It feels like there’s dozens of me in my head, each one fighting for the front row seat to the hell that is my life. If someone asked me to describe it for them, I’d ask them what they’re talking about, wonder briefly why they think there’s something going wrong inside my head, why they believe that there’s an issue to begin with. Then I’d look in the mirror, see the circles under my eyes and realize they might be right ot question how strange I’d been acting for who knows how long. But the thought would be fleeting and disappear before any real depth can be probed. When they bring it up again, the realization will strike once more, but it’ll be laughed off – they think I need help, but what good is help if no one can give me a solid plan?

No, their words and ideas do not help because all they would give me is vague advice and stupid hints. I want a damn plan, something that can be a guideline but still has explicit directions if I ever need them. Things like ‘be honest’ or ‘make the right decision’ do not help, believe it or not. If anything, they’re the most generic crap people say just so they don’t have to take the chance of hurting someone or saying something wrong.

Way to go, people.

So now there’s a million people in my head trying to tell me one thing or another and it’s starting to hurt and no matter who I ask or turn to, no one has anything useful! I’m not crazy or insane and I don’t need psycho pills. I need the little devil-winged brat to shut up and stop talking about sex positions. The retarded angel needs to stop preaching about diapers and the cop in the corner needs to stop playing with the stupid bag of heroine! But no matter how I try to change the thoughts, shift the perspectives, none of them will go away, leave me in peace, stop ruining my world. My inner world, that is.

What can a girl do about a large group of things in her head when there’s no simple solution? Well, my answer came with a very interesting hedonistic spell- Not! My answer came with the very simple idea that one of the very few things in my head offered. Block the rest of the real world out and focus on fixing my own. Because what’s the point of interacting with a stable world when the unstable can barely comprehend it? It’s impossible for me to understand why someone would dress up as a clown to harass their ex or why someone would marry a person they had not seen for twenty years, regardless of the length of the later relationship. None of reality makes any sense to me because no matter who says what, it goes in my ear, gets torn to shreds by the things in my brain, then sent out the other like confetti. The worst part? There’s more of them every day.

Since the only use of all this is to play with my own mind, it’s about time to start with the first section – the skyscrapers. Funny enough, they were not there before these things started showing up. When I saw how many of them were there after a rather stressful day and they were bouncing around like mad, I just sort of thought ‘Where did they all come from? Where do they sleep?’ So, high rise apartments and pent houses. Cool, right? Which is a very apt word at the moment considering the weather.

Despite being middle of summer, the skyscrapers are experiencing an impromptu snowfall, complete with freezing breezes and flurries. Shivering at the temperature, I reach out and lift a hoodie from a snow bank next to my sidewalk. After a quick shake, it’s perfectly fine, dry despite the logics of physics, and I slip it over my head. The fabric blocks out the wind, a relief to my near blue skin, and the wind dwindles down to nonexistent. Well, kind of. It’s still blowing, but I don’t really feel it anymore. How strange. But the extreme temperature makes at least a little sense, though not to the extent of turning me blue. Anywhere that lacks vegetation of some kind tends to bend towards extreme temperatures – that’s why places with a lot of concrete are easily freezing over or boiling hot. Vegetation somehow creates a little sphere of regulation that keeps things in a nice, comfortable zone of warmth or cold.

Weird, right?

“I’m always envious of how you do that.”

Laughing lightly at my own thoughts, I barely glance at the woman next to me. “Envious? You can do it, too.”

“No. The rest of us are stuck with logic and actually work with the elements and physics around us. You bend logic.” She grins, poking at my covered arm. “You could probably make this place into a desert if you wanted to.”

“Not really,” I deny quickly, glancing to see if anyone heard her. “I've tried, believe it or not.”

“Right. Your conscience works for both your reality and fantasy, right?”

That’s a new thought to me, but I nod anyway. “Something like that.”

Turning around, I step into the room, feeling heat cover my form. It’s not quite warm enough to have me removing the sweater, but still a good change. She laughs from behind me, letting go of the back of my clothes to walk further in.

“That’s about the only way any of us can move like you do!” A strange look crosses her face as she glances back at me. “We have to be in contact, you know.”

