Everything Falls Apart

The coffin and the black tower disappear. You find yourself sitting on a plush brown leather couch in a well-appointed office. A human male with silver-streaked brown hair sits at a desk, fingers laced together. "So, tell me, Eucharius, do you still have the dream?"

Eucharius blinks once, looking side to side. "Every now and again," he hazards, turning his head to face the man at the desk.

"It's a fairly common theme, even if it does express itself more...elaborately...in your case," the man says. "We all feel, every once in a while, that things are falling apart."

"It's very important to note that what's passed is past, and there's not all that much to be gained by trying to change it," the Mystic says, raising an eyebrow at the man and lacing his fingers together in front of him. "Everything falls apart sometime, doesn't it?" He pauses a moment, apparently done, but pipes up again, the moment long enough to indicate a new thought. "Why sit behind a desk?"

"The desk still bothers you, does it?" the man asks, tilting his head.

"From a professional standpoint," Eucharius clarifies, elaborating, "It's physical separation from your clients. Patients. Why?"

"We're not here to talk about me or my desk, or why I sit behind it," the doctor replies. "I thought we'd worked past that delusion where you were a psychologist. We had been making progress. Why, I think we were about ready to deal with your obsession with silver wigs and makeup."

Eucharius holds up his hand at arms' length and looks at it, saying, "I suppose that would make me a Timonae, then." He looks up to the doctor and raises an eyebrow again. "Or are these prostheses?"

The doctor shakes his head, sighing. "You've constructed a very intricate world, I will grant you that. If you channeled that energy in a more productive, creative fashion, then perhaps we wouldn't be sitting here for our eighteenth session." He lifts a clipboard from the table, reading from the pad affixed to it. "Patient claims to be a Shohobian Mystic named Eucharius." The doctor lifts his own eyebrows, setting the clipboard down. "Interesting choice of pseudonym. You know the story of Eucharius, yes?"

"Figure I don't," says Eucharius, leaning back a bit and tapping his fingertips together. He glances down, then back at the doctor. "Could I trouble you for the date?"

"Of course," the doctor says. "It's Jan. 2, 2009. Your birthday is in two weeks. Well, not the birthday of Eucharius. The birthday of Theodore Drummond."

"Mm," says the Mystic (?). "You mentioned the story of Eucharius. Go on and tell me. Again, if that's the case."

"It has been said, in legend, that Eucharius was among Christ's seventy-two disciples," the doctor explains. "He traveled to Gaul to preach the Gospel, with his colleagues, Maternus and Valerius. Maternus died during the journey. Eucharius and Valerius beseeched St. Peter to lend them his staff. Eucharius used the staff to resurrect Maternus from the grave." He shrugs. "I find that detail fascinating, under the circumstances."

Eucharius frowns, head tilted for a moment as he scratches at his cheek. "Are you going to elaborate on that, or leave me to try and puzzle it out on my own?"

The doctor offers a slow nod. "Certainly, if you're ready to hear it. You have been laboring under the assumption that you are this Eucharius, rather than Theodore Drummond, for almost exactly six years. It began after you left a New Year's Eve party with your brother, Leonard. You'd been drinking. Cell phone records show he tried to call for a cab, but you cut him off. You insisted that you could drive. You were his big brother. He had to listen to you, you said. So he did." He leans back in his chair. "You lost control, took the BMW through a railing, and plunged into Chatham Gorge. He died."

There is a long pause from Eucharius, and then a low "Hmm." He repeats the tilt-head-scratch-cheek gesture, and adds, "I suppose that would fascinate you. Do you have a mirror?"

"In the bathroom," the doctor says, gesturing toward a door behind and to the left of the couch. That also happens to be where a burly orderly in white scrubs is standing, crew-cut and grim as he watches Eucharius. "Can't let you go in alone, of course."

"Maybe later," Eucharius says, relaxing into the back of the couch and regarding the doctor askance. "Tell me about me first."

"Securities broker, during the late '90s," the doctor says. "Your wife left you in 2002 after the market went into a slide. She took the kids. You lost both houses. Kept the BMW, though. It was home, for a while. Then your father took pity on you. Mostly at your brother's urging. He gave you a job working the books at the charity food bank."

"The memories I have, then? You'd have me believe that I made up a hundred-some years of detailed past, came up with the smells, the tastes, and the textures that recall a childhood and life that never really happened?" asks Eucharius. "How many delusions with that fine of resolution have you seen?"

"I can only see with *my* eyes, Theodore," the doctor replies, a sad smile on his face. "I can understand why you want to believe in something with such vivid detail. Were I in the same circumstances, I could certainly imagine falling prey to the attraction of such a fantasy. But, the fact remains, you are neither an alien or a psychologist. I'm very sorry."

"I should point out that you didn't answer my question," Eucharius replies. "I suppose you aren't obliged to, but it seems to me--even if we assume I'm no psychologist--that my trusting you on a personal level is a stop on the way to curing me." He stands. "I'm going to go have a look in the mirror now."

"Suit yourself," the doctor says, nodding to the orderly. "Show him in, Lucas." The orderly grunts, opens the door, and waits for Eucharius to go inside.

Eucharius looks the orderly in the eye as he passes and steps inside, turning to face the mirror. In the mirror, you see the puffy face of a middle-aged man with greenish-brown cake makeup and a messy silver wig on his head. The face is lined, the cheeks sagging. The fingers on your hand appear to have the number appropriate for a humanoid.

Eucharius smiles thinly at the mirror and steps back out into the office. As he's walking to the couch, he is also talking: "So. If, hypothetically, I accept your theory--what happens then? What changes? Who's happier for it?" He sits, frowns. "Maybe that's the wrong way to look at it."

"I don't want to be overly optimistic," the doctor says, shrugging. "But, assuming we make a breakthrough and you begin recovering from this circumstance, it is possible the court might allow you to see your children again."

"Well. That wasn't exactly what I meant," Eucharius says, pausing a moment. "This will sound to you like nothing but more of the same--like a regression, probably. There's nothing I can do about that. I'm not sure if this is real--if there really is a Theodore Drummond running around the distant past thinking he's me, trying desperately to ignore the fact that he's responsible for his brother's death. I'm not sure whether I'm suddenly in a real man's mind or whether I'm just dreaming this. Either way--the fact remains that I am sure of who I am." He pauses for a moment or two, takes a breath. "Who I am includes feeling deeply sorry for Theodore Drummond. I'm a terrible person to delude oneself into being. Drop your preconceptions for just a moment, and allow the possibility that you're not talking to a delusional man, but to an alien psychologist from the future. What can I do to help Theodore?"

The doctor picks up the clipboard, pondering Eucharius with a furrowed brow. "Regression, indeed. I'm sorry, Theodore. Our time is up for now." He nods his head toward Lucas. "He'll show you back to your cell."

Eucharius lifts his shoulders in a helpless shrug and stands. "I'm sorry, too," he says. "Good luck with me." He turns to the orderly.

The orderly opens his mouth to smile, but instead of teeth you see the shimmering white-blue of an energy rift that consumes Lucas and then lashes out with tendrils that snag your arms and pull you in. When the brilliant energy fades, you are once again in a glass coffin in the black tower of Nocturn - Eucharius the Mystic.