Time becomes thin when your mind begins to rot.
You don't feel it at first. You forget things—names, dates, what you had for breakfast. Then it gets crueler. It lets you remember just enough to suffer. A moment here. A face. A voice. A hand reaching for help you never gave.
And in those flickers of clarity, you see the truth:
This is not illness.
It's a reckoning.
The doctor still visits.
Each evening, without fail, he arrives at my door with that same leather case, that same gloved hand, that same unnervingly perfect face.
Blonde hair.
Blue eyes.
A smile that once healed, now cuts deeper than any blade ever could.
He brings me tea—bitter and sharp—and watches me drink. He watches me more than he treats me. Watches me like I'm something already dead, twitching in memory alone.
"Any dreams, Roger?" he asked one night.
"Only old ones," I muttered. "The kind that don't leave when you wake up."
He smiled, and I swear—just for a second—I saw Jack behind his eyes.
Not the Jack I strangled.
The Jack who called me brother.
The Jack who would have forgiven me.
On the third night, I opened my journal. I hadn't touched it in months. My handwriting shook on the page, barely legible.
"He trusted me. I buried him.Now he visits me nightly, in a different skin."
I don't know if that's a metaphor.
I don't think it is.
Each day, I grew dimmer. My memories scattered like moths in a burning house.
But his grew stronger.
He moved more confidently. He stopped pretending.
Sometimes he'd hum the same tune Jack used to hum in the shop. Sometimes he'd brush dust from my shoulder and whisper, "You always had a bit of hair stuck here."
Once, I saw him looking into my cracked hallway mirror, adjusting his collar—not as a visitor would…
…but as if the house was his.
I stopped taking the medicine.
I started preparing my own.
The tea I gave him wasn't to cure.
It was to level the playing field.
Made from herbs I remembered from a murder case—a hallucinogenic root, once used to drive prisoners into madness during war.
He drank it without question.
And slowly, I saw the same fog seep into his eyes.
I didn't want to forget him.
I wanted him to forget himself.
To doubt who he was. To look in the mirror and see Jack's face—but not know if he was a man or a ghost, a doctor or a reaper.
If I was to lose myself, then he would come with me.
I would not go alone.
On the sixth night, I awoke gasping.
There was a weight on my chest. My lungs fought against the pressure. I couldn't scream. My arms wouldn't work.
A figure knelt over me, his face obscured by flickering candlelight.
I whispered a name.
"Jack…"
But he said nothing.
Only gripped the edge of my bed and tilted.
I rolled.
Crushed.
Pinned beneath the frame.
Wood cracked against my bones. My head struck the floor.
Then darkness.
I heard my own breath slowing.I heard my heart faltering.I heard… laughing?
Not loud.
A whisper. Familiar.
Not cruel.
Forgiving.
Before the light left me entirely, I saw a face above mine.
Blue eyes. Blonde hair.
Tears on his cheeks.
He leaned down close to my ear.
"Do you remember me now?" he asked.
And I did.
Too late.