“It’s strange to me. You can’t be any different than me, right?”

She takes a seat on a plush couch, pulling her legs up to her chest. “Are you so sure? We don’t exactly look anything alike.”

That’s definitely true. While she looks beautiful, clean and well-dressed, I’m standing in the entrance to the room with messy hair that’s barely brushed and clothes that are a few years old. It’s not that they’re ratty clothes, or even moth-eaten or damaged with holes – they’re well-worn with obvious wear on them. So they don’t look quite as nice as the skinny jeans, tight tee and bracelets she’s got on. Maybe that’s just something a person like me has to suck up and deal with in their life. It's never that easy to get good stuff, after all.

“I don’t… We may not be the same.” I shrug at the look she gives me. “We can’t be too different. You’re with me, right?”

“True, I guess.”

With a vague smile, she gets up and walks through the wall. Even though I could have swore she just said that all the things I do are impossible for the rest of them. Then again, this is the girl who just said that we’re not that different, either. Maybe we’re just that kind of people? We contradict ourselves regularly both in and out of the mind just for something to do?

Ah well.

The two of them are always together no matter the time or day, the weather or the conditions. If one is about, the other is close by, at least within a visual block. If I were to start speaking to one of them, the other would pop out of somewhere to join in, even if s/he never opens their mouth to say a word. Just being there is enough to get a point or idea across. But that’s what makes handling an encounter with them so dangerous as well. Not getting the idea or the point can be rather fatal for me, especially if it’s a crucial piece of information they’re trying to remind me of. When it comes to the people I speak to in my head, the twins are some of the few who I can openly say are here to help me. The two small children have helped me survive multiple occasions that could have gotten me seriously injured if not killed.

There was an incident in the ocean when I hadn’t quite learned how to tread water, an accident with a power saw in one of my old woods classes after a teacher had asked me to do a demonstration – something about having the steadiest hands – a slight issue with a freshly painted room, sealed windows to keep out bugs and dirt and a door that was jammed while no one else was home… A nearly endless list in which they had always shown up to give me the way out. If my memory is right, they were the first ones to appear, and the only ones to remain with me without complaint.

Somehow, it feels like that says quite a lot.

Now they sit patiently across from me in the empty lobby, playing with one of their many puzzles that they wear on their wrists or on the loops of their pants. Rubik cubes, mingled circles, prisms and the like are scattered across their figures in one form or jewelry or another. And their dull blue eyes go through them at rapid paces, refusing to look away for even a moment regardless of how intently I may stare. Maybe something has gone wrong and there’s no way for me to fix it?

Like a switch, the two finally look up at me, smiles on their faces.

“How smart you can be.”

“Why don’t you keep thinking, now?”

So this would be one of those other conversations where neither of them is constantly quiet. Wonderful. And that's genuine delight, by the way.

A light sigh escapes me for the idea. “Because that would mean giving in to whatever you think is coming after me. I’ll pass on the idea. Thanks anyway, though.”

“Would you like us to tell you the possibilities?”

“You might want some paper if you do.”

Shifting my gaze between the two, my mind inwardly debates the offer. But there’s so many others arguing about it at the same time that no real answer comes to me except that there’s no paper around in the first place. My backpack is back at my dorm room, gathering dust because I’ve ceased to find carrying it around useful, and any notebooks I might have brought with me are stuffed full of notes to the point that writing several pages worth of possible fatal or maiming incidents would be impossible. And no matter what these two have to say, there’s no way anyone is getting me to drive all the way the store to pick up a new notebook to write it all out in. That would be a waste of my time and money and the two of them would probably forget most of what they would say in the first place during the trip.

“I’ll pass, thanks. How’s the mountain?”

“Boring since the bears stopped showing up last month.”

“When are you coming to visit?”

Oddly enough, they switch their roles around, even their eye colors shifting. The two of them are often color coordinated, either as opposites or exact copies. Today seems to be a copycat day, their clothes and accessories varying between gray and black with rainbows in their hair. Between the two of them, the only real difference to be spotted is the green and hazel eyes that mark just how active or reactive they’ll be. Usually the one who asks questions is the one with the green eyes and the one with hazel is the commentator. To my immense annoyance, the difference can switch back and forth between them depending on how they choose to communicate with me. Which often leads to a major headache on my part.

