Clarity

You wake up in the middle of the night. It's hot, the air stale, swirling sluggishly beneath the whining silhouette of a ceiling fan. The covers have been kicked to the floor, and yet still it feels as though your bed clings like a damp breath, sheets sticking to skin. But it was not this discomfort that awoke you. No, it was that thought rising, again, from the back of your mind amid a dream—that notion, that self awareness, that cue to a lack of privacy. You are not alone tonight.

You haven't been for years.

Sometimes you ignore it, that shadow overlapping your bedpost from the window. It's late and all you wish is to return to sleep, return to a place of ignorance. But tonight, you are playful; an interest arises to start a conversation with him—with Benoit. After all, the two of you have not spoken since—no, not since you started taking Abilify. And, that's right, you forgot to take it before going to sleep two-nights-in-a-row. You've let him in, left the door ajar, and it would only be rude to leave him to his corner, perched on a stool, a gargoyle of a man—a statuesque nineteenth century British dandy, to be exact, wrapped in wool and tweed, with eyes as large and alive as nuggets of coal—they scan beyond you, perhaps through you, listless and knowing.

"Benoit," you croak, the dried cracks on your lips threatening to split. A dry mouth and numb tongue are reminders of that nightmare which rung round your neck.

"What a delicious dream you were having," he replies. You see him blink. That harrowing innocence is kind to his features. Or perhaps the other way around. "I was wondering when we might get back to it?"

"I need a glass of water," you announce, sliding off the bed.

The pads of your feet brush through dust as you plod to the door, groping in the darkness haphazardly for the knob. With a contemptuous amount of glee and vigor, he stirs from his seat and grins—and this grin, you know, means he has missed this, has missed you.

"Debilify," he'll call it, if ever you reach into the medicine cabinet, and you'll both laugh because you know it's true. You know the madness is what you want, is what you prefer to swim though day in and day out—despite its difficulty, its horrors, its viscous maladies—because above all, it is entertaining. Reality, un-embellished, is terrifying. And bland and unbearable.

Unbearable because it must be born alone in an eerily vacant mind.

"Let's get that glass of water," He says, disappearing down the hallway with such energy. You can hear his steps descend the stairs and leak into the living room, and you wonder what it all means. What must it mean? Do you own a thousand faces? Are you fragmented, an entity dominant in a singular vessel; or are you haunted, a lure for ghosts—yes, ghosts, because that is what they must be; lest you be merely a hemorrhaging vein in the cosmic imagination of some Divine that has ascribed, to you, the task of care-taking for a most voracious and witty incubus, whom you so dare to call your only friend.