Thoughts Held Captive

Content Warning: Mental Health issues.

Alone in My Head

They haven’t always been here. Well, not here. Not sitting beside me or walking with me or leaving messages for me. I don’t see, smell, taste, touch, or hear them.

Okay, yes. I hear them. But not with my ears.

“If no one speaks to you, Phen, do your ears even work?” Flit says.

“Nonsense, Flit. I hear the wind in the yard. My ears work just fine.” I say.

Who is Flit, you may ask?

Before I tell you that, let me say that my name is Phen. I remember being young when I was told my name, but “they” are the only others I know. It would be strange if I didn’t know my name. But it is Phen. Fritz Phen. I know, it’s an unfortunate name.

Flit was not the first one I heard. I recall that Stoma and Musial arrived before I was told I am Fritz Phen. They all decided I would simply be “Phen.”

Here is Stoma. The hole. The opening without a closing. The appetite for the senses. It is filled every so often, but the opening can only be blocked, never sealed. Stoma believes I cannot exist without him. He, or it, has been here from before memory began. The first. The hunger. The needing. The craving.

“Aren’t you special?” Flit says derisively.

Stoma stares at Flit.

“Don’t look at me like that, Stoma. It’s… unsettling.”

“You think that I could devour you, too?” Stoma’s gaze hangs heavy, like a bat sleeping in a cave. “Why don’t we find out?”

“You’d be sick for days, Stoma. You might even die of food poisoning.” Flit turns away, hugging himself.

“I couldn’t eat you, Flit. Who would bring me my meals?” Stoma slurs his speech as if in slow motion.

Sozo steps forward, making Stoma cringe and recede.

“My apologies for the diversion, my friend. And for the time issue they present,” I say. “Past. Present. Future. All at once. I suppose that’s a result of a lack of sensory input. I think that’s where the word ‘nonsense’ comes from? The opposite of sense? Or is it an absence of sanity? How can one know if one is nonsensical or insane? How long have we been alone, Occasia?”

A thin woman made of the moment answers, “Phen, darling. I only know ‘The Now’.”

I look at you calmly. “Musial is playing that song again. Not playing, but broadcasting. That’s a better term.”

“Annoying is more like it,” Flit snaps. “Always trying to please Occasia or Sozo.”

“I can’t do this with you right now, Flit. Occasia?”

“As is needed, Phen,” she replies. “I serve as the one present at the moment. Mindfulness. Personable, and yet fluid. Phen, is this the right time for me to remind you of the day ahead?”

“No, Occasia, Not now.” We share an inside joke. “I was hoping you would just clear the way for Sozo.”

“Of course. Master Sozo? Please. Feel free to correct the course.”

“Yes. Please,” I say.

Standing beside me, Sozo turns to you. “Phen, I will speak freely, as is our custom.”

“Yes. Have your own way.”

Speaking to you, Sozo continues: “Phen has been in this physical form for over five decades. I came in the thirty-eighth summer from his physical beginning. The Logos came to Phen, and he accepted our invitation to live with him. It was a spiritual rebirth. That was long after The Great Divorce. Broken and angry, Phen needed my help.”

“You are a killjoy, Sozo!” Flit cries.

“I hold every thought captive,” Sozo responds. “The Logos commands it.”

“Yes, The Logos brought Sozo,” I add. “Flit, you are no longer in control. You haven’t been in control for over twelve summers. Why must I remind you?” I feel somewhat embarrassed at having to correct Flit in your presence.

“That woman at the drugstore knows better,” Flit says, sitting on an overstuffed couch made for one occupant. “She was so cute!”

I recoil slightly at the memory. “I am not guilty of that anymore, am I, Sozo?”

“No, Phen. The Logos sent it into the Sea of Forgetfulness.” Sozo speaks clearly, directed at Flit, who sinks lower into the cushions.

Flit stews belligerently.

“Everyone, please. We have a guest—The Reader.”

“Musial?” I prompt.

“Yes?” Musial answers. “‘Be Our Guest’ or ‘Getting to Know You’? What do you think, Occasia?”

“‘Getting To Know You,’” Occasia responds decisively.

“Musial, you heard the lady,” I say. Music fills the air, a medley of versions wafting over this moment with you.

“A tour, perhaps, Phen?” Occasia prompts.

“Yes, of course. Occasia, please work with Stoma for afternoon tea?”

“Very well, Phen.” Occasia’s dress trails behind her like a lingering thought.

You and I walk along a hallway of high, vaulted ceilings. You look up to see clouds moving and birds flying against a backdrop of brilliant blue. Flit and Musial walk behind us.

I stop and turn to Flit. “You may accompany us, if you hold your tongue.”

Flit watches your face for a reaction. “Stoma has a request.”