Leaning back in my seat, hoping to relieve some of the pressure already gathering in my head by backing away at least a little, I eye the two carefully. They’ve never given me names, only said that they live on a mountain surrounded by oceans and floating forests and some weird bubble of pink stuff up in the sky. So far, that particular area in my head remains unseen. It’s probably a very deep level of my subconscious that might take years of meditation and practice to reach. Meaning I may only ever see it once in my lifetime and quite possibly when I’m bleeding out from some ridiculous accident.

“I’m not entirely sure. Your home isn’t exactly easy to get to,” I remind them. “How many times have you tried to drag me there?”

“A lot. My last count was at 37.”

“Should we try again?”

The thought sends a shiver down my spine – what little of the trip I've seen usually isn’t pleasant. “No. I’ve got quite a few things to do after this and I’d rather remain out of a coma, if you don’t mind.”

Both shrug, indifferent expressions taking their faces as they lift from their seats. With vague, emotionless smiles and waves, they wander off into random directions to disappear around just as random corners. Knowing the two of them, following for any length of time or reason would be a bad idea, especially since they’re two of the few who can spontaneously appear and disappear because of some ridiculous excuse of not being me. Now if only they gave me real names to go with their eyes, at least, the two might not freak me out quite as much. Though they probably enjoy confusing me that way when speaking with me.

Leaning back in my seat, I note that the lobby has vanished while staring up at a cloud that oddly resembled a bunny. Instead of sitting on a couch, my legs crossed over the edge of a soft cushion, I’ve settled back into a plastic patio chair on the deck of an old looking house. This, of course, means that someone else will probably pop up soon. But my head is currently hurting from the recent debate on questions so I push up from my seat and leave the area behind me. As much fun as speaking with another person from my head might be, a walk through a quieter part of my head is bound to do me a great deal more good. For starters, fresh air always helps aching temples and peace and quiet never hurt, either.

Of the many people in my head that I speak to, none of them are quite like my mother in terms of pointless wisdom and useless advice. Still, she’s a wonderful woman who makes me think and feel horrible about being inadequate or failing something. On a brighter note, she has yet to really ruin much of anything for me at this point in time, except maybe my financial freedom, so there’s no real animosity for it. Just that feeling that maybe the relationship isn’t healthy and we should have a talk. But that’s what breaking up with boyfriends is for. And detaching from very annoying friends, that too.

Whenever my mother and I manage to have a decent conversation about something, it’s always trivial and has almost nothing to do with real life. In other words, but not limited to, usually about the size of an actress’s breasts, whether or not they’re real, if a male actor can really perform (I sometimes wonder about those particular conversations), when exactly she’s getting a grandchild from me, if the world is ever going to really end (probably not), when the country will finally have its next revolution, if my video games are a phase or if they’re a pastime, my penchant for yelling at my brother, my penchant for crying to my other brother, my penchant for insulting my sister, my penchant for snuggling with my father, my penchant for rambling with her, the many penchants our family has, the somehow diminishing bottles of wine in her wine rack and the occasional thought on how the basement finishing is going. Really, we need some new material, but at least we have variety. The point, though, is that our may dealings in person through vocal communication is solely about trivial ideas in which we never assume a thing about one another’s lives. Except that there’s probably something wrong, we don’t want to talk about and thus everything is probably just fine. Yeah…

“What are you talking about? Are you even looking in the right place?”

“Yes, Mother. And I’m not saying she’s ugly. I’m just not into her.”

She frowns at me, much like always when I reject her dating advice, before moving on to find another ‘target.’ This is arguably her favorite pastime whenever I manage to come around for a visit. Thankfully, visiting is a rare occurrence and the majority of our interaction is through phone calls and messages. But when we do get together, it usually lands us in the middle of a busy area with tons of foot-traffic that hosts a number of possibly available men and women close to my own age. You would think that, by now, she would understand that a woman of nearly fifty years is more of a repellant for a person hoping to get a date. That, and Mother’s do not make for great wing-wo/men. Which should really be common sense.

