Ken
I wince into consciousness, eyes squeezed shut against the headache forking through my brain like lightning strike. Someone is just behind me, watching.
Hazy remnants of dream, or memory—I can’t tell if it’s theirs, mine, or ours—wisp like curling smoke along the periphery of my mind: rough stone scraping at my skin; the flame-licked hem of a white dress; the echo of a rhyme chanted in a distorted, childlike trill.
The goblin king who never sleeps,
awaits us at the stormy keep.
When all is dark, in dead of night,
The hunt begins . . .
I try to cling to the images as they dissolve and the melody as it fades, but I blink and—
I’m awake.
Fuck.
An insistent breeze scours my face with its rough caress, carrying with it a scent of outside that’s more brown-green than slab gray. The air vibrates with birdsong—shrill chirps instead of the soft coo of pigeons—and a relentless rush different from the sound of cars plowing down busy streets. City sounds have a rhythm, an ebb and flow, but these noises blend into an all-encompassing, jarring drone, like the dentist’s drill about to hit a cavity.
Motes of daylight drift across my scrunched-shut eyelids; even this is painful after so long in the dark. I peek between my lashes and try to acclimate to the amber light jabbing at my retinas like shards of broken liquor bottle.
Where am I?
Standing at the end of an old wooden dock. Brackish water churns beneath me, hypnotic in the way of things that might kill me if I make one wrong move.
Who am I?
My brain is foggy, my sense of self thin as a Mickey D’s cheeseburger. It can be like this after a switch to the front, when I slide back into the driver’s seat of the body formerly known as mine, wading through emotions and sensations that aren’t my own as I take the wheel.
The only thing I know for certain is that wherever I am, I don’t want to be here. I shouldn’t be here—for everyone’s sake.
My hands clench into fists as a familiar anger takes hold of me. My fingernails—which are way too goddamn long—dig into my palms, a pleasurable sting. I resist the urge to press harder, to ride the edge between painful pinch and open wound.
I review this new evidence: I’m someone with a hair-trigger temper and a penchant for self-inflicted pain.
I’m me.
Ken.
Fuck.
The multilayered ripple of distress underlying my own disappointment confirms it.
It’s kind of funny in a fucked-up way. For years, I’d tried to fill the cavernous void inside of me,
shoveling in nuggets of dopamine—in the form of drinks, drugs, dicks, and dildos, if you want to get alliterative—like I worked in a ship’s engine room. Come to find out the void was already occupied by a whole damn castle full of other people and, after everything I’d dumped on them, they disliked me as much as I disliked myself.
That’s life, I guess. Sometimes you win, usually you lose, occasionally you become public enemy number one to the people squatting in your brain. My headmates are scared of me—and they should be.
A memory of my ex-boyfriend, Landon, staring at me with fear in his eyes and blood splatter on his face after he’d pulled me off his father, flashes into my mind. The human stink of a crowded jail cell and the antiseptic burn of the psych ward mingle in the back of my throat, scent memory that never fades. The strain of muscle and slosh of bathwater as I struggled to press a blade into my wrist while my own body fought against me—
“Stop thinking about it,” I say aloud, my nails finding the meat of my palms again. “Stop.”
Whatever. I wasn’t some Miss Hyde, sneaking out at night to ruin the life of a respectable, well-adjusted person. I was ruining my own life just fine before they made themselves known, but somehow I’m the problem.
I do a little two-step shimmy on the wooden planks, to shake off their discomfort and to get reacquainted with weight, gravity, and all that. A cig would be nice, a Jägerbomb nicer, but figuring out where I am, and when, is my priority.
Time is my nemesis even on a good day, but last I remember we’d been balls deep in winter—black ice on asphalt, and greedy nights that ate daylight like Pringles, leaving the can empty for the rest of us. The trees wherever I am now have shed most of their leaves, but bursts of orange and ochre dot the landscape; clusters of autumn foliage too obstinate to give in to the natural order of things.
At my side are a large pink rolling suitcase, big enough to fit like a body and a half, and an old skull-print duffel bag I’ve had since high school. Instead of my usual all-black outfit and leather jacket, I’m sporting a calf-length pink bubble coat over a mauve power suit that I’d randomly snagged from the TJ Maxx discount rack for job interviews during the Ally McBeal era—or not so randomly, since it’s clearly my headmate Della’s style. The look is tied together by a pink fanny pack
and, in a selection as diametrically opposed to my preferred shitkicker Docs as possible, faux leather loafers that are flaking onto the planks around my feet.
