his key to slip in the back door. It was an old servant’s entrance that opened to a narrow staircase. He didn’t turn on the light, his fingers finding the wall out of habit, using it to guide him.
There was no sound in the stairway, nothing from the hall. One fluid movement took him into Kristen’s room. The door swung on well-oiled hinges, clicking quietly shut behind him.
She didn’t look up when he entered, though he knew she was aware he’d arrived. He watched her for a moment, a long leg balanced on the edge of her vanity table as she painted her toenails a shade close to black. Finally, with a breath across the polish, she glanced up at the mirror, meeting his eyes through the reflection.
“You haven’t been answering your phone,” she said, not turning to him. She capped the polish and dropped it into a drawer.
“I came as soon as I could.”
Kristen swiveled the chair toward him finally, her face indifferent. The quiver in her lip was so slight, he almost missed it.
“Oh, Kristen,” he said quietly. He didn’t have to read her mind to guess her thoughts. “I should have called. Did you think I wasn’t coming?” She seemed to give in suddenly, forgetting the pedicure and hurrying across the floor to throw herself into his arms. He hugged her tight.
“How’s my little black rain cloud?” he asked, pulling her back. The dress she wore was dirty, the antique fabric tattered and torn, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary for Kristen. He’d half hoped that she’d been holding her own, even with her appearance. The room gave her away.
On the top of the dresser were ten writing utensils. Lined up in a row, the pattern was simple enough, a pencil higher than the blue felt tip beside it, the marker after rising again, even with the pencil. Up, down, up, down across the polished wood. Iambic pentameter in pens. On her nightstand, the hair clips seemed random until he counted them. A row of five, of seven, of five again.
“Kristen, haikus?” He cupped her chin in his hand. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “You should have left a message! I would have come!” She started to speak but he shushed her, closing his eyes. He bowed his head, concentrating until he picked up her thoughts.
At first, he only heard her fears…. came back this time but what if I’m too much of a burden and are the pencils straight think of something else so he doesn’t see how bad…A rush of poetry assaulted him, the lines and couplets screaming past his ears in stereo. He raised his hands to her shoulders, his eyes still shut tight.
“Kristen,” he chided, then softened his tone. “You’re not a burden. Now let me fix it, okay?” He squeezed her shoulders. Under his fingers, she relaxed a bit, giving in. Every few weeks since he and Az found her, he wiped her mind clear. Saned her back to herself. It never held long; the roots of the disease had dug deep while she had been human. The residue of her schizophrenia slowly reclaimed her brain if left alone. He could only clean so much.
A jumble of words and thoughts coated her brain like plaque, flaring knots of insanity wrapping tighter the longer he left the schizophrenia alone. He narrowed his focus, untangling the damaged threads of thought. He’d nearly finished when he came across the patch of static. They’d appeared suddenly last year, strands of white noise he couldn’t get rid of, as if they were operating on a different frequency. He’d thought at first that she was getting worse and the disease was progressing anyway, but they never spread.
I should have been here, he thought. He swallowed, guilt tightening his throat, and pushed his own thoughts away. The volume skyrocketed, her mind opening to him, playing out like a song, the lines of static humming dully in the background.
Steam poured from the crack of the door, though the shower had been off for ten minutes. Gabriel flipped though a magazine, the glossy pages sliding past unread.
“You okay in there?” he called out. The door swung open in answer, the handle bouncing lightly against the wall. Kristen looked almost normal, save her sense of what passed for fashion. He eyed the black ball gown with distaste. “Look, I know you like to be different and all, but do you have to be so nineteen-forty-six debutante?”
She ignored him, opening one of