He knew the name. How he knew it wasn't something he could understand nor did he even want to. The presence bearing that particular name had been skulking inside his mind all these years -- at first, distracting him, then manipulating him, and finally taunting him. From the very earliest memories he had ever had as a child, he had known there was another.
Now Slider wanted to talk about him, and it was the last thing he wanted to do.
"He's gone."
"No...he's not."
He didn't like it that Slider was slapping him in the face with it. Pushing his hands against the chair arms to rise up in one, smooth, graceful motion, he left the chair and walked over to stare at a painting on the wall -- his broad shoulders squared and his hands thrust deep into his pants pockets.
"Nice...original?"
"Hardly," Slider answered, still waiting for Todd's response to his earlier statement.
Moving quickly away from the picture, Todd began prowling aimlessly around the room. Finally his body whipped around -- his eyes accusatory and distrustful.
"You just said that I was free of all that."
"It's my belief that you are...but Nick isn't part of the DID."
Damn...I was hoping you wouldn't say that...
"Go ahead then...do your dirty work," Todd muttered a low expletive under his breath and shoved his hands even deeper into his pockets.
"Okay Z...but don't you want to sit down?"
"No...I prefer to stand."
"All right then...here goes. You do understand the origin of Nick, don't you?"
Origin...beginning...the voice...my childhood...
"Yes."
"...and you understand why it happened?"
"I think I have an idea."
"Well, it was all due to your stepfather's abuse, Todd -- abuse that provoked your young mind to come up with an escape...some means to extricate yourself from it. That's why your mind split into two separate parts."
"...You didn't...couldn't know what was happening to you. All you knew was that another voice was channeling through your consciousness. That voice that leapt away from your mind was Nick's."
Toddy...it's me...let's go somewhere and do something really fun...just you and me...come on!
"...as a result of this, you had an imaginary friend of your own making...someone to talk with when you needed him. Later...as you got older, the bond between you and that voice got stronger...much stronger, and he drove deeper into your psyche, making it impossible for you to pinpoint exactly where he was."
I kept it quiet...the voice in my head...no one would ever understand...
"Todd...are you with me?" Slider questioned.
Sucking in his breath, Todd nodded. "Yeah."
"Z....you and I...we were so close back then, but I never had a clue you had this kind of secret."
"You expected me to tell you I was hearing voices? You were my only real friend, Slider...I couldn't afford to run you off!" Todd lashed out.
Slider gazed at him with a fresh surge of empathy. "I was your friend...not just an acquaintance, Z. I would never have run off."
Todd lowered his eyes, shrugging his shoulders slightly. "I guess I didn't have a lot of faith in anyone...when I should have."
"You certainly had your reasons for that, Z. I think I always understood that about you," Slider said sympathetically. Okay...back to Nick."
Rolling his eyes, Todd sauntered back to the chair and flopped down in it. "This is going to hurt, isn't it?"
"It doesn't have to... not if you don't let it. Now...we've established that Nick has been shadowing your mind all these years and that your personality...the essence of your personality was divided..."
"So...if I was divided...then...how did I..."
"Function? Sorry...didn't mean to jump in. You were just doing what the one half knew to do...and function you did...but the split did leave you with problems."
Problems...I'd call them walls...walls I had to scale...
"Everyone has problems." Todd said stiffly.
"Sure they do, but yours were a little different from most people. You were sharing your mind with another consciousness separate from your own."
"...You see, at the same time that Nick had helped you get through your childhood in providing you with a separate entity to relate to, he also weakened your own mind psychologically. The separation took away a lot of your strength and ability to weather the trials of life. In effect, the split sabotaged your own life, Z...making it extremely difficult to get along in a normal society."
Normal...Tea once said there was no such thing with me...
***********
. Sherry gazed out through the sun drenched blinds in her bedroom into the all consuming brilliance of the street below. She had already gone out very early to pick up some bagels for breakfast and then returned to her apartment. There were still more errands to run, but lately she had done everything she could to avoid running into a certain individual who lived in the same building as she did.
Even though she had been careful to go out at times when she knew he wouldn't be around, she had often heard sharp, persistent knocks at her door. Deliberately shutting out the agitating sound with hands over her ears, she never answered it.
Just this morning Slider had tried to reach her by phone and had left yet another message. "Sherry...it's me...we need to talk...take your time, but we can't put this off too long...call me..."
All right, so she knew it was downright silly and immature to be playing the avoidance game, but she couldn't do anything else in her present state of mind.
I'm just not ready to face him...and I just can't run into the man who was Nick either.
That night when she had run out of Nick's home was still very real to her. What she had seen and experienced hadn't deserted her mind. Every night she had been haunted by the ghostly reflection of Nick's strained face and all that had transpired in that dark hallway, and she had slept fitfully -- often waking up at odd hours.
Her dark eyes lingered on a stack of boxes in the corner of her room. After returning home that fateful night, she had wrestled with what her next move would be, and there seemed to be only one option. There was no way she could stay here.
