When the Lights Are Bright
By KristineInchausti

When It starts, it's like someone has turned the lights up too bright. Like when the doctor dilated her eyes and it last for hours and hours and the world went all overexposed and hazy. Walking down the sidewalk, pebbles grating under her feet, bits of broken glass just centimeters away from cutting her skin. The sounds are warped, and muffled. All the people who pass her by are harsh, cartoonish, like a street full of carnies calling out for marks. It's an effort, pushing herself through the sound waves bouncing endlessly off her skin while all the cells in her body rush to constrict themselves as far in as possible. Heat roils around her, and she tries to stand straight, shoulders back, head up. Looking weak in this state is dangerous. When it starts, she's one feather stroke away from crashing down.

Wait - no. It's not always like that.

Other times the lights go dim. It's usually like that in the house, when the roommates are gone and she's alone. It's almost like It knows; It can hear the *click* of the front door closing behind them. The edges of the room fill in, colors desaturate.
Coast is clear, It says to her. Time to come out and play.

It's not "almost" like It knows. It's exactly like. Because It does know. Because It's using her ears. Hanging out in the periphery of her vision. When It comes, It takes over, and she's left in the sidelines of her own mind, voiceless, powerless.

Alone again, eh? Can't keep anyone around for long, can you?

She tries to turn her back on It, looks for something else to fill her attention with. She grabs a book.

You've read that one. That one, too. Gosh, you have a lot of books. At least you can't piss them off enough to leave you.

She sits at her computer. It sits on her shoulder, watching the page scroll down down down. Past pictures, past vacations, past happy couples. It watches for her reaction, breathing softly in her ear.

They look happy, don't they?

She looks around the room. It's filled with a mishmash of possessions, shrapnel from the relationship she left. That she helped tear apart. It likes to remind her of this. Over. And over. And over again.

Remember this? It points to a small cabinet.

In here. Look in here. It points to a drawer.

She turns on a lamp and peeks in. There is a reclaimed valentine, handmade. She had taken it back after he tossed it aside. It was a miniature artwork and she had been proud of it. A picture of a heart inside a small box - it was weird and intricate and she loved making it. The look on his face when she had given it to him said "I don't get it." He had no valentine for her, anyway.

Pathetic.

The tiny box dropped back into the drawer. She slowly pushed the drawer shut, and turned the lamp back off.

Work is swill. As in, serving it.

It's fine, really - it gets her out of the house, but it's not where she'd hoped she'd be. Not now, not at this point in her life. But when she asks herself the question, again and again, "What else? Where else?" the normal internal voices give the normal platitudes. "Somewhere better!" "Somewhere more interesting!" "Somewhere better paid!"" Somewhere with a future!" And then nothing, static, a long open road that leads out to the empty plains.

Until It speaks. Noooo wwwwwhere, it hisses.

At work, It sits in her pocket, poking its head out occasionally to take in the view. The swill shop is in a fancy neighborhood, and the customers are all button down shirts with ties, pearls and high heels.

Well, that one's doing a lot better than you, isn't she?

He's a handsome one - looks like he's married. Not that he'd be interested in you.
She shoves a napkin down into her pocket, and takes a bite of something pumpkin flavored.

Part of the job is to make the shop a warm, fun place to be. She knows this, but ends up just staring all day, at the people, at the swill, at the processed food products. She counts cups and glasses, packages of napkins, boxes of sugar. She tries to care. But It has run an IV from the base of her skull, down her back, straight into her pocket and into its mouth, sucking away any thoughts or feeling or light, leaving bare the rocky bottom of her emotional tank.

Tasty, It gurgles.

She can't remember what it feels like to be full up. Was she ever? Her mind is a haze of gray, jumbled up string, and now she is too tired to go back there and pick out the knots.

Maybe, she decides. Maybe I used to be happy. It is silent on this point.

On work days, she leaves the house super-early, when it's still dark out, and gets home well before the roommates. This is problematic, because it means she is alone with it for hours at a time. Work is a mess and the people are not her favorite and the swillers are self-important and steal all the milk from the carafes and look indignant when you catch them but at least it fills the hours up with noise and she can shove her hands down into her pockets to muffle its voice further.

