My eyes had finally left my hand and wandered along the hospital room. There was a single window where light peeked in and shined brightly along the walls. Beside the bed was a black and purple vase full of blooming lilies, which were to unsettling to look at. Too perfect—too flawless. Too clashing with the room. And the scent… it drove my senses mad and made me sick every time I got a huge whiff of the potent scent. There was something else about the flowers, too… I couldn’t quite put my finger on what exactly it was that made me want to smell them then shred the petals and make them go away like they reminded of something beautifully painful. I’d only felt inner peace with them when they started to wilt a couple of weeks later, yet there was still this strange sensation of loss when they were gone, just how I felt. Dying, life slipping away, unnourished, despite the steadiness of my heart. Maddie was withering and someone else was growing in her place, her words alarming yet familiar. I decided that I needed to give the voice a name to differentiate between the two of us, so I started calling her Lily after the dead flowers. It felt fitting and the voice seemed to agree with me. I’m not even sure why I chose the name. Whether it was because of the flowers beside my bed were dying and that I wished she’d die along with them, or if it was simply a name that had surfaced from somewhere deep in my mind. Whatever the reason the name seemed fitting and Lily was born.

“Maddie, did you hear anything I just said?” Preston Wrightson, my therapist since this all began almost six years ago, waves his hand in front of my face. There’s a sharpened pencil in his hand and I flinch back when it nearly pokes my eye out. “Sorry,” he apologizes, quickly withdrawing his hand holding the pencil. “But you were zoning out on me again.”

I’m in a strange mood today, which I usually am when I’m at therapy. Being a combination of Maddie and Lily, it makes my mood unstable, more depressed, more struggling to find a balance, but I think that stems from my dislike toward Preston. “As much as I think I could rock the pirate look,” I say forcing my fake light tone out as I touch my eye that survived a near puncture. “Maybe you should start working on your depth perception before you go waving around sharp objects.”

He sighs, that oh Maddie and your sarcasm sigh. “I really wish you’d tell me where you go when you space off like that.” He pauses, waiting for a response he’ll never receive.

“Me too,” I reply evasively. If I ever did tell him where I went—what I was thinking—I’d be in straightjacket. So round and round we go on the merry-go-round where nothing happens, the one I live on every single day. Madness. Insanity. It drives me crazy, but I still keep my secrets and he still tries to pry them out of me, despite almost six years of failure.

He sighs again, then looks down at the folder in front of him, the one that carries years of notes about me. I can only imagine what they say. Difficult. Uncooperative. Confused. Childish. It makes me sick to think about, what he could possibly see inside me, if he can see underneath the steel shell I’ve created around myself, but is keeping it to himself.

After reading some of the notes over, he sighs for the third time, then closes the folder. There’s disapproval in his expression when he glances up at me. “Maddie, you’ve barely spoken today at all.” He overlaps his hands on the desk, scooting his office chair forward. “It seems like for the last couple of visits, you’ve kind of regressed, and your mother mentioned you’ve been distant and distracted at home. Is there anything going on in your life that’s been different? Or maybe your nightmares have been getting worse?”

“I hate that you talk to my mother so much,” I say, dodging the subject. Yes, my nightmares are bad, but that’s not what’s wrong with me. What’s wrong is that Lily’s been gaining more control over me, so I feel like I’m more bad than good anymore. I’m trying to fight it, but I’ve been fighting it for years and I’m starting to get tired. There’s been a few times where I’ve zoned out and I swear to God she’s taken over, but I can’t prove it yet. “I wish you’d stop. She’s not your patient. I am.”

“I know you are, but that’s not what we’re talking about at the moment,” he replies. “Please answer my question. Are your nightmares getting worse?”

I bring my foot up onto the chair, hug my knee to my chest, and rest my chin on top of it. “Maybe I don’t have anything to say anymore.” I pause, contemplatively. I need a detour from my nightmares. I don’t want to talk about how every night, late at night, and sometimes even during the day I see things that normal people never would. Blood. Screams. Fire. My hands taking the lives of others.

