Short Story III

I’ve been with him ever since the catastrophe. People say he’s just a pale shadow of his former self now. I see images of his glorious past adorning the walls of the enclosure I have built for him.

The doctors say he’s losing his mind. Nonsense! They’re all hack-jobs not worth even half their fees. Insane or not, he doesn’t even need to ask me for help – I sense him feeling vulnerable and immediately step-in to protect him. Although he doesn’t say as much in words, I know he’s secretly thanking me.

His fiancé visits him dutifully every day. Though I haven’t formally met her yet, I don’t like her much and have reason to believe that the feeling is mutual. The other day she came around just as I was about to leave. I was inclined to stay, but he told me to give him some privacy. I heard her expressing disapproval of me on the way out though. She says I’m stealing him from her and morphing him into an alien. But I’m just trying to help. I don’t want to see him hurt when she deserts him.

We’re closer than brothers now… almost as if two minds in one body…Shh! He’s coming. I have to go now….

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How did I get here? I must’ve been playing FIFA on the XBOX in my sleep again. I do that a lot now, having lost the ability to do the real thing. My fiancé says it’s not healthy – spending as much time as I do, immured within the safety of my house. But my friend says I’m too frail to venture out.

He’s been a great help the past few months. I’ve grown quite close to him. I don’t know why she hates him so much. Jealousy sounds a bit far-fetched, but stranger things have happened where women are concerned.

Yesterday she was telling me she doesn’t know me anymore. I think she is drifting away from me, now that the glamour and excitement has evaporated. A woman like her can’t keep living like a nurse. She deserves better I guess.

Besides, I have my good friend to take care of me. I don’t know what I’d do without him. He’s so confident and assured of himself. I wish I was more like him. I wonder why he sticks with me though. Maybe he needs me as much as I him. I suppose I give him a means to satisfy his magnanimous ego. It’s time to meet him….

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It’s been 5 years since we came to this “institution” for rehabilitation. We don’t talk as often as we used to. He thinks I’m the reason we’re here. As if his life would have been any better without me. I gave him a purpose, a belief that he could survive without needing anyone else. I was there for him when the world was falling apart around him….. When his fiancé left; and this is how he repays me - pushing me out of his life, like one would weed out old clothes.

But I will not go so easily, having invested so much of my life….

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I feel he’s controlling my actions… I wake up in the corridor sometimes and don’t remember getting there. The horror of things he’s made me do sends shivers down my spine. I’m a danger to those around me. I’ve got to end this… the only way of getting rid of him forever… and I think I know how.

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The two men in the picture are two facets of a single person (one which makes him feel small & vulnerable and the other which makes him feel big and arrogant). There should be a harmony between the two in order to achieve goals of one's life.

I have tried to justify this theme through the story of a person suffering from dissociative identity disorder – split personality, due to an accident which caused him to lose his ability to walk and confined him to the seclusion of his house. Both his selves want to claim his body and this disharmony has resulted in him losing his identity, fiancé and freedom.