“You don’t speak for Stoma anymore,” I respond quickly.

“Your friend is pretty.” Flit ignores me, stepping closer to you. “I like you. Tell me your name. Go on, say it out loud so I can hear it. C’mon, just a little softer.”

“Enough!” I scream. “Sozo, please. Help me.”

You look at me and see I am a child. Wet from an unseen rain, dripping from head to toe.

“Momma said to wait for my uncle, but it started to rain and I don’t know what to do.” He says weakly.

Sozo whispers as he walks toward Flit, who is shaken into a cowering position of submission. You see Sozo reach down and offer Flit a hand. When you turn back to me, I am Phen again.

“I’m sorry, Master Sozo,” Flit blurts out.

“Come, Flit. Rest in me. My burden is light and self-control is my vow to you.” Sozo lifts Flit to his feet, and you see Flit become more like Sozo as they embrace.

They stand face to face, and Flit looks at you. “I’m sorry, friend. I hope I didn’t make you feel uncomfortable. Or afraid.”

“Come, my new friend. Let me show you around.” My voice returns to the steady, peaceful lilt before Flit’s outburst.

We walk and the hallway stretches before us, seemingly infinite. The sky above shifts from the brilliant blue of afternoon to the bruised purple of twilight in the span of a few steps.

“In here, time is a suggestion, and the ceiling reflects my moods. They move pretty fast sometimes,” I laugh to thwart my embarrassment. “The result of being bipolar, among other things. But I think you’ve figured that out by now.”

We pass a series of heavy, oaken doors. Some shine in an unnatural light. Each is carved with shifting symbols: grapes on one, scrolls on another, a jumble of comic book icons on a third. One is weather-worn, featuring a simple wooden baseball bat and glove.

“Each memory has a room,” I say, my voice echoing off the marble floor. “Though ‘room’ is a small word for the expanses they inhabit.

For instance, Stoma’s quarters are mostly pantries that lead into an abyss. Musial lives in a concert hall. And Sozo…”

We look back, but Sozo is not there. Flit and Musial are walking behind us, focused on something up ahead.

“In a way, Sozo lives in the light that comes through the cracks. He goes wherever He is needed.”

I stop before a door with no handle. It is perfectly smooth, made of a wood so dark it looks like a hole in the air. As I approach, the door solidifies, and a handle of silver appears.

“This is the Archive of the Great Divorce,” I say softly. The air here smells of old paper and sawdust—a faint hint of a storm that passed many years ago but forgot to take its clouds with it. “Flit used to keep the key. He liked to go in there and reread the arguments, the slamming doors, the need for chaos. He fed on the salt of the tears.”

Occasia calls out from the room ahead. “Tell them about ‘The Now’ of it.”

I smile. “She loves saying that. She used to hide in her room; I didn’t see a reason for her company. But that is how I was before Master Sozo and The Logos.”

I feel a warmth on my shoulder. Not a hand, but the idea of a hand.

“The door is no longer locked from the inside, Phen,” Sozo’s voice ripples through the hallway. He isn’t walking with us, yet his voice is everywhere. “The Logos replaced the seal.”

“It was broken anyway,” I whisper.

We turn a corner into a vast conservatory. Instead of plants, the glass-walled room is filled with memories suspended in amber-colored bubbles. They drift like slow-moving dandelion seeds. One floats past your face—you see a younger version of me, Fritz, holding a single wildflower and looking at a woman whose face is blurred, like a thumbprint on a lens.

“Occasia!” I called out.

She materializes beside a stone fountain that flows with silver sand. Her dress is no longer trailing; it is tucked neatly, and she holds a tray of porcelain cups.

“Tea is served in the Pavilion of To Nyn” she says. “Stoma has been managed, with the help of Master Sozo, of course. He settled for an Earl Grey with heavy cream and toasted sourdough. The Hunger is sated for the time being.”

I raise an eyebrow, “She used the old words, again. To Nyn is The Now.”

She leads us toward a circular table. As we sit, Musial shifts the soundtrack. The medley of “Getting to Know You” fades into a string quartet rendition of “You’ve Got a Friend.”

“Tell me,” I say, leaning forward. “In your world, do you only have one voice? The one that speaks when you move your lips? It must be so quiet. So lonely without The Others. Or perhaps,” I tilt my head, “it is peaceful. Is there peace in your silence, or is it just an empty room waiting for The Logos to introduce Master Sozo?”

Flit peeks out from behind Master Sozo, his face no longer distorted by malice, but by a genuine, childlike curiosity.

“Do you have a Stoma?” Flit whispers. “Does something inside you always want more, like us?”

——-

“Prisoner 370195.” The voice breaks through my dedication to solitude.

The guard, the warden, and the priest stand watching through the bars.

“It’s time, Fritz.”