You never leave, and your unending presence is more of a slap than a whisper.  There’s been no break between us for years, and there’s no comfort in the consistency.  We’re long past our brief stints of personal space, of relief.

 
Your feelings and desires came through more powerfully as you became more defined and definite.  I keep dropping things because you don’t like them, and it’s as if your distaste knocks them out of my hands.  Tea.  Chaucer.  Washing.  You’ve put it all on my floor at some time or another. 

 
At least you’ve finally dropped the pretense of having a purpose, something we had both feverishly clung to at first to explain our relationship.  Something that I, strangely, discarded before you did.  After all, settling about my back and shoulders like an insubstantial cloak did very little in the way of protecting me, failing even to bolster me when I felt alarmed or afraid. 

 
My only comfort is that you’ve never and will never be able to do anything directly.  You can just watch, without ever really touching the world.  My mind plays enough tricks on me already.  I don’t need you moving things around to where I can’t find them as well.  That’s just the sort of thing you’d do if you could.  I know that you already take a sick delight in stepping bold and close to my back, heightening the frantic paranoia that seems ever-present at the base of my skull.  I can almost hear you laughing when you do that.  Almost.  Like everything else about you.  Always just on the edge of sound and sight, always avoiding my reach.  Always behind me, watching, the strange energy about you humming and pressing up against my body.  A silent vibration.

 
I lie alone at night sometimes, alone aside from you, that is.  I lie alone and I can feel you’ve gone from my back, protected now through a firm pressure against the sheets.  I feel a barely tangible pressure as you explore me, and I’m paralyzed beneath your hands.  I know you’re staring at me.  I don’t need to see you to know that.

 
You don’t touch my thighs because you’re curious about my body.  We’re past that too.  It’s because you like to watch my chest stiffed and my face turn tight, and laugh how I can’t hear you.  There’s little else you can do.  You can only amuse yourself with frightening me when you’re bored with watching, exercising your perverse whims to make me twitch or cry. 

 
I can’t hear you anymore.  Not that you ever made sound during our history.  It was just a presence of words and tone in my mind, something I interpreted.  It was usually angry, and always timed when I wasn’t fit to hear it.  That was your biggest disruptive tool before I started getting help.  You got worse then– I remember.  Your behaviour climbed and peaked in energy and malice when you caught the inkling of a threat towards your continued existence.  You felt you had some right to exist like this, to cling to me for the rest of my life.  The drugs strangled you back down though, and I know they still frighten you.  I shake them at you when you step close to my back, and I wish I’d remembered to keep them by the bed when you touch me in the night.

I still go out though.  I won’t let you disrupt my life so much that I’m perpetually secluded.  I drink when I’m out.  Drinking helps to suppress you when I’m with people.  It’s made you crazy in the past.  Made you rave. 

 
I was drunk when you were first with me.  You screamed when you arrived.  God, you just didn’t shut up.  You screamed and raved that you didn’t belong here, that I had somehow trapped you and that you felt you’d lost everything about you.  That your existence was as valid as mine, only strange.  Parasitic.  You deemed yourself my protector soon after that, and then let go of the notion to seek out your own identity.  Once you’d established your voice and presence, you seemed disinterested in the rest, even dropping the guardian act eventually.

You buffet at me when I drink, when I’m out, and you’re all excited over the stimulating atmosphere.  I sit and roll my hands clumsily about my face, palms and knuckles pressing into my eyes like it’ll deter you.  Calm you down somehow.  It doesn’t though, and you get up close and try to whisper, try to involve yourself.

 
They can’t hear you but my friends seem to know when you’re acting up, even though they don’t really know about you.  You like them though.  You think my best friend is pretty and want to stroke her hair.  You managed to instil that impulse in me once, goading me on.  It made her fidget and she didn’t talk to me afterwards.  I stopped caring about things like that a while ago though.

 
I’m scared.  Not of you though.  I’m scared that one day I won’t wake up, and that we’ll have switched.  That you’d have won the fight for control, for dominance, and that now these were your hands and your eyes.  And I’d have to watch you.  I’m scared because I know the sorts of things you’d do, and in the past, when you’ve been close and loud, I’ve wanted to do them too.  I sometimes wish I had, because that would have been easier in a way.  Because then, even if you never left, we’d at least be on the same side.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 1:16 pm and is filed under Short Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.