The Alter

          She awoke in a dungeon of her own creation. The physical manifestation of her mind: a semi-circular room offering dust-gray walls, ebony doors, black marble floors, and an ebony table and chairs. This was her first time seeing it—but not her first time trapped here.

           She had expected no better. Her surroundings represented a life fragmented by memory lapses, blank spots that she struggled to explain to puzzled coworkers and her boss, to whom she couldn’t afford to reveal her affliction. Some days, she woke in the morning, and, next thing she knew, she saw the moon in the onyx-black sky, and she spent the rest of the night wondering what she had and had not done during the missing hours. She could not plan; how could one know what one was going to do at any given time if one didn’t know who they would be at that time? She had hoped that her father’s death would solve the problem, but it hadn’t. And so she had had to seek help elsewhere.

She had found it via an online advertisement. “Struggling with Dissociative Identity Disorder? I can cure you in as little as one session!” written in navy blue Courier New font on a lavender background. Beside it, a photo of a thirty-something woman with a white smile and perceptive-looking brown eyes. Adeline Carrigan, M.D. Jeanie had had her doubts but found the prospect of a quick fix for a condition she’d expected to struggle with for years, if not the rest of her life, too enticing to pass up.

The following day, she’d landed on Dr. Carrigan’s burgundy velvet chaise lounge, telling her story. Dr. Carrigan listened, nodding and scribbling on floral-print stationery. When she finished, Dr. Carrigan said, “I’m so glad you found me, Jeanie. I’ll have you healing in no time.” She explained the process, after which, eyes sparkling, she proclaimed, “As I’m sure you know, nobody’s ever tried anything like this. It’s a huge breakthrough—and a huge help to people like you.”

They got right to it. Dr. Carrigan told her to lie back and shut her eyes. At first, panic gripped her, as it always did when she did so, but then Dr. Carrigan started talking, sculpting her words with cashmere-soft hands. She felt herself slipping away, into darkness. Only this darkness didn’t scare her. This one embraced her.

Now, she found herself wishing for that darkness again.

           The door on the straight wall opened, and in walked her doppelganger. The sight stole her breath, and she collapsed against the nearest chair. Yes, she’d known what she would face, known that Talia was her, at least in the physical sense. Yet seeing her in the flesh brought a weirdness no one could possibly have foreseen.

           “What’s the matter, Jeanie?” Talia drawled. “Astounded by your own beauty?” She sauntered to one of the chairs, sat down, and folded her hands on the table.

“We need to talk,” Jeanie said.

“Yeah, I know what you’re here for.”

           “You…you do?”

           “I’m not an idiot.”

           Her father would have begged to differ. He had declared both of them as such what seemed an infinite number of times, like during his conference with her seventh-grade algebra teacher; the teacher had told him that Jeanie had been having a hard time with variables, and he’d snapped, “Well, what’d you expect? I’m sure you know by now, kid’s more than a few beams short of a house.” Jeanie’s cheeks had grown so hot that it seemed a wonder that their flesh hadn’t melted off their bones.

           Much like what she felt right now.

           Talia gestured to the chair before her. “Park it.”Legs wobbling, Jeanie did so. Talia speared her with a glare. “So you wanna get rid of me—after all I’ve done for you.”

           “No, I wanna integrate us.” She’d read enough articles on the topic to know that alters were not the other one felt they were, but, rather, another side of oneself that would, rather than disappear, meld with one’s “host” personality when one achieved integration. Apparently, Talia either didn’t know that, or didn’t want to acknowledge it.

           Talia leaned back, the parentheses beside her lips darkening. “So that’s that. You take away my autonomy, and, boom, a happy ending?”

           “I didn’t say that.” She didn’t know whether she’d have a happy ending, even if she did get what she wanted. She simply knew that failure to do so would make that impossible.

           Talia shot her a glare icier than any of which she’d thought her own eyes capable. “Don’t play with me. I know what this is: You got what you wanted outta me, and now you wanna dump me. At least own up.”

           “I’m not saying you never did anything for me,” she said, bristling. “I’m just saying, I can’t do this anymore.”

           Talia’s face reddened, her eyes glinting like fiery coals. “You don’t get it, do you?”

