puppeteer.
That kind man, forged from a generational habit of skillful deceit, found his way into the unguarded chambers of my mind; with his soft words, he carved and morphed the memories that his Hyde had inflicted on me; what resulted was near insanity, as what I knew to be truth, what I knew to be reality, crumbled. I had --- and still have --- moments where the very fabric of reality seems to be wearing thin, and I can see no difference between reality and these captivating, yet nonetheless dreadful, memories. As years passed, and Jekyll continued to wear thin the cognizant layer of my mind, I had more and more moments where I seemed to slip from my body; not in a paranormal way, but in the way of one who knows not who she is --- what she is. What she means.
Confusion. Hysteria.
An evolutionary and well-developed terror at the thought of my captor and those calloused hands that molded my torture. Delirium because the vividities of last night were mere dreams, mania because yesterday's twisted events never happened.
Half-assed apologies over text, disorienting "I love you"s slipped under doorways post-episode; a huge sheet of unlined, white paper, with crude sharpie scribblings and an effortless, three-featured smiley face. "Sorry if you think..." "Sorry that you feel...but..."
A doctor could say someone's guilty. A prosecutor would say you're guilty. Yet here I am, doing nothing.