Heavy Rains: Inferno (WATTY AWARDS 2012)

Part 1: Chapter 1

"Are you Jay Fields?”

Breath escaped me.

My breathing began to slow down, here was  a question easy to answer. I opened my eyes slowly, half expecting it to be a trap, but when met with a calm expression and blank eyes, I took the bait and watched her cautiously.

Finally, my head became clear and I could hear my own breathing again and aligned to be in sync with the rise and fall of Dr. Robinson's chest. 

“No, I'm Greyson Fisher."

Dr. Robinson looked pitiful towards me, and gave a sigh as though dejected. I knew then I'd said something wrong or against her expectations. My eyes widened at this realization, my heart rate quickened again, and I looked into her downcast eyes in agitation. My answer was unsatisfactory by her expression.

"Aren’t I?”

There was silence and the uneasiness heightened to panic. I sat forward and tried again, brain racking for an answer to this puzzle.

"Aren't I?" 

A crack of lightning sounded throughout the ill-lighted room, him from a typical restless sleep.

"Damn..."

His hands gripped for his blankets sheets just as he realized they were apparently, gone. 

"Damn..."

He took a breath, looking towards the window with narrowed eyes. Water droplets illuminated in the moon light, and he could see when the lightning struck, that the rain was coming in sideways. It beat against the windows like a furious hail storm.

He blinked for a couple of moments as his eyes adjusted, the room was blurry and almost tilted in his unsteady gaze.

He swallowed, feeling what little saliva go down, attempt to help his dry throat.

It was a failed attempt.

He slid over the side of the bed, his legs hanging for a brief second over the blankets and sheets that had all fallen off the side of the bed in a tangled web of a mess.

"So that's where you went to."

Pushing off the bed, he put a hand on the side on the wall, looking through his long window pane that reached from his knees to his forehead. It was probably his favorite part of the entire spacious apartment.

He let his head tip forward, hitting the window with a ‘thud.’

He repeated the action.

Again.

Again.

Biting his chapped lower lip, trying to remove the skin that hung only by a hinge, he closed his eyes moving his head forward against the glass, and with every inch he moved he attempted to guess what time it was.

It was a game he played with himself every time he woke up from one of his nightmares, which tended to be fairly regular, even if he didn't exactly like to admit it to himself.

"Two. Theres still drunks leaving the strip club, the strip club turns it's sign off at three. Around two thirty, William on the street corner packs up his New York memorabilia. One thirty, and the bakery's sign is still on. Two fifteen and usually there's a group of strippers leaving by then. So, two."

He pushed a hand through his dark hair, letting it take on its natural bed-head look. Even the sweat and grime from restless sleep couldn't keep it down flat, which he thought was probably one of the world's  strongest hair products.