Now, under normal circumstances, we would simply sit here and do nothing but point out attractive people and be shot down almost immediately. My mother refuses to prey on innocent young children – yes, because no one below the age of thirty has ever seen a second of porn – and I refuse to approach a person to ask for a date. It’s most the principal behind the ideas in our heads that make us so stubborn. Rather than getting up and doing something about the many bits of advice and the many suggestions we hand each other, we instead sit at a table – like right now – or on benches while mocking each other or just commenting on random nonsense. Every once in a while we’ll get up and move to another place for a change of scenery or to get something to snack on, drink, maybe something keep us entertained. On occasion she’ll even let me bring along a deck of cards to idly shuffle in my hands whenever the itch hits me.

“How about him?”

Glancing languidly over at a rather attractive young man, my brain actually does jolt at the sight of him. He’s got incredibly dark hair, thin frame, squared glasses and a coffee in hand. How my mother managed to catch sight of him, I may never know, but she finally found someone worthwhile to at least stare at. Eye candy… Now if only I could manage to get her to leave me alone about her chances at having grandchildren, my stress levels would drop tremendously.

“He’s cute,” I give her grudgingly, knowing the next words to come from her mouth.

“Perfect! Now go over, ask him on a date and try to get more than a one-night stand. Babies need their fathers.”

Saw that coming. “I’m astounded you have so little faith in my sexual control, Mother. Haven’t we had this discussion before? I’m still a virgin and that shit hurts like hell the first time.”

“So? Sweetie, if Mommy can handle it, so can you.”

A light smirk crosses my face. “So? Sweetie, while Mommy handled it, she was also married to Daddy, the result was four kids, and she’s currently exploring her homosexual options after a surprisingly neat divorce with a second husband.”

My mother stares at me almost blankly, the only sign of emotion being the light annoyance in her eyes alongside a tapping finger on the table between us. Of course, this mood only lasts a few minutes since she recently had a cigarette and is officially on a nicotine high – a smile twitches onto her face as she tries to choke back a laugh. When she finally lets out the amusement, I drop my smirk and take another look for the attractive man she had pointed out. He’s long gone while my mouth snickers about something to do with her failed second husband who really needed an attitude adjustment.

At least I no longer have to pretend the latter man is a god match for her. That had been painful for all parties involved – I’m bad at acting when I don’t try.

Having had our fun in that area, we move away from the table toward another. Or we would if we hadn’t already spent a few hours lazing about in the open air. Instead, since we’ve no doubt covered the majority of the populace currently in the area, we decide to head for home. Of course, we stop outside the shopping area and look around for our car which we’ve probably drifted past several times and most likely won’t find for a good thirty minutes. Which means my mother pulls out her car key and starts to press the buttons for it.

“So, how goes being in the real world?”

Oh good, real conversation. “About the same as fantasy, I’d assume.”

“Let me guess,” she sighs, giving me one of those looks mothers always have. “Did you stop taking the medication?”

An innocent expression plasters itself straight onto my face. “Now, Mom, we both know that the doctor specifically told me not to skip out on them anymore. Bad things happen to little girls who don’t take their medicine.”

She chuckles lightly, turning back toward the numerous cars. “But you’re not a little girl and have the brains to make your own decisions. And the memory of a squirrel.”

“Only when it comes to medications and personal well-being.”

“How humble of you.”

“I know. I’m very mature for my age.”

The look she gives me makes me smile innocently. “Of course you are. Now how about a real answer?”

“I thought I gave you a real answer.”

“That bad, huh? Ah well. You’ll get the hang of it eventually. Hopefully you won’t be like your older brother and take most of a decade to get there.”

Well, that’s the hope. Unlike the millions of people inside my head, my mother seems to be far more helpful on a vast number of subjects. Assuming one could pluck up the courage to actually ask her for help. On a number of occasions, I find it incredibly difficult to even approach her about my problems because she likes to beat the same question over the head multiple times in different forms that all lead to the same answer. Which usually winds up with me being incredibly aggravated and impatient that leads to a great deal of arguing and berating each other which is never an enjoyable atmosphere for dinner. So really, I just let her ask whatever questions she wants and try to avoid giving her any answers that might lead to her trying to give me actual advice on my issues. To date, the system is incredibly effective.

