Ego Sum Pt. 3

Read Pt. 2 Here

Marion was stopped as he stepped into work, being given a slip of paper as soon as his feet crossed into the building. Shannon didn’t say a single word as she passed over the paper, not even smiling at him. Her face was terribly blank, nothing being her eyes - just a deep, dark abyss. 

The note read that he had to report to human resources. Another department that Marion had never gone to. Although anxiety wanted to rush through his veins, he was far too exhausted to even consider it. He had barely gotten any sleep the night before, thinking intensely about the previous situation that had happened at work. He failed to let the image of the empty office drift from his mind. It burned into his retinas. 

The elevator ride was quick, though Marion couldn’t even think about it. His body felt like it was drifting through the world, something that he wasn’t fully controlling. The past few days had been exhausting, mentally he was done. He just wanted it all to be over.

The HR office was bland, just like the IT office was. A single woman was sitting at a desk with only a computer before her. There were no identifying images, no knickknacks, nothing. Marion sat in the seat in front of the desk, letting his shoulders slump. 

The woman took a moment before turning her attention to him. “Marion Tafford?” 

“Yes, ma’am.” Exhaustion flooded down his body. Marion was wrecked to his core.

The woman turned to her computer once more, almost like she was being pulled away from the situation at hand. “We’ve had a few of your colleagues speaking about their concern regarding your recent actions and words.” Her fingers typed on her keyboard, similar to the way his coworkers typed - randomly and without meaning. “We like to see our company as a family, which means that we look out for one another.”

Marion’s head started to spin, “What do you mean?”

The woman, without looking away from her screen, slid a pamphlet across the desk. “We’re hoping that you will look into the psychological services that we provide. We understand that this may be a difficult time for you, and we want to help you in any way that we can.” 

The pamphlet sneered up at Marion - the images being full of smiling people. The smiles stretched too far, too wide. It made his skin crawl. He pushed the pamphlet back, “I’m sorry, but I don’t fully know what this is about.”

“You’re unwell Mr. Tafford.” 

Marion swallowed, almost like a stone going down his throat. He didn’t want to admit to himself that he was unwell, even if everything around him was telling him that he was. Marion wanted to believe that it was just around the world that was wrong - it had to be wrong. “I don’t need to see a shrink.”

"Don’t you?” 

He squeezed his eyes shut, head beginning to pound. Nothing in life was going as it should, but that didn’t mean he needed to see a psychiatrist. Marion Tafford was a completely ordinary man and there was nothing false about that.

Don’t you? 

Don’t you? 

Don’t you? 

Marion’s eyes snapped open.

“Mr. Tafford, a pleasure to finally have you with me again.” A woman was sitting in front of him, a name tag reading Niusha. She pushed up her glasses right before she wrote something down on the clipboard resting on her lap. “You spaced out for a moment, are you alright?”

Looking around the world, he didn’t recognize anything. He assumed it was an office of some sort, but it wasn’t like any office he worked in. Marion looked down at his lap, seeing himself sitting on a brown, leather chair. It was one of those stereotypical lounge chairs that people imagined when they thought of a therapist’s office.

Therapist. 

Marion shook his head, standing from the chair. His hands fisted in his hair as his mind spun - trying to figure out what was going on. “No, no, this isn’t right.”

“Mr. Tafford? Please sit down, you’re just a little confused after your spell.” 

In a moment, he spun around and backed himself towards the wall behind him, trying to put as much room between himself and this Niusha woman. “Don’t come any closer!” The room grew silent after his outburst. Marion tried slowing his breath, sucking in the air was difficult - extremely so. His eyes began to burn, hot white tears behind his eyes. His body was trembling. 

Niusha continued to sit in her seat, expression calm and collected. Robotic. “Mr. Tafford, everything is going to be okay. We were just talking about your job, do you remember that?”

Taking a moment to compose himself, he tried to come up with something that made sense. Nothing made sense at all, “I don’t have a therapist. I’ve never had a therapist.”

Niusha's head cocked to the left, “You must be confused again. Don’t worry, we can work through this once again.” One leg crossed over another as she began to scribble down words, “So, what’s the last thing you remember?”

Marion entertained the idea for a moment, actually talking to someone about all the mind-melting things he had been experiencing, but the interaction didn’t feel genuine. Niusha had never seen him before, he was sure of that, just as he had never seen her. Never in his life had he ever gone to a therapist’s office, or a psychiatric facility. 

He shook his head, making his way towards the door, “No, no this isn’t right at all.” Opening the door, he pledged to run as far as he could, he didn’t know where he was - not fully at least, but he could find his way back home. “You aren’t my therapist, you don’t know me, there’s been another mix-up.” A mix-up was a very kind way of putting it.

“Marion!” Niusha called after him, but he was already halfway down the hall.

