Keith was sitting on the front porch when we arrived with a scratch on his face.
“Looks like two of us need tending too,” said Mr. Wilcox as he slammed the truck door.
“Jeff, what the hell have you done to yourself this time.”
“A nail in the foot, Doc.”
“Alright, come on inside. I’ll have Nicky look at it while Christain and I take care of some business downstairs.”
“You want to borrow my old catchers mask.”
“Nicky, Jeff’s back.”
“Again––Mr. Wilcox, what am I going to do with you?”
As I followed Keith downstairs, we stopped halfway as the whole staircase began a slow descent, two stories down to be exact. When it stopped, we made our way down a hallway to the last door on the right. “Kate, this is Dr. Decker; I’m going to come in and talk to you. You won’t be restrained unless you act out again.”
Spiting through the small opening, she yelled, “Go away, you fucking bastard! Why have you locked me in here, you’re not the police.”
“Your right; I’m not. I’m your friend. We’ve known each other for years. You have amnesia.”
“Fuck you! I don’t have amnesia. And my name is not Kate. It’s Carol Wiseman.”
“If that’s true, where were you born?”
“Cincinnati, Ohio, I still live there. My address is 2205 Baker Street.”
“But you’ve been living in a homeless camp for years. Why not go back home?”
“I tried, but my boyfriend said he would kill me if I left.”
“When did you meet him?”
“I don’t remember; Jake was just there one day. I had a bad trip, and he—.
“Is something wrong?”
“I’m not sure. Do you have any heroin? I need some heroin! The voice is coming back.”
“You don’t need heroin. I can make the voice go away.”
She stepped back from the door, crying. “All I need is the heroin.”
As we entered you could see mindless scratches along the wall made from a screw taken out of the bed frame. In the corner stood Kate. “Not him, you, by yourself.”
“He’s my assistant. I need him to take notes.”
“I’m not a lab rat.”
“No one said you were. And I promise to give you all the heroin you want if the voice doesn’t go away.”
While his promise may have comforting Kate, or Carol, or whoever she was. It did not comfort me; I knew what he meant.
“You Promise?”
“Yes, now lie down on the bed. I want to use a hypnotic technic I developed to help people who hear voices.”
“Other people hear voices?”
“Yes. And I want to know what yours is saying.”
“You don’t have to put me under for that. I’ll tell you what it says. It says, ‘I’m not me, look in the mirror I’m not me.'”
“And what do you see when you look in the mirror?”
“Me, you dumbass. What the fuck did you think I was going to see?”
“Christian, get the mirror out of my bag.”
“Kate, take this mirror and tell me what you see.”
Her eyes flashed. “A crazy woman, I see the crazy woman,” she yelled, hitting me in the head with the edge of the mirror, causing it to shatter, its pieces reflecting multiple faces.
Before I could look up, she fell to the floor shaking. “Get on top of her, Christian, and hold her down while I give her a shot.”
A few minutes later, we were standing outside again, looking through the small opening. A cut on my face and a new scratch on his. “Carol, look at me. What’s the crazy woman’s name?”
“Kate,” she replied softly. Her name is Kate.”
Shift is an online work of fiction.
This is the first draft of my manuscript Shift – Don’t judge a book by its cover. I am writing it online in sections as I go. So feel free to comment, good or bad. If you see mistakes, point them out.
The story centers around shapeshifting.
I’m currently working on chapter nine.
Timothy French 