“What’s for dinner?” I hum as we climb in car, me ignoring her very pointed look. “Please say real food. I’m starving.”

“Smartass.”

“What’d I say?”

He’s the most… confident of them all. In the odd little world that somehow comprises my brain, he’s the only one who can actively change things without me being around or without having my say so or me telling him he can do something. Like that transport thing they all seem to be envious of, he’s quite good at that one. As it happens, his confidence manifests itself in odd ways around him, ranging from his clothes – an oversized fluffy one that’s colored white and is really soft, which I know because I’ve touched it – to the women that gather around him – faceless which tells me that they’re not part of my consciousness but actually part of him and usually dressed in bare minimums that I could swear my mind has never even seen before. And on most occasions, he’s usually in some room with high-class furniture and décor that drives me crazy trying to figure out where I might have seen it all because the mind cannot create what the mind has not seen or known. The coat, yes, my eyes might have spotted in a window at one point and there was a very long debate in my head about buying it. That, I get. But the plush circular couch that could seat the entire Knights of the Round Table, maybe a pantheon of mythological gods? No clue.

Anyway, he’s the most confident, with clear skin, smoldering stares, and ruffled hair that actually makes sense. Because he’s more than just a confident figment in my head. According to him, he happens to be a manifestation of the very thing I desire. What that happens to be, though, I’m not entirely sure because he quickly started cursing me out when I asked why I would want a male stripper. Not sure why he was so upset about that. All the black leather under the coat and the light chains and crap all scream strip-club to me. Either that, or bondage sex slave which really doesn’t sit right in my head. Just… no. So really, he’s the manifestation of something or other in my head that I must really want and as such enjoys bugging me about doing a number of things I happen to know would be fantastic fun. They also happen to be partially illegal or not entirely sanitary or socially acceptable.

For instance!

One does not walk down the middle of main street – I’m being literal when I say that – dressed in full regalia from the renaissance while screaming out for their king. Especially when one does not have a king to scream out for, a particular damper on any attempts at chivalry or shows of medieval skill. Such things are frowned upon mostly for the fact that they require weapons of potentially harmful natures…

One also does not wander into construction zones with roller blades on and skate about singing about raining men as they throw paint everywhere in an attempt to be artistic. That would find one arrested, minimum, and maybe with several hefty fines for vandalism, trespassing and disturbing the peace. Not that there’s any peace to disturb on a construction site that has nothing but farmland surrounding it that somehow managed to remain there in the middle of a city.

But that’s me rambling and the main point here is that he highly encourages these things but barely manages to be content with them getting written down in a journal or suggested as protest ideas to others. Hopefully they ignore that second one since that can get people into major trouble. Any way I look at it, though, he’s something from deep in my subconscious that’s taken form because there’s clearly something that I desperately want more than anything and he’s around to show that to me. Although he’s done a very shitty job at doing so and as such is almost completely useless to me. Except for some very extreme form of entertainment as long as I’m in the mood for a more racy kind of joke.

“You don’t even care, do you?”

Blinking out of my thoughts, which is rather odd now that it’s occurred to me, I stare at him from my seat across the obscenely large couch. “I’m sorry, what? I was thinking about something.”

“I’m aware. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m in your head and I hear your thoughts regardless of how hard you try to hide them, right?”

Completely unembarrassed, I shrug at him.

“So shameless.”

“Says the man-whore currently embodying feminine sexualization.”

He blinks back at me, a frown on his face. “Do I look like I’m modeling underwear? No.”

“But you look like you’re modeling for Playgirl.”

“You said that last week,” he practically sings – he naturally has an amazing voice to top it all off, the smug bastard. “I heard that.”

A smirk crosses my face, enjoying that thought heavily. “Good. Maybe it’ll kill your ego a bit. That’d be fantastic.”

