Fan: Coming Out

"We can't just leave him to...to die in there! He's our son, our son. You sicken me to think that we can just leave him."

"I'm trying, I'm trying. I don't want to leave the boy either. But we can't live like this. I can't live like this. And he can't either. We kill him or he dies alone."

Two parents were talking in a basement, hearing the voices of a troubled boy upstairs. The 'father' had a pistol and the 'mother' had a phone.

-

Sixteen year old John was thrashing all around, hitting tables and knocking over lamps. He grasped his head with all his might, fingernails digging into his scalp. He let out a scream, and fell to the ground. He heard a massive, loud voice in his head yelling at him. Laughing. It had been happening for hours. "Make it stop," he screeched over and over.

The 'father' downstairs clicked the gun and a small shell hit the concrete basement. "He's suffering and I can't take this anymore!" the father told the mother. She started crying. "Why is this happening?"

And then suddenly, the sound stopped. A final thud hit the floor. At this point, the 'father' creaked open the basement door. When they looked around the wrecked living room, there was broken glass, blood under John's hands, and John himself was propped up against the counter. Alive, but not sane; it seemed.

The 'father' pointed the gun at the boy, steady. "Are...Are you alright?" he asked. John looked up, dark eyed. "He's gone," he said. "T-The person in my head is gone." The 'father' dropped the gun. He sat by John. "Tell me everything that's happened," he said. John whispered, "Ever since this morning, I-I heard someone. Almost like a child. But he was angry. Really angry. I got a... a migraine, as if he was banging on my head. It's what it felt like. And then he laughed. Kept on laughing, I couldn't handle it. I wanted him gone. He was shouting something I couldn't understand because... because I couldn't hear it over the pain. Then...it stopped. He said I'd see him again one day. Some day when I see him I'll know. But I-I don't k-know why or who he is so how can I know who he is when I see him s-someday?"

After that day, the 'mother and father' left. They had adopted John for only a few days after they found him homeless. Apparently he had run away from some town with his brother, who he couldn't remember the name of but knew was out there. Of course, after that, he started getting hallucinations and dreams and last of all, the voices.

Now John is moving away. He ran away from everyone and out into a wood. He wanted to find his brother. He wanted to know who was in his head, and why he was telling him future things.

He wanted to know why the boy named Jimmy was laughing at him in his head, possibly prior to when they meet. This Jimmy, or so the boy told his name was shortly, was after him. Or was he?

He couldn't know until he found his brother. His dear Gregory.