He just wanted to get home, not to worry about anything that was currently afflicting him. Speeding his way to a bus stop, he anxiously awaited the time when he could settle into his bed and forget about the world around him. At least when he was asleep he knew that nothing was real - it was a far better escape than anything else.

Friday, April 15 (?) 20–

I can’t take this anymore. I randomly appeared in a therapist’s office after I was called down to HR. There was truly no reason for me to be in either of these places. I haven’t actually done anything to deserve this; I have not offended anyone in my life - not to the extent to warrant this behaviour towards me. 

The world is such a cruel place, a cruel, cruel place, and I cannot escape it. My head is spinning trying to come up with some sort of explanation as to how this can all be possible. None of it seems so. I know that I was at the office today, that I had been called down, and had a very aggravated conversation with the head of HR (the only person in the office). 

Tomorrow is a Saturday, and I will have no reason to leave my home, and perhaps that is for the best. The last thing I want is to have another breakdown, another day filled with odd occurrences and phenomena that should be impossible. How was I in two different places today in the span of a few moments? How did the Niusha woman know who I was? She acted as though I had met with her a dozen times before, but I knew that I hadn’t. 

I’m going mad. 

That’s the only explanation that makes sense, I am going mad. 

This world has doomed me to a life of misery - I cannot escape it.

Marion Tafford

Marion placed his scribbling pen down, deciding that if he were to write anymore his mind would just continue to spiral. He closed the journal, pushing it off to the side of his desk. He sucked in a breath. A warm shower could help, as they always did in the past. Marion needed one thing that would set everything straight, and put a sense of normalcy into all of it. 

He turned the knob, listening to the water pitter-patter against the porcelain. The room began to fill with steam as Marion stood there, waiting for the water to be the right temperature. “Everything is going to be fine.” He mumbled to himself. Marion bit his lip as he stepped under the spray.

A moment passed, then another. 

Marion’s heart dropped.

The water wasn’t touching him, not at all. It was almost as if the water was passing right through him. Marion raised a hand, watching as the water dropped to the ground as though his hand wasn’t even there. “This isn’t real.” His breath began to quicken, heart racing, “This is all some sort of bad dream.” 

Marion lowered his hand, backing away from the stream of water. The last thing he wanted was to see that horrifying sight. “This isn’t happening.” 

Fighting with the shower curtain, he climbed out of the tub, wrapping a towel around himself. He didn’t bother to turn off the stream of water, not wanting to bend his mind any more than it already was. He choked out a laugh, one filled with tears, “I’ve lost it; I’ve truly lost it.” Standing before the mirror, Marion looked upon the broken man before him. 

The blond hair he was accustomed to began to turn a dirty brown colour, like dye dripping down the strands. The man in front of him smiled, a stretched one - painful looking. The grey eyes shifted from blue to brown to blue-black. Two voids stared down into his soul. Marion gripped at the edges of the sink, the marble edge digging into his skin. “Stop it! Stop looking at me!”

The man began to speak at him, a monotonous voice, droning on, “Experiment 01001101… unresponsive… trial T to end…” 

With little else to do, Marion began to bang his fist against the mirror, “I am normal! I am average! I am!” The mirror refused to break away, not a single crack forming. The robotic voice continued, reading off the same strand of numbers over and over and over again. Marion’s eyes filled with white-hot tears, dripping down his face, “I am, I am…” 

“Experiment 01001101 deemed unresponsive. Trial T to end in T-Minus fifteen seconds.” Niusha announced in a steady voice. She looked to Steven whose hand was hovering above the termination button.

The rattled expression of Marion Tafford played before her, the screen he was displayed on taking up nearly the entire wall. “Such a shame, this one seemed like it had potential.” 

“Lay off Stevie,” Another woman’s voice rang out, Shannon, “He’s still here with us.”

Steven rolled his eyes as he turned to point at the pink amorphous blob suspended in a vat of clear liquid, glowing like a fluorescent bulb. “I’m sure he really cares about what we’re saying.”

“T-Minus five seconds.” Niusha continued to count down, tapping her pen against her clipboard, “Terminate.”

There was one last scream that echoed throughout the laboratory because the screen went dark, as did the vat. “Steven, take our patient down to the HR room.” 

Steven trudged on, unhooking the dozen or so wires and cables from the vat, rolling it out of the room on a metal cart. “I never understood why they call storage HR, seems a bit morbid if you ask me.”

“Steven.” Niusha’s voice hardened.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. You want me to bring another back up?”

She thought it over for a few minutes. Marion had been their most successful trial so far, he had truly believed that everything he had been experiencing was real. The simulation had worked perfectly, up until the end that is. She shook her head, “Call up that young man from IT, I want someone to look at the coding of our systems again.”

“Sure thing boss,” Steven left the room, muttering to himself about jars and brains.