawn. 'He'll either sink or swim,' they said...."

Yeah, I heard you the first time. So what happens if I decide to go along with this? If I "meld" with you?

"Just that. Sink or swim. One of us will emerge as the dominant personality. The other will wither away and die. Our mind couldn't sustain both of us. We'd be right back to crazy.

"That day that I killed Katie is the day that you were born. You've grown through thoughts of mine, developed into the person that you think you are, and made a persona up for me. If anything, this whole concept of us being two different people is solely yours.

"So what's the harm in going along with this? Chances are, you'll be the one to be victorious. I've been struggling with you for too long. Trying to stuff you back into the closet, but you won't go. I'm sick of fighting. If you don't want to at least try, then I say fine. I'll just lie back down and let them kill us. I don't have anything to live for.

"But you do. You could have your Dawn. Come out of this on the other side, and she's all yours."

But if you come out, then I'm gone and you're back to where you started. Killing girls. Killing Dawn.

"Perhaps. If they even let me out of the looney bin. But if you come out on top, you'd have no trouble convincing your precious Dawn to help you be released. Between the two of you shit talkers, it would be smooth sailing. And you'd have the love that you so... fuck, I can't even finish that thought it's so wretchedly annoying. Point is, you'd have a better chance of getting out of this prison than I ever would."

So what do we do?

"We go to sleep. A much deeper sleep than we've maintained these last 6 years. We sleep... and then one of us awakens."

He had moved over to the couch in the mental image of Mom and Dad's house. He sat down.

"So, are we a go?"

I thought about the prospect of being with Dawn. If I made it through, I'd have her. If I didn't, and it was him, I would no longer exist. And if I no longer existed, I wouldn't be a party or a witness to anything else that happened afterward. It was worth a shot.

Fine. Let's do this shit.

He stretched out over the length of the couch and closed his eyes. The world went black. It was blacker than I'd ever seen before.

Fuck, I thought. I chose wrong.