“He invited me to go see the plush warehouse,” I said.
“He is being polite,” said the voice. “You are a piece of nothing shaped like a person. You are Echo, after she dies, speaking only the words of Narcissus back to him. You may as well be dead.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Please. Don’t say that.”
“I will say what I please.”
“I can make you go away, you know,” I said.
“Oh yes? How?”
I flicked on the radio, turned the dial to find static. But I wasn’t fast enough. I caught a snippet of conversation—the Houdini Killer appears to have struck yet again, with local prostitute Shayna Jennings reported missing two nights ago, only a week after—
I kept turning the dial, let the words sink into:
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But I couldn’t keep it up forever. Eventually I had to turn it off, and the voice was waiting. The voice was always waiting.
“See what you did?”
“What?”
“You let another girl die. You failed. You were supposed to be finding him, right? The Houdini Killer? But what have you done? You’ve done NOTHING.”
“What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to—”
“You’re supposed to TRY.”
“I …” I shook my head. I felt like I really was going crazy. “Why me? Who do I have to—”
“BECAUSE YOU’RE LETTING THEM DIE. BECAUSE OTHERWISE HE GETS AWAY WITH IT. Don’t you see? Just like the guy who killed your—”
“SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.”
Silence.
Then, a voice like a gust of cold arctic air, frost hanging in it, crystals, capable of getting into the lungs, into the ears and freezing you from the inside out.
“Wash your face,” it said. “Ten times. Maybe if you deal with those zits he will be more interested. Maybe it will make you less disgusting.”
Yeah.
At times like those, I thought maybe Dr. Lewis was right. I mean, I looked in the mirror, in my bathroom—the en suite that Dad had made for me when we moved in—and I saw two pimples, one on my cheek and one on my chin.
And I felt disgusted by myself when I saw them.
So even though there was a part of me that still thought the voice might be supernatural, might be some kind of ghost or something, I could see the logic of the Doc’s position.
I.e.: everything the voice was saying was really what I was saying. My own hatred of myself, my own desire to punish myself, to make myself pay—
And then my thoughts would stop, would come to a brick wall that didn’t let them go any further, a barricade in my memories. I know what it is, now, that barricade.
But I didn’t then. I genuinely didn’t.
Anyway, yes, I could see that maybe the voice was me. I mean, I could understand it intellectually, as an abstract concept.
It was the concrete aspect I had difficulty with.
That is: the voice was not my voice. It was someone else’s voice, a woman’s, and I heard it through my ears. You have no idea what that feels like, when you hear a real voice that seems to be from outside you, and it hates you too.
At least, I hope you don’t.
“Wash your face again.”
“You said ten times.”
“Again.”
I looked at myself in the mirror. The dark circles were gone from beneath my eyes, but the pimples were like the size of the moon, blotting out my whole face, they were so enormous.
Disgusting, I thought.
But Dr. Lewis had made me believe I could control this thing, at least. Even if it was hard. So at the same time I was thinking about the next precept, the one about dialogue and conciliation. “If I do, can I read a bit of a book?”
“What book?”
“I don’t know. The one Jane gave me.”
“That *****? You want to read her book?”
“It’s not hers. It’s the library’s. It’s by Haruki Murakami. He’s Japanese.”
“The ***** called your dad, and he took you to the hospital, and that’s where they killed me again with those pills. I already died once and you did NOTHING to stop it. Then she killed me again.”
I closed my eyes. “Please,” I said.
ALL TOGETHER NOW:
“No,” said the voice.
3. DIALOGUE AND CONCILIATION. Welcome the voice, instead of ignoring it or telling it to shut up. Encourage more positive interaction and negotiation.
I’ve touched on this already. And the weird thing is, it did kind of work. Not right away, but it did.
So:
I was sitting on my bed, the room full of red morning light. The room was spotless. Here’s something freaky: I really liked that. I mean, it was the voice that had me always cleaning up after myself, but I had come to realize I enjoyed the feeling of space and order.