When she unlocks the door to her empty house, and steps inside, the height of the ceilings go up twenty feet. The staircase looms so large and steep that when she goes up she doesn't know if she will make it back down again. Over the last couple of months she has made her room almost devoid of anything from the last ten years of her life. New mattress; old, old dresser. A drawing table from college and a recent laptop. Everything else has been hidden down below the floorboards in the basement, shrouded in cardboard and plastic. She thought it would make her room a safer spot, having taken away all of Its toys. But now It is restless, and bored, filing its nails and looking around, waiting for her to ask the question. She tries to ignore It.

"What am I gonna do with my life now?" she addresses the spartan walls.

The normal thoughts pop up. "Go back to school!" "Get a new job!" "Make some art!" "Make new friends!"

And then, from the tangled knot of her mind, comes a new voice. One she hadn't heard before. It is silky, and cool, and steady.

What if...what if...you just weren't here anymore?

So calm. It stands back and waits, in a white linen suit.

Goosebumps spread across her skin. She glances over at her original It, looking for an explanation. Where did that voice come from? Who let that It in?

It shrugs its shoulders, a slow, exaggerated motion, as a smirk spreads across its face.
The lights get very bright, and her breath very shallow.

Suddenly she is transported to the edge of a pit, an enormous, gaping maw in a vast wasteland far beyond her room. Twenty feet across, and the bottom nowhere in sight. She freezes, dizzy from the depth.

She senses that They are with her. They are standing at the beginning of a path, narrow and rocky, spiraling down the pit walls, a thin lip of granite leading down into the darkness.

The white linen suit tips its fedora at her and begins to head down, sure-footed and casual. It motions to her.

Come along. Just take a look. See what's waiting for you.

Her previously frozen feet take a step toward the path without asking for her opinion.
Another.

She is heading down, underneath the mouth of the pit, waiting for the darkness to engulf her. Her eyes search for details in the wall, but can only make out sharp edges. Another vision appears and takes over. It is a memory, a memory of a dream she had when she was a child. A bright white room with a conveyor belt that disappears behind a curtain. There are no doors, no windows that give any hint of day or night. To the side of the conveyor is a table, holding only a book...and a gun.

She is, for the first time in months, completely alone. She doesn't see or hear the Its; there is only the sound of her breathing in the stark, echoing room. There is nowhere else to go, no hint of humanity in this place, other than what she has brought with her.
I am alone.

Her chest tightens. It seems clear what the room wants her to do. It's just a matter of her doing it.

Would anyone even know?

Her hand, like her feet at the mouth of the pit, moves without warning. It brushes up against the table, skims its surface, comes to rest on the barrel. Her fingertips trace the edge of the trigger, and somewhere in the back of her mind, she hears a sigh.
Her hand wraps around the grip. She is surprised at the weight.

She looks down the opening of the barrel, another pit of darkness, and wonders if it would end. Would there be just another pit, and another, or would she fall into the endless silence of nothing? Was she ready to find out?

No.

Her hand shakes.

Wait...she mouths. I don't want to.

The gun drops back down. She steps backward, away from the table.

NO!

With a jolt, she hits the floor of her own room. Tears fill her eyes, and she ducks her head as a tidal wave of relief crashes down over her. Another wave comes, but this time it's fear and is enough to get her on her feet, through her bedroom door, and down the stairs to the living room.

Shaking, she sits on the edge of the sofa, clutching a pillow, and jumping at the shadows. The Its are still gone. She counts 157 minutes until the first of her two roommates come home.

"Hey, what's up?"

Her roommate marches nonchalantly across the carpet, tossing her purse onto the coffee table and heads toward the kitchen. She suspects that this particular roommate thinks she is a loser who needs to get out of the house more often.

Maybe I should take her advice, she thinks.

"Oh, you know - I'm still here."

The sound of a rustle came softly down the stairs.

And so are we...