And see you, I must.
It was truly torture…
Hale ran his hands through his hair, tucking it behind his ears as he started the morning. It was enough that he was dizzy and his vision was cloudy today. But now, he was going out in public, so he wanted to look like he was at least pretending to belong. He had never considered himself an introvert before, but ever since his ‘beheading’, he’d really had no choice. The feeling left him cold ever since, and every time he considered the world after becoming the thing that he felt he had become, his throat grew just as cold.
It was a distracting feeling, really; he could barely get his arms to move like he wanted, his eyes closing for a moment with a sharp sigh. And even when he felt steady enough to make his next move, he all but slammed his head against the top counter reaching for his house keys.
Nonetheless, he rushed out of the door right before dawn. The clinic opened as the sun rose every morning, so he wanted to be first in line. What else was there to do, really, when a person was as unhinged as he felt?
The bus station was across the street from his home, thankfully. He often took it to the stop by the grocery store, but never much farther. As he boarded it today, however, he paused at the touch of cold metal. It was just a sharp shock to his already-compromised system, and his eyes closed as he remembered the ordeal of the morning.
As he boarded the bus and sat in his usual seat, he let his head lay upwards, peering emptily at the ceiling. No one else was seated, and the bus driver simply tipped his hat and ignored him, as many others did. The gesture stung the first time, but he soon came to understand why they looked at him as they did. As the dreams weighed him down, fear and panic of the night took root quickly in his daily appearance. Every night he lay immersed in panic, which had but ample room to grow to a peak in his weak heart, he felt weaker by morning.
As he opened his eyes, which he hadn’t realized he closed, he peered at the darkness of the window. Sad little eyes peered at their body through the reflection, which caught in the reflection as just a translucent shadow. In this window, he was bigger than the scattered people on the street, more ethereal in lighting. The dim, flickering bus light was the only thing projecting him this way, though, and he noted how fragile that was. It was amusing to him, but it made him wistful to think this way. He let out a breathy chuckle, before adjusting his gaze to view beyond just himself.
There was never much to see out here, in the way of scenery or company. It was a small town he lived in, with people that seemed even smaller to him. He never noticed them, never thought about them or their names or their lives. He barely considered their environment, either. It was built for them, but not for stumbly, thin-breathing, haunted people like himself. But, with a scrunch of his eyebrows, he had a thought of himself, how he looked to these same people. They didn’t matter to him, but he…believed that he mattered to them in some way?
But, as he remembered the driver, his gaze grew a little darker; he knew the answer well.
He exited the bus without fanfare, holding his bag as he barely acknowledged the bus or its driver. He clung to the door as a support to depart, stumbling down on shaky legs. With a gasp of effort, he understood, very sharply, what he was missing. Any other day, it would be fine, but why had he left his cane, of all things, on the day when he was in a strange place? He peered back at the driver for a moment, right as he was steady on the floor.
“Thank you,” he called out at the last minute, trying to look strong enough to not draw eyes.
As the driver tipped his hat again and the bus left, he let himself stumble to the tree next to the station. With a huff, he looked around at the surroundings. There were still too few people for him to be noticed at all. Those who were out were talking at old, rusty payphones or taking out their trash bins. Nonetheless, he took advantage of the lack of sunlight to highlight his struggles and began his stumbling down the street.
The walk down the street was interesting at its best, and terrifying at its worst. He stayed to the edges of the street in the cold shadows, lamenting his genius as he stumbled forward.
“Today, of all days”, he mumbled, looking up the street with a heavy uncertainty. Hale knew another man would have asked for help, but he didn’t think he would survive it. He already had let out his little bleating laugh he made on instinct when he had to grab a stranger’s arm on the street to keep himself from falling over. He didn’t need all this.
Nonetheless, with some effort, Hale finally tracked his way to the clinic doors, standing straight as he leaned himself against one of the pillars. His breath caught at the sight of it, and it felt magnetic after such a trek across the block. The dark, gray slate building was growing some sort of moss, which was unnaturally soft to the touch. It felt almost as if it was pulling Hale’s hand into it. As he traced his hands across the moss to get to the entrance, he felt a strange sensation, himself. Like a sudden peace.