I used to have a nice padding of curves, but this church-elder suit is hanging off me like a squeezed-out sausage casing. Exactly how much time has passed? The longest I’ve gone without fronting is a month, but clearly it’s been longer. I’d pulled a Rip Van Winkle, in a way, so maybe I, too, have slept for twenty years.
I check the backs of my hands: no wrinkles or age spots, but they’re ashy as fuck and the cuticles are splintering like we haven’t known the moist embrace of Vaseline in way too long. The numerous thin scars I’d accumulated from X-Acto knives, hot stoves, and general lapses in common sense are still there, if slightly faded. A tendril from the twisting green-and-black medieval ivy tattoo that snakes up my left arm from wrist to elbow, placed to cover less accidental scarring, peeks out from my sleeve. I’d designed it myself, basing it on a doodle that I’d scrawled into the margins of every notebook since I was a kid. Well, I thought I designed it, but the joke was on me: despite being an artist, I can’t draw for shit.
If you ever want to catch the express train to nihilism avenue, try learning that the things you’d considered the bedrocks of your sense of self had never been you at all. The artistic talent that had won me accolades over the years, my wellspring of knowledge, and the luck that always kicked in to save me by the skin of my teeth were apparently courtesy of my headmates. My worst attributes—stubbornness, a violent streak, and the innate ability to always make the wrong choice? All me, baby.
I force my attention back to my surroundings, swiping at my glasses again and hissing out a curse when I realize the blurriness isn’t just moisture, it’s the lenses themselves. This is a new pair of glasses, which is an issue since thanks to the wonders of the human brain, my eyesight is worse than everyone else’s even though we have the same eyeballs. I hadn’t been around for the latest trip to the optometrist, so I hadn’t been able to push for a prescription closer to mine. The wrongness of it is enough to be a slightly disorienting nuisance, like having a bunch of uninvited people jabbering away at the back of your mind.
I squint to get a better view of things. Judging from the way the water in front of me snakes off in two directions, surface broken up by
choppy waves, it’s a river. Not the East, with bridges stretched across from Brooklyn to Manhattan like three stitches keeping the city’s skin from splitting apart.
This is the Hudson, just not the part I’m used to, with crowded skyscrapers jutting out like uneven teeth and the Statue of Liberty in the background like that dangly thing in the back of your throat.
Epiglottis?
(“Uvula.”) The unasked-for correction comes from just over my left shoulder, but also inside of my head.
Solomon.
A familiar calm settles over me; a comforting weighted blanket studded with memory-barbed nettles.
Once upon a time, long conversations and elaborate daydreams with the boy, then teen, then man, in my head had seemed normal. After reading some psychology books and learning about maladaptive daydreaming, I’d figured they were abnormal but in a crazy-sexy-cool “inventing a boyfriend as a trauma response” kind of way.
They were neither.
Solomon is entirely his own person. Unfortunately for him, I don’t trust anyone but myself.
“Go away,” I sneer inwardly.
(“I can’t. Have you forgotten how this works while you were off sulking?”) His voice is a resonant monotone with bass to it, and somehow it’s pitched to provoke. He knows how to push my buttons with minimal effort.
“Listen, you little punk—”
(“It’s been a while since we’ve seen one another, but I’ll remind you that there’s nothing little about me.”)
My retort gets snagged on the recollection of strong hands, soft lips, the squeeze of his arms around me—hyperrealistic fantasies that real-world sex had never lived up to, and that I’ll never experience again because I crushed whatever Solomon and I had beneath the tread of my boot.
(“You were right about us being on the Hudson. As to how much time has passed—you’ve been dormant for six years.”)
Well, shit. I knew I was a stubborn bitch who could hold a grudge; turns out, I can even hold one against myself.
My left wrist vibrates and chimes, followed by a more subtle echoing jolt against my hip bone from something in the fanny pack. When I lift my arm, I see we’ve acquired a smartwatch. The pink strap of it covers the thin keloid scars that had been one of my parting gifts.
Text has popped up on the watch’s illuminated screen:
Reminder
Today
New job, new start
on life!
The stress-induced pain that shanks me under my left shoulder blade reminds me how much I hate this guessing game of trying to figure out what the hell some headmate has gotten us into. I refuse to ask Solomon, so I unzip the fanny pack to search for the cell phone. A multicolored pen, a travel notebook, a small tactical flashlight, and, oddly, travel-sized bottles of Lysol disinfectant spray and hand sanitizer. The phone, a sleek, seemingly buttonless Android instead of my old reliable iPhone SE, is in an almost-hidden inner pocket, tangled in the elastic straps of . . . a surgical mask?
