Noise.
All of the noise.
A loud static noise faded in and out, interspersed with the sounds of his mother and her ex-boyfriends yelling, or her johns, or whoever Mom was angry at now. Then the static that rattled his insides, but never silence.
Of course, his mom wasn’t real, was she? Neither was Daisy. Those were some elaborate constructions of his brain to help him cope with this, his reality.
Po slipped in and out of consciousness. His consciousness was a large body of water, a rope pulling him deeper, then going slack and allowing him to float closer to the surface before tugging him back down. He could see the surface, reach out and touch it. The thing was, consciousness didn’t offer any answers, so it didn’t make a difference where he was.
He had no idea how long he’d been here, had no concept of time. It was liquid, time was, like it would fit with any perception he came up with. He’d been here a day, had been born here. It didn’t really matter, did it?
Po knew though. This was his reality. The skin on his lower back ached, like a sore festering and oozing. That was his reality. Everything else was a lie. A dream. He wasn’t sure which was preferable, the dream where he was a bad seed, or this reality, where everything was covered in stark white and noise was everywhere. It was everything.
The static consumed him. He felt it in his bones. They vibrated with it. Sometimes he could hear a pipe dripping somewhere; maybe there was a shower nearby that leaked. That would explain it, but he’d never seen it. That door in the wall had always been closed.
Sometimes he could hear an air conditioner unit click on and start whooshing air through the vents in the ceiling. That suppressed some of the static.
But the noise was always there.
It seemed like he remembered another time in his life when there was static like this, but he couldn’t trust that memory. Everything else was a dream. Daisy wasn’t real. She was the only good thing his brain had come up with to distract him from his reality. But she wasn’t real.
Nope. But he could still watch her smile in his mind’s eye, with the buzz of static as a background. In fact, looking at her smile made the static fade, just a bit. So he thought of that often.
Sister. What a weird thing to come up with to deal with this. He didn’t have a sister. Sisters provided unconditional love, even when you were a monster like he was. Unless he was toxic to her. Maybe that was it? He was surely toxic to himself, so why not others?
Still, he didn’t think he had a sister who loved him unconditionally like his hallucinations told him. He certainly didn’t deserve one.
Not sure if he was awake or not, he allowed his mind to wander, exploring the recesses of his brain, where he’d locked up all the blood and screams while he’d tried to get rid of dreams of being a criminal. His brain was a house, a big one, one with tons of rooms, most of which he’d locked up tightly. But now, doors swung open on squeaky hinges, freeing all the dreams he’d painstakingly locked away, allowing them to finally spill forth.
Boredom did strange things, and he wondered how long he’d been bored. Why had he always been strapped to this bed to have these visions? Were there other people like him here, in this place, spending a lifetime with false dreams?
Po saw the whore he’d brought back for Scorpio. Her blood. He heard her screams for mercy. But right now, he knew he had been the one to inflict the pain. By choosing her and bringing her to his boss, he was the one who had killed her. Her blood was on his hands.
He looked at his hands. Sure enough, they were dark red, glistening with blood. Her blood, the blood of countless others he had brought to his boss.
His boss’ voice echoed in his head. Good boy, son. You did really good.
A sob left his throat. He was definitely conscious. He was back in the hospital room. White walls, sterile, a bed that crinkled with rubber coverings. A lot like the bed Scorpio used for his whores, so the blood wouldn’t ruin the mattress. Strapped down with an IV pumping God knows what into the vein of his arm.
What did the visions mean? Why was he being tortured with them? Are they some sort of yearning? Did he want to be the one to put women out of the misery of their existence? Then why did he deliver them into the hands of a murderer?
Why were these his hallucinations?
The blood climbed up his hands, to his elbows, and he wondered how it had gotten there. With a mounting horror, he watched the blood climb up his arms, knowing that as soon as it got to his heart he was done. There would be no coming back from this.
Nothing could protect his heart from the blood. When the blood reached his heart, he would be completely covered in it. No emotion would be able to get through the horrors and screams of the blood.