Voicemail (IC Contact Post) OLD - at capcha

[abrightboy]

 This is Bright. Leave a message.

Comments

[cactusy]

That's not the same thing. If you disappear here, everybody knows what happened to you.

[abrightboy]

That doesn’t mean you got to say everything you wanted to people who were important to you.

[cactusy]

[Good point. She digs the spoon back into her soup.]

Anyway, Eiffel and Caffrey got the letters. Don't know about Cook, though; I haven't talked to her yet.

[abrightboy]

Neal didn’t mention Cook.

[cactusy]

They didn't know her. She was, uh, you know-- someone I visited when we came into town.

[A hook-up with vague burgeoning feelings! A true breach rite of passage.]

[abrightboy]

She was your girlfriend?

[cactusy]

We never talked about words. Uh, they never talked about words.

[Breach terminology is confusing; sheeee haaaaates thiiiiiiiiiis]

[abrightboy]

I’m sorry.

[cactusy]

... Why?

[She asks, as she eyes him warily, having the feeling that she might not like the answer.]

[abrightboy]

[He shrugs.]

Just that you had to lose that twice in a row, inside the breach and then by leaving the breach.

[cactusy]

[Yup. She sighs irritably, shoving a big spoonful of soup into her mouth.]

I didn't lose anything by leaving the breach, Malcolm. It wasn't real.

[Even less real than everything else.]

I'm pissed off that it fake-happened in the first place.

[abrightboy]

Because you don't want to carry it when it isn't yours?

[cactusy]

Right. I don't want to date Franky. I don't want to have thoughts about her, even ones from another world.

[But she does have thoughts, and it sucks.]

[abrightboy]

Does it help to think of it as a kind of... erotic nightmare? Like, you dreamed it and now you've woken up.

[cactusy]

Logically? Yes. But it still feels more like a memory than a dream.

[abrightboy]

Most people say that. That they feel different. But my nightmares feel real. Sometimes I'm not even completely sure whether I'm asleep or awake.

[cactusy]

Lucid dreams? Night terrors?

[abrightboy]

Pavor nocturnus. Night terrors. I also have waking psychoses sometimes, which sort of blur the line a bit, too.

[cactusy]

[She pauses, fiddling with her spoon.]

That sucks. You got any methods that work for dealing with them?

[abrightboy]

Um. Sometimes, when I'm pretty sure something isn't real, I can close my eyes and tell myself that and it'll be gone when I open them. Sometimes I recognize things that I know are my common dream indicators. Basically, you get used to it and you can sort of tell most of the time. And when you can't... you just sort of have to go with it until you figure it out.

[cactusy]

There anything that other people can do to snap you out of it if they see you having a tough time?

[abrightboy]

Interacting with other people doesn’t tend to stop the psychosis. I do try to ignore it, though. If people see you arguing with empty space, it sort of freaks them out.

[cactusy]

It doesn't stop even if they know about it and are trying to get you out of it?

[abrightboy]

I don’t know. That’s never happened before.

[cactusy]

Seriously? Don't your coworkers give a crap?