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Tyler’s wrists were still raw.
He sat in his bed staring at them, and he couldn’t tell if they were real anymore. This house felt like something for a different Tyler. A different life. It wasn’t for something like him.
He didn’t even know what he was anymore.
Tyler blinked and he was in his car, pulling out of his driveway on the way to school. Tyler slammed on the brakes and cursed.
His heart pounded in his chest, but the birds kept chirping like nothing was wrong. The clock flashed in the corner of his eye, warning him that he was already late for school. He cursed again and hit the gas.
Nobody asked him where he’d been. That may have been the worst part. He was having a hard enough time figuring out the holes in his memories and the hazy nightmare that was his life to not have anyone else even notice that he disappeared for days if not weeks without a trace.
“Next week’s essay…” Ms. Torris lectured. Her words fell over him like white noise as he stared at the long sleeves covering his wrists.
What if he didn’t disappear, and he was losing time because he was going crazy? That thought only brought forth images of his mother dying in that hospital, left to rot by herself because nobody gave a shit about people like them. That familiar anger rose up within him, burying the terror underneath, but it felt different. It was harder not to find something quick and beat it bloody.
Tyler swallowed heavily and raised his sleeve with a shaking hand. His wrist was still cut up and purple, but that didn’t mean it really happened. He wished someone would look at him and react. Any reaction at all just to let him know he wasn’t making it up.
Nobody did, and he shoved the sleeve back down with a vengeance.
He blinked and he was eating dinner.
His dad sat across from him for once, his head buried inside a takeout container. He ate like he couldn’t wait to leave. Tyler gritted his teeth and tried not to start a fight that would go nowhere.
The words stuck to the back of his throat like acid eating away at his resolve.
Where were you? Where was I? Did you even look for me? Did I even leave?
What happened to my mother?
The chopstick snapped between his fingers. Tyler noticed that his hands had begun to clench into fists.
His father sighed like Tyler was the problem. “One dinner,” he said like it was all he could ask.
Tyler blinked, and he was in the woods.
The wind was bitingly cold against his naked skin, but he was too busy trying to breathe to notice. Curling onto his side, he puked his guts out before sobbing through the fruitless attempts to just take one whole breath.
His chest ached. His face hurt from crying. He grew dizzy, and then he didn’t feel anything at all as he fell unconscious.
***
Tyler’s wrists were healed, but he was still losing time.
He didn’t think his wrists should have been healed yet. It didn’t feel like enough time had passed, but he woke up one morning and they were good as new.
He didn’t notice this until he was sat in the tub with the shower beating water on his head. He’d woken up from another vivid nightmare that felt more like a memory than he wanted to deal with. He shivered despite the heat of the water, and tried to get up when the steam became too thick to breathe.
He grew nauseous. He had to be at school in twenty minutes.
***
Tyler looked up at the ding of a new customer and froze.
Marilyn stood before him, smiling widely like she always did as she recited her order. It was the same every time. Tyler knew it by heart.
His blood sang at the sight of Her as he made her coffee. She didn’t act any differently than before—
He wanted to throw up.
Maybe he really was going crazy.
***
Tyler was running through the woods.
He was naked, he could tell, but the cold didn’t touch him. He was taller than he should have been. Faster.
He was angry, but he wasn’t sure what he was angry about. There was too much to choose from. There wasn’t really any need for a reason at all.
He lunged as a buck tried to flee from his path.
Tyler blinked, and he was in his tub, sniffing the blood on his arm. The smell made him feel like hands were pressing in, hurting him.
He scrubbed himself raw, buried himself in his covers, and tried to go to sleep.
***
“What the hell is this!” his dad shouted, slamming a paper on Tyler’s desk. The sound of his palm hitting the wood startled Tyler strong enough to break the pencil in his hand and send his heart to an early grave.
“What?” Tyler asked just as shortly.
The paper was his last essay. He didn’t remember writing it. He barely remembered it being assigned.
“Is this what we’re doing now?” his dad asked rhetorically. “Flunk out of school so you can, what? Give me one more thing to have to deal with?”
Tyler gritted his teeth as the urge to shout or break something rose up again. It pressed against his ribs and clawed its way up his throat.
“What do you care? It’s one stupid essay.”
That only angered his father more. He opened his mouth and—
Tyler blinked to the morning sun piercing his eyes. He was laying in the woods again, naked and covered in blood. There was nothing around him that could explain where the blood came from. No dead animal or open wound on his body.
He checked thoroughly for some sign of struggle or attack. Aside from the blood under his fingernails, there was nothing.
Tyler shoved himself back until he hit a tree, only to press himself against the bark as if it could protect him from…from…
He didn’t know, and he didn’t know how much more of this he could take.
Tyler curled up into a ball, pressing his face into his knees and cried. Shivers wracked his exposed body. Everything hurt from how tense he was, but he couldn’t bring himself to relax his muscles for a moment.
Without warning, Her voice passed through his mind. He couldn’t understand what She was saying, but she was happy.
Tyler shuddered at the thought, and yet, it settled something deep and scared inside him. It felt like something tangible underneath his skin. It felt like everything he’d been shutting out.
Tyler looked down at his wrists, whole and bloody as they were.
It was wrong. He didn’t know why, but it was wrong. They shouldn’t look like that. They shouldn’t—
Tyler scratched at his wrists until they were red and raw. He didn’t realize he was doing it. He didn’t feel the pain. He just dug his nails in until he broke skin, and then he dug some more until they were bleeding as well as bloody. He would have kept doing it too if a shadow hadn’t eclipsed his work and stolen his attention.
He followed the shadow up until he was staring at the silhouette from before. The dream he wished for within the nightmare he wanted to forget. She stood right there, staring at him dispassionately.
He could feel it on his skin. Her mild curiosity burned, but he couldn’t tell if it was a good thing or not.
“Go away!” he shouted, and immediately regretted it. The thought of her disappearing filled him with a terror he couldn’t name.
The silhouette tilted her head as if to study him. It made him feel naked and unsure. He didn’t like it. He couldn’t move.
“Who are you?” he asked, fresh tears escaping his eyes and staining his cheeks. They only reminded him how filthy he was. Only made him realize how much his wrists stung as his nerves touched the open air.
The silhouette didn’t speak. Of course she didn’t because she wasn’t real, and Tyler was going crazy.
Tyler curled into a tight little ball and didn’t move until her shadow disappeared.