Reprogrammed (Hunter Angst)

Puppet's Apathy

The increased dose of Sertraline made these thoughts worse. Hunter felt more paranoid, more nauseous, and much more numb. This numbness was coupled with a terrible, deep, red hot anger and a scared and desperate fear of every dark corner, every reflective surface. Hunter would rather be skinned alive than mention these feelings to Darius, Camila, or his therapist. He was not deserving of receiving help for illnesses that he did not have, and he also did not want to waste more time and money by telling everyone that medication made him miserable. So instead, he lied more and more.

Despite this, Hunter found it harder and harder to ignore the conflicting feelings he had about taking the Alprazolam. It had made him feel so miserable and sad, had made him act so strangely that Gus had to leave class to take care of him; had forced him to spit out his most private, honest, and true thoughts to his caretaker. And yet, he couldn't stop thinking about how it had made him feel for the first few hours that it was in his system. Happy, anxiety free, distanced from his body and feelings in a way that Sertraline could not replicate. An escape.

He thought about that escape, especially now, as he sat in bed, staring at Belos's ugly skull on the floor. It stared back at him, judging silently. Somehow, it still managed to follow him from room to room, location to location, dimension to dimension. He knew that it wasn't really there, wanted desperately to believe that Belos was really completely dead, but a small and rather annoying part of his brain just couldn't let it go.

His Uncle was quite talkative, now that his only choice for a social life was his own Nephew. Belos's favorite hobby was to remind Hunter of how much of an attention seeker he was, how far and weak he was, and how lazy he was for sleeping in and trying to take care of himself.

"I'm not weak for needing sleep," Hunter said finally, about a week of incessant nagging.

"Sure, you're not. It's so important to sleep, Nephew, but I really do think that 'needing' human medication just to sleep is a bit silly, wouldn't you agree? I would've never allowed you to use such a thing as a crutch."

"I'm not gonna let you bully me." Hunter shot back, but there was no confidence in his tone to match his words.

"Well, it doesn't seem like you have much of a choice, my boy! I'm in every corner, in every reflection, waiting behind the shower curtain in Darius's bathroom. Everywhere you go, I go. You'll carry me around through the marks I've so carefully carved into your skin for the rest of your life." The skull prompted, somehow managing to look as though it was smiling.

Hunter sighed, tears pricking at his eyes before he forced them away. He chucked sleeping medication into his mouth, listened to Camila's music device, and waited impatiently for unconsciousness to sweep him under.

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His joints seemed to be hurting an awful lot as of late. As he walked to school, everything felt stiff, from his scars to his knees. It also became increasingly hard to wake up in the morning. School was beginning to lose its meaning. In fact, everything was beginning to lose its meaning. Hunter just felt irritated and tired all the time, and both feelings were thinly masked by a large blanket of general malaise; an unending numbness.

Every time he interacted with his friends, the blonde was desperately trying to hide how he was feeling. Every laugh was forced, every smile had no feeling behind it. At first it was something that his friends picked up on, but the longer he put up the front, the more they left it alone.

After a month or so of acting like this, Hunter thoroughly believed that he'd fooled everyone. However, in the process, the boy himself had completely forgotten who he was on the inside. There was nothing behind his eyes except emptiness and anger. The only time he ever felt anything beside these two things was when he took Alprazolam.

While the first experience had been less than negligible, Hunter quickly adapted and figured out what worked and what didn't. He took it in the evening after dinner and would lay in bed for hours in a relaxed daze. Homework would sit in his bag, unfinished. Grades were starting to slip, and his teachers were starting to pull him aside in class to talk about it. Any time that this happened, he would have to excuse himself to the bathroom to sob afterwards. Belos's skull would always be there to remind Hunter of his worth.

He started staying up late, finding comfort in the absolute silence of the nighttime. This, of course, became a problem of its own. Every time he stayed up until the wee hours, he wouldn't take his sleep medication until the wee hours, and then he wouldn't wake up until noon. That, or he'd barely manage to pull himself out of bed in time for class, and then he'd spend the entire time slumped over a desk asleep. His teachers were really starting to get pissed with him.

Darius would also find him asleep in strange places; on the floor, halfway hanging out of bed, slumped over the kitchen table with homework pinned under him. One Saturday, Hunter's therapist came out into the lobby to inform Darius that the boy had actually fallen asleep mid-session.

When they walked back into the warm and dim room together, Hunter laid halfway on the couch with his legs jutting out and off the cushions. He looked as though he'd simply slumped over for a nap mid-conversation. A quick conversation with his therapist confirmed this theory. Mrs. Rose informed him that there was no charge for today's session, seeing as Hunter "clearly just needed the rest".

Adults close to Hunter consistently expressed their worry for him, and yet Hunter had become a master in shutting them down, telling them that he was just fine. The attention degraded away at him, and it was exhausting to continue to lie to them.

It was also exhausting to look in the mirror and never recognize the stranger reflected within it. Eyebags, deep scars, stress lines, sharp cheekbones. All of these features came together to resemble a face that looked like Hunter, but never felt like him. The boy did not recognize the person in the mirror, did not feel like he belonged in that person's body. He felt like a monster trapped beneath someone else's skin, a puppet with the wrong master.

When he was halfway honest with his therapist one day, she labeled these feelings as "derealization". Hunter realized that day that he wasn't sure if he wanted to remember what it was like to feel real. Derealization was terrifying and it rotted away at his identity, but it took away so much of the daily pain he lived in.

Pain itself became a distant and foreign thing, more and more so every day. Everything became more distant with each passing day, each swallowed pill. This made the good memories and feelings unreachable, but it also made the bad memories and feelings equally unreachable.

His psychiatrist was pleased to hear that he had not had a panic attack in two whole weeks, and that his nightmares had lost their vivid luster. Belos's skull sat slightly behind the psychiatrist, staring. More often than not these days, he stared back.