His frown tells me everything he wants to say. According to him, I’m a very sad and pathetic person with a very low everything. And that’s apparently a very bad thing, although I think being me is absolutely fantastic if only for the fact that being me is incredibly easy to do. For the majority of classes and work, my responsibility requires me to be in one place for extended series of time and remaining there for the majority of my life. In other words, life for me is simplistic and easy to understand, which is how I like it because that gives me the chance to sit there and think deeply in the back of my mind.

“No, you just don’t like doing anything that requires actual effort.”

“Yet I’m sitting here talking to you. Isn’t that requiring effort.”

Again, he frowns at me, but eventually shrugs and pushes away from the pair of girls leaning against him. The second he’s standing from the couch, they vanish as if they’d never been there – no burst into mist or a sound effect like the movies, just not there anymore. And he strides purposefully toward me and my section of the couch. Which I only now wonder how I’d gotten to since the entire thing is one large circle and there’s no real entrance to it.

“That’s a hint,” he chuckles, stopping in front of me. “Tell me something, sweetheart-“

“Don’t call me that, pig.”

“-so I can get this brain of yours better. What really stops you from doing what you want? What keeps you locked up in that routine you seem to cling to?”

Unlike his now smirking face, I find myself pouting up at him. “Don’t you already know that? The whole lot of you constantly argue and debate in my head, I find it hard to believe you aren’t entirely aware of what goes on in here.”

“Well, sure,” he snickers, sliding into the seat next to me. “But do you know what stops you? What’s holding you back?”

Sighing lightly, I try to think on his words. When was the last time I’d consciously thought on why I wouldn’t do something or what was wrong with one of my ideas? Well, aside from last week when my eyes were glued to a computer screen trying to come up with a good topic for a college paper. It would have been a very bad idea to thoroughly explain the methods and uses of medieval torture in class to a group of apparently squeamish classmates. That’s how students get kicked out of the classroom and future discussions. Otherwise, though…

“How should I know? I’m not my brain.”

The man next to me laughs, light and airy, as if he can’t believe me. “Yet you work with that same brain on a daily basis. Explain that to me.”

I shrug helplessly at the question. “I need my brain. If I don’t use it, it’ll stop working and I like it working like it’s supposed to. What else am I supposed to do with it?”

“Listen to it, maybe? Try it for once,” he suggests, a grin on his lips. “You might just learn something new about yourself.”

Frowning over at him, I debate the idea in my head just as I’d done a million other times in my life. And for once, there was a real majority in those arguing for agreement with him. Which is incredibly odd considering how often they tend ot argue against his ideas.

“Ever think there’s a reason for that?” His snickering makes me frown deeper. “Hey, I’m just saying, is all.”

“Whatever. Go back your toys.”

“But I don’t want toys right now,” he whines at me. “I want to take a nap!”

Groaning lightly, I lean back against the couch and ignore the weight that drops into my lap. Although I do glance down at the man now turned boyish with his head on my legs. Such a strange thing about him, much like the kids he tends to look a certain way depending on how he acts. Going by the fact that he now looks like a ten-year-old, he must’ve really wanted a nap. And since he’s using me as a pillow, it seems I’ve got the time to take that deep look into my subconscious everyone seemed so set on me doing. Well, if it keeps them quiet, even if just for a little while, who am I to complain?

Julia glances about the dark room, frowning in discomfort. “Could someone turn on the light?”

“No,” Francis quips, standing near the sink and playing with a sponge in her hand.

A smirk creeps across my lips. “Pass.”

She grins openly, looking over her shoulder at the other girl. “Who actually wants lighting, anyway?”

Humming, my fuzzy mind draws a blank. “Thomas Jefferson?”

“Uh…” Francis glances over at me, looking confused. “Why him?”

“Wasn’t he the one who invented the light bulb?”

The oddly named girl frowns at me. “Edison, not Jefferson.”

With a shrug, my stare returns to the book in my hand. “Whatever. They’re both named Tommy.”

Julia just stands by the door, looking back and forth between the two of us. If she were smart, she would step back and head for her room, ignore the entire event that has occurred in front of her. But every once in a while, she does something stupid to make us all laugh.

“Why are we talking about founding fathers?”