I run my fingers over the phone with no fucking clue how to even activate the lock screen, then my index finger presses into an indent on the side—an assist from Solomon.
My thumb swipes across the phone’s screen, dismissing a winter storm alert and tapping in a numeric password; Solomon again.
It’s 3:40 pm on December 1, 2022.
The screen wallpaper behind the date and time is a group drawing of everyone in the system, probably Empress’s work since it’s digital and leans more toward a manga style than Solomon’s fine-art finesse. In the background rearing up over us is their house in the inner world, an incongruous Gothic castle that makes the scene look like a poster for a colorblind-casted Wuthering Heights remake.
I’m at the center of the picture. Brown skin, slim build, angular face paired with plush lips that’ve invited too many unwanted comments to count. I know it’s me and not just our body because my eyes are narrowed in general annoyance behind the lenses of huge plastic-rimmed glasses. My eyelids are shrouded in black shadow, my mouth in black-cherry, and tiny glints in my eyebrow, septum, and lower lip mark where my piercings should be. My hair is how it’d been when I went dormant, a kinky wash-and-go-hawk with the sides shaved down short, not the relaxed and bumped-end James Brown bob that I see reflected on the phone’s screen.
I’m wearing a black mesh tank top paired with black skinny jeans and my Docs, holding Keke on my hip. I’m leaning slightly away from her, as if I’m not quite sure what to do with her. Accurate, but fucked up since she’s me, too, in a way. Me at around four years old, stubby-legged and round-bellied in a frilly floral dress and shiny Mary Janes, looking up at the older version of herself with a gap-toothed grin.
I wonder if I’d ever been like Keke, playful and open and willing to smile at someone who’d tried their hardest to hurt me. I can’t remember—my earliest memory is being pulled kicking and clawing off a boy who’d been flipping skirts at recess in kindergarten.
Mesmer stands on the other side of Keke, short orange hair curling around her ears and hand clutching the little silver amulet she apparently always wears around her neck, even though I’d tossed it in the trash years ago. I’d got it at a temple visit during one of my non-Western religion fixations, which I guess was her making herself known. She’s the only white person in our system that we know of, though she’s a ginger so maybe that explains how she got in.
Lurk stands off to the side, wearing an oversized gray hoodie and baggy jeans. Apparently, no one knows what he looks like. I assume he’s Black under there because he’s the headmate that makes the bangin’ baked mac and cheese that I’ve been complimented on so many times over the years. From what I’ve heard about him, he just bums around the inner world, rarely speaking and never causing problems.
Empress, short, mid-sized, and sharp featured, wearing a T-shirt with a buff green woman on it, denim shorts, and green high-top
Reeboks. Her hair is in the same cornrowed style it’s always been in, though it’s now teal, highlighting her dark skin and bright brown eyes.
Della, high-yellow and bird-framed, is dressed like she’s ready for Easter service, complete with an ostentatious mauve hat.
And then there’s Solomon—brown-skinned, lantern-jawed with a close-cropped beard, and hair so immaculately waved that I have to wonder about his inner-world hair regimen. He’s sporting a tailored white button-up shirt and dark denim; the small round glasses perched on his nose and tight-lipped smile hint at his annoying nature.
In many ways, like being unreasonably hot, he’s the headmate most similar to me. More accurately, given our particular connection, he’s the best parts of me, or the me I thought I was.
I’ll never forgive him for it.
(“We don’t have time for this,”) he says, either picking up my thought or sensing my general annoyance with him, and, as usual, he’s right.
A mechanical droning in the distance differentiates itself from the racket of birds and trees, and when I squint down the river I see a ferry so old it might be breaking through the mists of time. It’s moving slowly, but its direction is clear. It’s coming toward the dock.
Toward me.
I put it together all at once: Ugly suit. Luggage. Meeting point. New job, new start on life!
Oh, hell no.
I’ve been handed the baton in a relay race when I haven’t had time to stretch, but unfortunately for my headmates I’m only capable of a niche individual event: extreme minding my business.
“Della?” I call inwardly. “Come out and handle this.”
We aren’t genies in a bottle who can be summoned on command, but she’s usually listening and waiting to extend a judgy, perfectionist hand. She’s silent now. Solomon is, too, and I don’t like the apprehension rolling off him, like he’s watching me fumble in the dark toward a huge pile of shit.
“Della!”
Nothing.
No . . . there’s something—the emotions of the others, churning below my own like the ripping current beneath the river’s surface.
My headmates are calling for her too.
She isn’t responding to any of us. ...
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