Voices

He walked into the dimly lit room. A small boy sat quietly in the center of the floor. The lights danced around him. The man sat down across from him, confused.

"Who are you", the man asked.

"What's left", said the boy.

The man expected puzzles and push backs. His kind is always talking in riddles.

"Why are you left", asked the man.

"Because you keep killing me", responded the boy.

The man knew better than to take the bait. If he let his emotions flare the boy would use that.

"Death is a natural part of existence. Don't you like the idea of being able to rest?"

"I've been asleep for far too long as is."

"What's your earliest memory?"

 "Dancing in the rain as the flood waters rose."

"Do you know when that was?"

"In the hot summer. During the big storm."

 "Did the storm have a name?"

 "Betsy."

"Hurricane Betsy happened long before you were born." 

"Before WE were born."

The man was used to elaborate back stories, sometimes outright lies. But something in the way the boy spoke made it hard to disbelieve him.

"What's your happiest memory?"

The boy paused for a while in deep thought.

"The look on her face right after we've made love."

This surprised the man. It wasn't like one of them to break character. The boy was obviously too young to have ever had a lover.

"Don't you think you're a little young to know things like that?"

"Don't be silly. I'm older than you."

"That's impossible, and you know it is."

"Impossible things are rare."

The boy's defenses were unlike any he'd seen. Normally he could invalidate the persona. Force it to realize it wasn't real. This boy seemed to defy any logic. Yet he was so confident in his existence.
suddenly there were bells in the darkness. The man looked around.

"I have to go. Can I come back and talk with you again?"

"Yes, I'm always here when you are."

Confused by this last statement the man began counting backwards from ten. Slowly the small room faded into pure black. Th man opened his eyes. He was laying on a small couch in an office. He sat up and looked at the small table in front of him. On it was a small pad full of notes and a beeping watch. The man picked up the watch and turned it off. He flipped to a blank page in the pad and began jotting down notes.

"Boy, approx. age 10. Persistent persona. Danced in the rain during Betsy."

This last sentence bothered him. It was a contradiction on many levels. The boy appeared way to young to have experienced that storm. A storm that happened fifteen years before the man was even born. Out of curiosity and the need to gain information to discredit the boy the man started his laptop. He searched the internet for hours, looking up information, trying to find a hole in the boys story.

Then his jaw went slack. Among some grizzly pictures from the storm there was a small boy floating face up in the water. His features bared a striking resemblance to the boy in the room. The man shook his head. He must have seen this somewhere. This image must have stuck in his mind and manifested as this boy. But he couldn't shake the feeling that the boy was being genuine.

The man had been dealing with the voices in his head his entire life. The hallucinations  plagued him since he was a child. He spent the better part of his life medicated. But now he was a doctor of abnormal psychology. Through his new treatment he had freed himself of most of the voices. He even started cutting back his medication. But this one persona wouldn't leave. This one ghost.