As he arrived to the door of the building, he let himself come to a sudden stop. He had heard about the Clinic, both from old rumors of “Old Hope” in his youth, and from the flyer. It was an enchanted door, primed and tuned to drive away the average hypochondriac. The door itself was very plain, but its function was to turn away those it felt were not applicable for treatment. Hale braced himself against its frame, and he could feel an almost reverent, sanctified aura coming from beneath the white, cracking paint. His reflection in the dark tinted glass, which he couldn’t help but notice as he peered up, was a whole image.
“Excuse me, but, are you not going in?” Said a stranger from behind him. The too-sharp, almost invading sound made Hale jolt from his internal world and stumble backward, which in turn made the stranger back away. He curiously watched as Hale scrambled to grasp the rail bars with a squeak, pinning himself against the doorframe.
The pair peered at one another for a moment, each observing the mirror offender before common manners stepped in to avert their eyes.
As he gazed before him, Hale was almost painfully aware of how disheveled he was, his ash-copper hair messy and clashing with his sharp, dark gaze. He all but gawked at the clean dressed stranger before him as his own self was a textbook epitome of darkness and quiet brooding. And the one before him had bright skin, dressed in a white dress shirt and black, navy striped cotton pants with dark, shiny boots. As for himself, as if a cosmic refusal to the pristine before him, he was draped in his long, black, shaved duffle coat with rough black pants and tunic. His hands subconsciously came to the coat and sheltered his form, at which he turned away and stepped back.
“I… heh…I’m so sorry, am I in the way?” Hale said with a sudden raspiness, the sound of which made him wince and avoid the stranger’s eyes.
The other man returned with a similar response, but instead, he simply chuckled and gave some space. “You’re not going inside?” He repeated softly, a hand coming to half-cover his mouth expectantly.
“I…” Hale’s eyes were all but forced upward at the soft tone, which also gave him time to understand that he was in front of the entrance. And that it was the reason the stranger was asking him, of all people. “I.. I’m…am. I-I am, I mean, I...”
At his stammering, the stranger gave a peculiar, amused glance, but silently excused himself to go inside the building.
Hale, with a small grimace and a new feeling of embarrassment, steeled himself and took a step to follow. However, within just a moment, the stranger returned to him and handed him a sturdy, steel walker. It was the Clinic’s, branded with the ‘Magia Clinic’ on the side, but Hale regarded it as if it was brought specifically for him. “Don’t fall before you get inside.” said the other man. “I saw you down the street. I can hardly believe someone like you came outside like that.”
“I… won’t fall… thank you” Hale replied, gripping the walker as he entered first, ushered by the strange man. He kept his gaze to himself this time, simply focusing on getting to the waiting room. As he entered the clinic, he couldn’t help but wince at the scent of stale, sanitary air. It was a long time since he had to go to any kind of clinic, but it was at least some kind of abstract comfort that the air was the same as all the others.
As the door shut behind him with a sharp click and hiss of the metal grazing the carpet, he looked back. Being inside of this place, knowing what he knew about the door, meant he was here for a reason. It should have been horrible news, knowing that a curse was put upon his back, but he took it with a grave little chuckle. He was already bitterly miserable as it was, so perhaps he could only take the progress and news of the day as a blessing.
Hale voiced his anxiety all at once in form of a sigh as he moved over to the seats in the corner.
Alone with his thoughts, he couldn’t help but think of his shadow stalker again. “Five years,” he muttered to himself as he looked around at the similarly stale scenery. It was good he was getting help, but a small part of himself was disappointed that ‘help’ wasn’t more exciting. The clinic was among his worst nightmares, but, now that he conquered it, his body was already shutting down. Everything was heavy, but if he slept now, he might miss some abstract chance to exorcise the demon inside of his mind.
Regardless of his feelings on the matter though, he found himself helplessly dozing off in the corner, hands resting across his waist.