The decision had been precise and clinical -- just the kind of decision she was used to making in the hospital.
I need to start over.
The clothes strewn all over her bed to be folded and packed away prompted her to mentally tick off all that she had to do before the end of the week. Several days ago, she had visited some apartment buildings to look at prospective rentals. There was one that had impressed her, and all that was needed was her check deposit and she could move in right away. If she could get everything packed and make all the arrangements, she would be free and clear of her most recent torment -- that of coming home to the same building every day where she and Slider had shared so much
A sweater that she had tossed across the room landed in a heap on one of the boxes. This was something she had to do. Whether she eventually changed hospitals and not just her address was still up in the air, but she no longer felt she could exist in such close proximity to a man she felt she had somehow betrayed.
Was she making too much of all this? No...she didn't think so. A life she had carefully built and nurtured for the last four years was now coming to an end
It would have been easy to lay the blame on the dark, handsome stranger who had so cleverly seduced her will, but she knew that if it hadn't been Nick, it would have been someone else -- someone else who could whisper sweet nothings into her ear and get her off track. What he had offered her had been just too tempting, and she had succumbed with pathetic weakness to the moment.
What's done is done.
***********
"I handled my life," Todd said defensively.
"Did you?" Slider leaned forward. "On a certain level, you did...but it wasn't working out as well as it thought, was it?"
Sure...things had a way of getting screwed up for me...de facto...my relationships for one...
"There were times," Todd admitted with resignation, "... when I thought it was over for me."
One of them...when I thought I'd lost Tea for good...
"Tell me, Z. Think about those times, and tell me exactly how you felt."
The night Starr got sick...at the hospital...after Tea left me standing there...and I lost it with that nurse...
"Like I was coming apart at the seams...is that what you want?
"You came apart a lot, didn't you, Z?" Slider said softly.
Waiting for an answer that never came, Slider continued.
"Did you ever wonder why? Did you ever wonder why you had those periods of calm and then periods of going out of control?"
"I'm sure you're dying to tell me."
"Because elements of your functioning mind were missing...out there in another dimension that you couldn't always get to. The other half...Nick...had been surgically removed, and you needed him to handle all that rage and torment brought on by your frustration with life."
"Everyone gets angry...so what?"
"Not like your anger, Todd. Your anger went beyond that. It would double...triple in size and block out any rational thought you might have."
A small light came on in Todd's brain as he listened.
"I...when I went off on someone...then later...I was sorry...but,"
"Go ahead."
"The rape..."
"Yes...the rape," Slider's blue eyes deepened. "You weren't sorry back then, were you?"
"I remember what I felt...that I wanted to make someone else suffer...as much as I had."
"An emotion to be repeated again and again in your life. Yet, it got harder and harder to maintain that vindictive, desensitized attitude, didn't it? People came into your adult life who loved you and tried to help you, and that made a difference."
The first time...it was Rebecca...
"Still...even love couldn't completely fix the problem of your missing identity."
"And...people let me down," Todd insisted.
"They let everyone down, Z...but you took it all very, very personally."
Looking at Slider with one cocked eyebrow, Todd said, "You sit there analyzing me...like your life is so perfect...without flaws."
"I'm here to help you, Z."
"Or maybe you're here to help yourself some, too...eh, doctor? Maybe I went overboard with my psychosis, but I'll bet a few million that you've always had some creepy stuff lodged in there you just didn't act on...or maybe you did."
Nick...yes, you are there with him now...
"This isn't about me, Z," Slider said evenly, trying to hold back the rancor that threatened to spill out.
"Oh right...well, back to basics, then."
"We still have a lot to cover....okay, now we need to talk about the others...your DID experiences."
"You must think that I was aware of all these personalities...when I wasn't."
"Not consciously aware, but subconsciously...yes, you knew about them. Most people who've had DID do know about it on some level, but there's a great deal of denial involved."
Viki sure had some denial...
"The succession of manifestations of different personalities were all outlets for you. Nick created one of those outlets...Pete...as protection against your father. The others...well, some were probably created by you for various different reasons."
"...Another interesting aspect to your case is that unlike most people with DID, who are battling it with one mind...you were battling with two minds...and that other mind didn't always see eye to eye with what you were doing."
Tea...
Suddenly his throat took on the same parched quality it had before, but it wasn't because he was thirsty.
He never wanted her to be with me...he hated her...
It all made so much sense now...every panic attack he had had when he was with her...every single moment that he had tried to get away from her...the sense of knowing that something else lurking inside him had a very real grudge against her.
Without skipping a beat, Slider continued his dramatic monologue even as Todd sat there with eyes that were turned inward to his soul.
"But the good news, Z, is there is no more battling to be done anymore because there is no more DID. All those personalities have been laid to rest because of the integration. Nick's mind has completely merged into yours, Z...for the first time since you were a small boy. His thoughts are now one and the same as yours, and you have everything and everyone back in its place."
Thoughts the same as Nick's ..not just a voice in my head. This means I'm some perverted mutation, and he's right here now...with me. Oh God...I am Nick!"
