Lies of the Beholder (Legion 3)

That was how it had been for me when I was younger, before Sandra, and before the aspects. My brain tucked all of this knowledge away, but didn’t know how to use it.

I slumped in the seat, overwhelmed and used up, frustrated and angry. “Is she right?” I said to the small, empty bedroom. “I promised to find a solution, but what hope do I have? Sandra knows way more than I do about this, and she couldn’t find a solution.”

No responses.

I took the photo from my pocket and propped it up on the computer keyboard. “Is this really it? I’ve lost them forever? Ivy, J.C., Tobias? Gone because my brain just doesn’t feel up to the effort?”

“Not gone,” Jenny said.

I spun my chair and found her standing in the shadows by the door. She held up her notepad. “I’ve got them right here.”

“How are you still alive?” I said.

“You told me to go,” she said. “You told me to go away, to break the rules. So I did. You preserved me.”

“You’re not a real aspect,” I said. “I didn’t summon you.”

“Of course you did. The question is why.” She stepped toward me, holding out the notepad. “What is it you wanted me to do? What’s my expertise, Stephen Leeds?”

I looked away from the notepad. “I’ll just end up repeating the cycle. It’s either that or madness.”

“False dichotomy,” she whispered.

Pretending there were only two options, when there might be a third. Or more. I looked at the notepad, filled with scrawled notes. At the top of the page it read, Tobias.

She hadn’t been taking notes on me, but on the aspects.

A third way out. A way to internalize the aspects, yet let them still live on? A way to be at peace with the voices, to give them an outlet other than to scream at me, ignored?

“I am an expert,” Jenny said softly, “in them. In you. The sum expertise of a decade of living with them, and with this incredible, insane brain of yours.” She proffered the notepad again. “Let them live again.”

I took it, hesitantly. “It won’t be the same.”

“Make it the same.”

“It won’t be real.”

“Make it real.”

She faded. Leaving the notepad in my hand, filled with notes. Stories, lives. I didn’t feel the sensation of ripping loss. The information was still there in my head. Her knowledge. My knowledge.

I looked at the glowing computer monitor. This won’t work, I thought. This can’t work.

… Can it?

I sat with the notepad under my hand, but I didn’t need it. I just needed to know it was there. So I started typing.

My name is Stephen Leeds, I wrote, and I am perfectly sane. My hallucinations, however, are all quite mad.

I wrote for hours. Word after word after word. Somewhere near dawn, I saw a shadow reflected in the computer screen. When I turned, nobody was there, but when I looked back at the screen it was like I could see him behind me. I almost—but not quite—felt a hand rest on my shoulder. I didn’t look away from the computer, but reached up, and touched the hand with mine. The hand of a man weathered with age.

Well done, Stephen, a familiar voice—not completely real—said in my mind. Well done! Why don’t you write about Ivy and J.C. going to Paris together? She’s always wanted to go. Something will go wrong, of course. A diamond heist perhaps? The Regent Diamond is there, on display at the Louvre. It’s said to be the clearest diamond in all the world.…

I smiled. Sandra was wrong. It wasn’t about containing them. It was about letting them free.

I hurriedly continued typing. My adventures are done. Finally, thankfully.

But my hallucinations … well, they’re always getting into trouble.