The man from earlier slunk around the corner the moment Hale slipped into rest, let himself lean on the chair next to him. Hale, even unconscious, gave off a look of a very aesthetic sort of haunted. He wasn’t ugly, nor was he a type of gorgeous. It was very visibly troubled, with off-color, olive skin and messy hair. He didn’t seem to shave, so it seemed he was given a sort of eternal state of just…’being’. It was something classical, to be studied by the appreciative eye, and the stranger seemed the rare sort, willing to approach the muse.
“You’re a troubled sort,” he uttered suddenly, only leaning back after the hesitated moment when the drowsy Hale jolted awake in his seat. And Hale, wide eyed, backed upward in his seat, blinking out the burn from his eyes.
“Sorry about that…” The stranger trailed off as he leaned back, settling himself into the seat properly rather than leaning over it. “They don’t typically let the patients sleep in here. Not that I think you’d get in trouble.”
Hale didn’t respond this time, instead smoothing out his worn clothes and trying not to fall asleep again. Doubly so, now, as there was a strange man sitting next to him. His head was swimming in deep lethargy, but he tried once more to look strong. Something about the moment told him that the thing he had to fear from falling asleep was not his dream stalker.
The man frowned at this non-response, but soon smirked at the prospect of something else. “It’s alright. A… curse like yours must be something else for you to have that kind of reaction in public, huh?”
“In public…?” Hale echoed subconsciously, before he could even stop himself. “I… In public, yes, it is.”
“Are you not interested in it?”
“Interested? In what?”
“Interested in your magic potential,” the stranger said suddenly, pushing Hale’s hair behind his ear as he leaned over, conspiratorily. “My name is… you might as well call me Green.”
Green, as we know the stranger by now, leaned in a little more, chuckling at some invisible joke that Hale wasn’t a part of. “There’s a lot I could tell you, if you wanted to know. But would you even be able to take it in as you are now?”
Hale barely responded in acknowledgement of the challenge, eyes blinking around in an attempt to stay conscious, could barely follow what was being said. His body was already threatening to fall back into that deep, nightmarish sleep. Even as he sat fully upright, trying to put on a face to get himself through this conversation, he couldn’t help it. It came through all too keenly that this was just another weakness, if not his sole, damning flaw.
Either way, whether he was healthy or not, he knew that Green would have always had a way of getting under his skin. Hale, even through the haze, had sharp senses. He knew, despite their short time together, that this Green character was someone to look out for, someone who meant nothing good for him. And as he looked to the side to see those pale eyes of his practically gnawing at some idea of his image, he couldn’t help but feel justified.
But Green went a little further, now grabbing onto Hale’s wrist. “I can help you,” he said quieter, now looking over at the corner behind the desk in the room.
Hale shakily pulled away, standing against the walker’s weight as he backed away from Green. And Green, unfazed, seemed primed to stand and follow him. And Hale’s expression dropping at the sight of Green following made him start to smirk.
In the same moment, as if Hale was spared by some higher being, they both froze at the sound of heels clacking down the hall. Green froze in his tracks and sat back down, and Hale took the opportunity to rest his full weight onto the walker, forcibly calming himself. A nurse, likely finishing her duties elsewhere down the hall, came around the corner with a clipboard, bearing a smile at the sight of the two men.
“Please, excuse me,” she bleated, smiling while looking over Hale. Her voice was very sweet, and her presence seemed to unnaturally calm Hale. She was enchanted too, perhaps even a mage herself. “We’ve been short staffed with a small excess of patients… You must be the next patient, no? And is this a sleep disorder you’re in for today?”
At Hale’s nervousness, which she attributed with just simple nerves, she chuckled and gripped Hale’s walker to steady him. “Don’t worry, dear, we get that all the time, here. Sleep curses are very easy to catch. If you just come with me, we’ll see if we can get that sorted out tonight, alright?”
As she gave Hale some room and began to lead him down the hallway with her clacking heels, Hale couldn’t help but glance back.
Green, leaning in his chair stared at him with wider eyes than before, like a curious, waiting creature.