How she had lost track of our conversation, I can’t quite come up with an idea since I’m laughing alongside Fran. The two of them are my roommates, not exactly on the best of terms with each other. Julia and Fran are actually quite close, to my slight aggravation, so run around doing a number of things together. I, on the other hand, barely know the two past the basics and have trouble getting close to get to know them in any sort of fashion. It has something to do with Fran, I’m certain. She has this tendency to ignore me whenever we’re in the same room and has only really shown concern when it seemed like someone might have needed to drive me to the emergency room. But that’s fine, I suppose, since it’s more appropriate to call me the intruder than them the excluders. They’ve known each other for a little over five years now. My presence only came about because they’re last roommate moved to another city for a job.

This was all a coincidence in which I’m just a person who helps pay the rent.

On a cheerier note to do with them, they at least don’t bug me about having multiples of the same outfit or loving a specific jacket enough to wear it to shreds. Some of my older friends used to give me weird look for buying five pairs of the same exact brand and style of jeans. All at once. It’s not that I don’t like the idea of having different styles, but usually designer crap is uncomfortable so I wind up grabbing the comfiest pair in sight, and multiples of it. Who cares if it seems like my clothes never get washed? Not like anyone ever actually pays attention to the pair of pants you’re wearing, right?

Or, at least, not anyone with a sense of decency and awareness.

“Whatever,” Julia grumbles, finally disappearing like she really should have moment ago.

“Well, we’re going now,” Francis chuckles, striding after Julia toward the front door. “Try not to ruin the place.”

“That was not my fault,” I call after them, fully aware they had stopped paying attention and the door was closed already.

Which happens to be the only downside to being their roommate. Living with another person usually means you should get to know them or something, right? But these two? They’ve stuck to just knowing each other and letting me pay my section of the rent when it’s due. We know the basics about each other, but something tells me that, if someone were to actually ask us all, we would know barely anything about each other. And that I could probably answer more of the questions about them than they could about me. For instance, Julia has a predilection to the bright side of life, and the colors that go with it. She’s got a boyfriend that spoils her regularly – lucky her – and went through private education. If you walked through her room, there would be happy-inducing things everywhere along with a collection of stuffed animals, her favorite being a large lion she named David. Francis, on the other hand, is a bit of an odd-ball painter kind of girl. She’s got a slight obsession with the arts and a natural inclination to anything to do with beauty and what she deems ‘interesting,’ like maybe a strange piggy bank that she made which is supposed to resemble some superhero. Going through her room would probably end with a very heavy concussion and a slight gap in memory.

Really, they shouldn’t be friends whatsoever, but college does weird things to relationships.

Anyway, the two of them have made cameo appearances regularly during a few of the recent visits through my head. It’s a little strange, really, to see my two roommates bouncing around in my head acting very oddly for themselves. Maybe it has something to do with them embodying some other distant prat of my subconscious. That seems to be the running trend for the majority of the figures and people that are playing up there. Whatever the deal, though, I really wish I could get them all to stop making me dream weird things about alligators with party hats, purple scales and spoons for teeth while they watch some indistinct comedy show on a bubble. Those are the creepiest things to dream up, I swear.

Well, they’re gone now, anyway, so no need to really fuss about them, I suppose. Instead, maybe it’s about time to settle in with something from reality. Fictional people in my head are fun and all, but spending too much time going through what is obviously the more insane section of my mind could only be a bad thing. Who want to go crazy from talking to their own self? Letting the less ruined part of my brain stay that way is a very good idea to me.

Thus I find myself in my room, on my bed, as the internet starts to load. And for the first time in what feels like forever, my eyes start to go over little bits of news, stories people tell over chats, a few forums that explain numerous scientific and historical findings and maybe an actual story or two. There’s even a few minutes spent looking through picture on the image section of my search engine. Not that it really means much since I mostly search up basic words and decided to see what the engine gave me for image relations. Some of them were a bit disturbing, quickly skipped over, and a few others had me glancing at web pages.

How odd my life must be if this is how I connect with reality. Through a damn computer screen. Maybe losing my mind isn’t such a bad idea after all. At least it’s more entertaining.