           “Get what? What’s there to—“

           “He called you a waste, did you know that? A waste of a body.”

           She felt as if skewered through the chest. She didn’t remember that. Why didn’t she remember?

           “And he shocked you,” Talia continued. She shook her head, a humorless smirk stretching her lips. “Man, he loved that taser. Bought it just for you. It hurt like hell…But you don’t remember that, either.”

           No, she didn’t. It sent her mind spinning, recalling cop shows on which she’d seen people enduring what Talia had described, writhing in agony, their screams stabbing her despite the crimes that had invoked the punishment. Talia had committed no such crimes.

           “Oh, and the time he tried to drown you in the bathtub. Remember that?”

           Jeanie slammed back against her chair, the room tilting and smearing into a whirl. Drown her. He’d tried to drown her. She’d had no illusions of him, with any facet of his being, loving her as a father typically did his daughter. But she’d had no clue that he’d despised her enough to do something like that. And Talia had had to find a way to live with it.

She opened her mouth but, for several moments, couldn’t speak. Finally, she managed, “I…I had no idea.”

           “No, you didn’t.”

           “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

           Her gaze sharpened still more. “I didn’t have to go through it, Jeanie. I chose to go through it, for you. ‘Cause, if I didn’t, that would’ve been it.”

           A part of her wanted to argue, but she knew that Talia had spoken the truth. She’d barely survived what she had endured at his hands. If she’d suffered the events Talia had described, she wouldn’t have held on to the very little sanity that she still possessed.

           Twisting, searing pain bloomed in her chest, coupled with longing to fold within herself until nothing remained. Instead, she told herself to focus on here. Now. Regrets would not make amends. Finally, she asked, “Would you…would you wanna talk to someone? Get some help?”

           Talia’s expression changed in such a way that it left her face nearly unrecognizable. Her eyes flickered and then sharpened, staring at Jeanie as if seeing her for the first time, and shocked that such a creature could exist. She said, “You know, with this little shortcut and everything, I didn’t think you’d go that way.”

           “What—“

           “You wanna integrate? Is that what you want?”

           “Yeah, but—“

           “As long as you know what you have to do.”

           Questions danced in her head, but she didn’t have time to sculpt them into words before Talia closed her eyes, leaned back, and started fading, becoming translucent. That rattled her so much that she still couldn’t articulate her inquiries, or anything at all. Talia continued fading, fading, fading. A ghost. A film. A wisp. And then nothing at all.

           She stared, eyes nearly popping out of her skull.

A rumbling sounded. The room vibrated. The wall crumbled, revealing the rest of the chamber, which looked identical to this half. A pile of splinters had formed on the floor, but, soon, they, too, disappeared.

           She felt her mind stretching. Expanding. Remembering.

Standing in the living room, a paperweight slipping through her fingers and shattering on the floor. Her father screaming. Worthless. Pathetic. A waste of a body, a waste of space. Her mother should’ve aborted her.

           Her father gesturing toward some laundry she’d folded. Telling her that a five-year-old had more sense. Reaching into his pocket, producing the taser, aiming, and shooting. White-hot pain wracking her, agonizing even in the abstractness of retrospect. Weeping on the floor while he sneered above her. Praying that he wouldn’t go another round.

           Her father confronting her as she came in the door two minutes past her curfew. Remarking, “If you’re not gonna be here on time, don’t come back at all—Actually, my life’d be a helluva lot better if you didn’t.” Tears running down her face as she apologized. Her father telling her that he’d had enough of her whining. Grabbing her by the hair. Yanking her into the bathroom, where he filled the tub. Pushing her head under the water. Scorching pain wracking her skull where it hit the porcelain, her nasal passages and throat as water rushed in. Flailing, clasping, desperate for something, anything, to relieve the pain, finding nothing. Her father letting go. Her shooting up, coughing and sputtering, flames in her chest. Wondering whether she should allow herself to feel relieved that he’d stopped this time, or whether she should feel terrified because, next time, he may not.

           A flash. The sense of zooming through space and time. A jerk. She opened her eyes to see Dr. Carrigan looking at her. “All good?” she asked.

           “All done,” she said. But definitely not “all good.”