I open my mouth to say… well, I’m not even sure, but the darkness within me takes hold and I’m no longer just Maddie. “Or maybe it’s just your dazzling, prince charming looks that have me all distracted. Perhaps that boy band combo you got going on,” I lift my hand and gesture at his boyish good looks, blond hair, blue eyes, dimples, GQ suit, looks that I’m sure many women are drawn to, “It’s very hard to form words when I pretty much have my own Ken doll right in front of me.” I’ve actually always despised Ken dolls or at least I think I did. After the accident, my mom gave me boxes of my old stuff, full of things like toys, drawings, clay vases and sculptures. There were a few Barbie and Ken dolls in it and all the Ken dolls head’s were ripped off. I wonder what it means. What was going on through my head when I did it? Whether I popped the heads of the doll because I thought he cheated on Barbie or something or if maybe I just enjoyed the act of popping off his head.

Preston frowns as he squirms uncomfortably in his chair. “I thought we discussed that you can’t flirt or flatter me anymore. It’s wrong and I can’t allow it.” He’s been saying that for years and yet he never actually does anything about it.

“Oh, it’s not flattery, Preston,” I say, lowering my foot to the floor and leaning forward in the chair, tucking a strand of my chin-length black hair behind my ear. “Because I’m not a fan of Ken dolls.” Under no control of my own, I wink at him. Actually wink. Jesus.

He shakes his head, reaching for his pencil again. “Please stop that.”

“Sorry.” There’s a hint of sincerity in my voice. I’m so confused at this point. Who’s really in control over me. Maddie? Lily? It is nearly impossible to tell anymore.

He scratches down some notes on a piece of yellow legal paper. “You say you don’t like Ken dolls but how do you know that for sure?” he asks. I’m not quite sure if he’s using Ken doll as a metaphor or not, but regardless I find it amusing. “Is it because of something you remember? Or is it just a hunch you have?”

“A hunch that I don’t like plastic, blond haired, anatomically incorrect dolls?” I ask and when he nods, completely serious, Lily orders for me to have fun with him. Play a game with him, like cat and mouse. I’m conflicted whether to listen to her—always am—but in the end, I begrudgingly give in. “Well, I’m not sure if it’s a memory per se,” I say, tapping my finger on my chin. “So much as a dream I keep having?”

“Is it different from the dream you normally have?” he asks and I nod. Curiosity crosses his expression. “And what happens in this dream?”

“Headless dolls are walking around everywhere.”

“And are the dolls doing anything in particular as they walk around?”

“Yeah, they’re biting each other, like zombies.” I slant forward, cup my hand to the side of my mouth, and lower my voice, “And the strange part is that whenever I wake up, I have the strangest desire to go find a doll and eat it.”

He looks disgusted for the briefest seconds and then his repulsion shifts to irritation as I relax back in my chair, crossing my leg. Lily quiets down as she gets the satisfaction she desires and I can sit lighter because of it. “Relax, I’m just fucking with you, Preston.”

He frowns disapprovingly. “Maddie, you know as well as I do that every time you lie, it makes it harder for me to believe you.”

“Maybe that’s what I want.”

“No, I think it’s your way of avoiding the truth and what you’re most afraid of.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I say calmly, despite the fear within me. Did he finally discover my secret?

He gives me a sympathetic look. “I know it’s hard to think about, but it has to bother you—the fact that you may never truly remember anything before the accident.”

I relax, but try to appear heartbroken on the outside because that’s what he expects me to do. “But the idea that I might scares me.” I press my hand to my heart, like it aches to speak of, when really I feel nothing at all. It’s so hard to explain what it’s like. Not knowing anything about yourself, yet I’m supposed to be at a point in my life where I’ve got it all figured out. I don’t have anything figured out. Not even my name. Sometimes, not even who I am…

He nods understandingly. “That’s an understandable fear. I’m sure anyone in your situation would probably feel the same way.”

Oh, I doubt anyone is feeling how I feel most days, except for maybe serial killers. And maybe a dominatrix. “So what do you suggest I do?” I ask, lowering my hand from my heart and sitting back in the chair. “To help calm the fear?”

“Talk about it,” he suggests, thrumming his fingers on top of the folder. “It’s what we really need to start working on during these sessions. Talking and communicating.”

“You say that all the time, yet we never get anywhere,” I mutter. Sometimes I wonder why I keep coming to these sessions, now that I’m an adult. The only reason I ever started was because my mother made me after the accident. She was worried about my heath due to the trauma I’d been through, even though I can’t even remember most of it. “But how am I supposed to talk about things with someone I don’t trust?”