This is a… new development. Despite the many journeys amongst my many selves, this is a strange form even for the people that I’ve seen up to this point. How does one tell oneself that they are not… mechanical in any way? Because I’ve found myself strapped against a table and staring up at a trio of mechanical versions of people. Well, mostly mechanical. There are places where they’re clearly made of metals of some sort – they each seem to be of a different one – and others where it’s obviously flesh. And there’s a few places where the two materials seem to blend together to shift between different areas. For instance, one of them looks to be made of copper, his ear shining dully until it hits the temple and jaw where it blends into skin.

“What is this?”

The one that looks to be an iron composite of some sort leans over, grinning widely underneath a metal plate nose – a well-made one no less. Between the three of them, he seems almost like the leader, but the other shiny one, whose metal is oddly polished and one I can’t name, is sitting back watching it all like a sort of supervisor. The copper person is bouncing back and forth like a puppy pulling gears and parts out of everything and smacking them in a machine over my head.

“Well, we’re just wondering what goes on in the head of this places…” He frowns lightly, almost thoughtful. “Master? Controller? God? Whatever it is you are,” he sighs, happily leaning back and strolling around the table they have me strapped to.

“And… why would you want to know that?”

“Because we want to know why we’re metal.”

For a moment, I blink at the third bot person as he stares boredly at me. “I could tell you that without you opening up my head.”

Loud clangs echo in my ear, sending a headache through to my temple as I clench my teeth in pain. Glancing over, the copper man gapes at me, metal teeth gleaming and a speaker in the back of his throat. So they don’t actually have to move their mouths to speak, then? Maybe that’s just him, though. But they all sound rather mechanical, digital in a way when they speak. It’s more likely, since my mind is complicated and like heavy amounts of details put into all the things in my imagination, that they have either a sort of vocal chord data set or the actual vocal chords in them somewhere. If it’s the data, then it’s probably stored in their brain, which would send signals into some sort of nerve translator that would feed into a processor, then be translated into words to be spoken that would play out in a specific pitch or tone related to the emotional output of the brain’s thoughts. Opening their mouth might give a signal that a thought is meant to be spoken, in such a case. Interesting…

“You know why we’re metal?” the copper one squeaks, popping up at my side. “You really know?”

“Well, I’d hope so, if this is my own head.”

“Oh yeah. One of the people we tried to grab said something about being in a head.” Amazingly moving to my side, the bored one looks down at me with a very vague expression of thought. “So you’re more like a controller than a master or god. You create everything here?”

With as much of a shrug as on can give when strapped down, I blink up at him in a similarly bored manner. “Sort of. As far as my meditation teacher taught me, this is more of a subconscious to me than the actual mind. And everyone in it is me in one form or another.”

“But you’re a girl,” the ‘leader’ squeals, leaning back and looking at himself. “I’m not a girl! I’m a guy!”

“Don’t you know that both males and females have some traces of each gender? That’s why people become transgender or cross-dress.” Which actually makes loads of sense if one thought about homosexuality in such a sense. “You’re a guy because you embody one of my more masculine tendencies in my subconscious. And since the majority of the people I speak to in my head are male, I must predominantly identify with a more masculine figure. In other words, I feel more boyish than girlish because I’m more influenced by ideas and thoughts that would normally be considered male tendencies.”

“Is that why we’re boys?” the copper one hums, setting his head into his hands as he leans his elbows on the table. “I thought it was because we were built that way.”

Built that way? “If you were built to be male, then that means you would have more male tendency than if you were built female,” I muse to myself. “But since you were built, that also means that, if your influences become female, you could just as easily become a female yourself. It would just be a matter of switching parts… My mind must be very complex to have come up with that one. It’s starting to do very strange things without my permission as well.”

“Obviously,” the bored one huffs, turning away. “I’m going on a walk.”

“Be careful of water!” the copper one calls out. “We don’t want to rust.”

“I wonder,” the one of iron composite hums quietly. “I wonder.”

This is a very strange occurrence in my head. Really, when did my mind suddenly decide that I was some sort of mechanical person? Although, I have been thinking about mechanical engineering as a career. But that was decided to be purely a hobby last week, or so I had figured since mechanical engineering is pretty much inventing or building machines and that is not exactly my kind of fun. No one even trusts me with a lighter, forget the welding torch.