In Memory of A Boy Who Could Talk To Objects

His name was Jules. He had been a patient of my father. My father is a psychiatrist, you see, one of the best there is. His looks were normal enough, a lanky teenaged boy with short wavy hair and a pointy nose. The difference was that he claimed he could hear the voices of everyday objects.

I had known Jules since he was ten. I was thirteen, a spoiled brat who believed he was destined to be a psychiatrist too. The first time we met, I caught him conversing politely to a vase. His defiant gaze when I demanded to know what he was doing unnerved me. I resolved to never speak to him again. It wasn't that difficult- I was going to be sent off to a boarding school soon.

Three years later, I caught him again, this time having a heated argument with the coffee machine in front of the toilet. He didn't gaze at me defiantly like before. Instead, he looked upset. Guilty, even. As though I had caught him doing something particularly evil.

I wouldn't have cared normally- I had seen my father's clients doing weirder things. But my father had mentioned during dinner that Jules had seemed to be making some progress. Arguing with a coffee machine didn't seem like progress.

He immediately fell into a defensive stance as most people tend to do when they're cornered, arms crossed, and avoiding eye contact.

"No one gets it. It's not a mental illness or some new mutation of schizophrenia," Jules had snapped, indignant. "I wasn't neglected or traumatised or anything. I just can hear them. What's so wrong about that?"

I wasn't sure how to reply to that. "It's just- strange. Don't you want to be like everyone else?"

"What's wrong with being strange? It's not 'strange' to me," he shot back, eyes snapping up to meet mine. "Why do I have to fit in with everyone else? Why can't everyone else try to fit me in?"

I still hadn't understood Jules then. I had believed it was just him being selfish and obstinate. Something about him that I still can never quite place, however, stopped me from telling my father how Jules had apparently been lying to him.

I graduated the next year, top of my grade. Compared to my mother who had cried tears of joy, I felt rather empty. It wasn't that great of an achievement, really. Despite my numerous protests, my mother decided to throw a massive party anyway.

For reasons I couldn't possibly explain, Jules was there. My father, once he had spotted him, dragged me over to him. I listened politely as my ignorant father explained in a discreet voice how Jules had improved so much that he couldn't even hear the voices most of the time, now.

But that wasn't the case and I was rightfully furious.

"What do you think you're doing?" I hissed, pulling him into a corner out of the rest of the guests' and my father's earshot. "My father's ruined if anyone knows the truth."

"No one will. I'll tell that I lied if that happens" Jules had answered petulantly. He couldn't have understood, I realised, being only fourteen, an ignorant age. He wouldn't understand that even if he confessed, my father would still be held responsible, perhaps even called a fool for believing a child's words so easily.

"No. You won't," I decided firmly. "Because I'll make sure you're truly cured once and for all."

He didn't look entirely convinced; a bitter smile had formed on his face. "Then you're going against a deadline. The doctors said I have two years at most left."

"Then I'll make sure you're cured before then," I insisted, stubborn.

The fault in my father was that he rarely interacted with his numerous patients outside of his counseling room. Perhaps he felt it was better if he kept a professional distance between him and his patients, some of them were delusional, after all.

But with Jules, it was easier to understand him by watching him interact with the world around him. He was visibly more relaxed when he was in space that had as little objects as possible. His own room only had a rug, bed and wardrobe.

He avoided places packed with objects like antique shops as if they were the plague. I had only managed to convince him once to enter a relatively empty antique shop. He froze at the door, clenching the handle so tightly that his knuckles turned white. He couldn't seem to be able to hear me at all when I tried talking to him.

"One second," he said shakily, taking a few deep breaths. I watched as he slowly gathered himself and entered. We didn't stay long and Jules immediately vomited a few feet away from the shop.

He had difficulty explaining exactly how he could hear the voices. Every object seemed to have their own unique voice as if they were actually people with a few exceptions. Most beds and anything made of paper do not have any voices at all. The rug in his room wasn't very talkative. The wardrobe spoke in an oddly accented Russian every now and then. Packed places were the worst as the objects liked to shout over one another in other for their voices to be heard.

Jules' condition grew worse and I found myself meeting him in his hospital room more as the year went on. He didn't seem to mind, saying that it was quieter there and I couldn't try to force him to enter supermarkets anymore. Though the furniture did take a sadistic joy in telling him of the previous particularly gruesome occupants of the ward.

He became a lot more talkative. Telling stories of his school life. He didn't have many friends and his condition was a deeply hidden secret. He had learnt his lesson in elementary school where he had been an outcast.

"It was hard to maintain a façade with all those things trying to talk to you," I remember him saying  the day before the surgery. "But I do wish I could have at least had someone who would have understood."

I wasn't sure how to reply back then but now, weeks afterwards, I can tell you with absolute confidence that he did have someone. He had me. Even if I hadn't managed to understand everything. I don't regret that I hadn't managed to cure him at all in the end. My only regret is that I couldn't have realised that earlier.

And that was how I became friends with a person three years younger who could talk to objects.