Page 115 of By the Pint

I swallowed, unsure of what she was trying to tell me, unsure what to say in reply. Instead, I said, “Can I go in and see him now?”

“No, Mr Black. Not yet. Go home. Go back to Remy. Your friends are missing you.”

Had I been so out of it I’d told Dr Nina the Wrecker all about my personal life and my flatmates? I raised my eyebrow.

“Probably,” she added, but she was smirking. “Look, I have your number. I’ll call you once he’s past his initial aggression phase.”

I chewed on my bottom lip.

“He’s lucky to have you, but you need rest. The worst is yet to come. Bank your strength and come back. He’s safe here. He’s got me looking out for him.” She lowered her voice. “I promise you, Dima.”

I stayed another two nights after that, but two nights of watching Casey sleep, or feed, or rage scream and thrash against his bonds, made me realise Nina was right. It was killing me. Eating my soul. “I love you,” I whispered against the mirrored glass, and I headed back to Remy.

It was quiet at home, which I appreciated. Taur and Joey had gone to the Human Realms for a vacation. They both maintained they would return if I needed them, but I’d told them not to worry. This was a long-haul type of situation, and there would be time to catch up. Goldie and Holly were busy with work. When they were in the apartment and not asleep or fucking, which wasn’t often, Goldie made me play video games with him. I was shit at them. Couldn’t get the hang of pressing all the right buttons in the right order, which, for someone with telekinesis, was really saying something.

One time, when I was supposed to be jumping off a moving platform, grabbing a rope, swinging over a spiked gorge, and dodging a sparkling bomb with cute cartoon eyes, I lost my shit. I threw the controller across the room and only stopped it millimetres from crashing into Goldie’s cinema-sized television screen.

“Go back to him,” Mal said, from the other sofa. He had a book open on his lap and was shovelling cereal straight from the box into his mouth like it was popcorn.

“He’s not Casey anymore,” I cried. “He’s just an aggressive shell of a man that looks a bit like him.”

“He’s still your Casey, and you’re a wreck,” Mal said.

“He has no idea who I am! I’ve lost him!”

And so began my week of sobbing. Every night I trudged upstairs to the roof garden and waited for the sun to peek its death rays over the horizon. Evidently, my flatmates didn’t think my mental state was as bad as before, and none of them figured it necessary to babysit me anymore.

Either that or they were sick of my moping. I didn’t see them often enough to read their thoughts and decipher which it was.

But every morning I dragged my sorry ass back to my coffin. Exploding oneself was so much harder than it seemed.

On the eighth night, my phone rang.

“Hello, is that Mr Black? Dima, it’s Dr Nina the Wrecker from the turning facility in the City of the Undead.” As if there were another Dr Nina the Wrecker in a different turning facility.

“Yes?” I said, my voice trembling, my insides a hurricane. “Is he lucid?”

“Semi-lucid.”

I felt frozen. “Talking?”

“Weeeelll, not really,” Nina said. “He hasn’t said much, but he has asked for you.”

38.

Dima

“You can go in and see him now,” Nina said, when I arrived, which was just as soon as Wayne could pick me up from my apartment in Remy and drive me to the City of the Undead.

“Casey asked for me?” I was unable to hold back my tears.

“Not by name,” Nina said, trying to manage my expectations. “He asked for the man behind the glass.”

“Oh,” I whimpered. I didn’t know what to think. Did Casey remember me? Or was he curious?

“We’ll have to go in together. I need to escort you. For as long as I’ve worked here, nobody has accommodated a visitor so early on in the process. This is unprecedented. Everything about his case is. Now, are you okay with me being there?”

I nodded.

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