Thomas stared at his own hands, his fists still clenched on his knees. He could feel the phantom ache in his knuckles from where he'd gripped them too tightly.
He felt a familiar, cold, weary dread.
He hated this part.
This was the part where he had to admit it, where he had to confess the actual depth of the rot. The nightmare... the memories... those were just the preamble. They were the trauma she could understand, the wounds she could label and file.
But this... this was something else. This was the infection.
He let out a long, slow breath. His shoulders sagged.
"The... apparition," he said, his voice a low, defeated rasp. He didn't look up. He couldn't. "She's... it's... been worse. More... active."
He could feel Grace's gaze on him, the sudden, subtle sharpening of her professional interest.
"She... talks to me," he continued, forcing the words out. "Walks. Moves. Like... like she's real. Like she's just... here."
He paused, swallowing against the dryness in his throat. He had to say the worst part. The part that he didn't understand.
"And she's... she's younger. Not... not how she was at the end. She looks... young. Like... like the first time I saw her. Before I even knew it was her."
It was the cruellest detail. Not the monster from the alley. Not the corpse from the apartment. But the ghost of the woman she had pretended to be—the lie, given flesh, haunting him.
He heard Grace make a slight sound —a noncommittal, clinical hum of acknowledgment.
"Thomas," she began, her voice infused with that practised, infuriating patience. "We've talked about this. This isn't... her. It isn't 'Lilith.' It is a... a complex visual and auditory hallucination. A persistent, trauma-induced delusion."
He flinched. The words felt like a slap—the neat, tidy labels for a mind that was shattered.
"Your mind," she continued, her voice a soothing, rational scalpel, "is trying to process an event that, for you, has no rational, emotional conclusion. You hunted this... monster... for years. It was an epic, personal conflict. And in the end... she died of an aneurysm."
She let that sink in—the mundane, pathetic truth.
"Your subconscious... your psyche... rejects that. It feels... anticlimactic. Unresolved. So, it has... invented... a continuation. It has created a version of her that you can still interact with. It's the only way your brain can make sense of the story."
It all sounded so... reasonable. So... sane.
And it was all wrong.
Grace sighed. It was not a sympathetic sigh. It was the weary, put-upon sigh of a doctor whose patient is refusing to heal—the sigh of a mechanic whose car won't start.
"Thomas..."
'Here it comes.'
"...have you been taking the antipsychotic medication I prescribed?"
The question was a landmine. It wasn't a question about his health. It was an accusation.
A hot, sharp anger lanced through his exhaustion. He looked up, his gaze finally meeting hers again. His voice was sharp, cutting through the beige air, louder than he intended.
"Do you think I'm crazy, Grace?"
He used her name. He used it as a weapon, a shard of glass.
She didn't flinch. Her fortress of professional calm was impregnable. She simply held his gaze, her expression one of... of nothing. Of placid, non-judgment. It was, in itself, a kind of judgment.
"No," she said, her voice infuriatingly level. "I think you are suffering. Profoundly. And I believe the medication will alleviate that suffering."
She had deflected. Of course, she had. She hadn't answered his question. She had diagnosed it.
"It... it makes me... foggy," Thomas argued, his voice dropping, the anger already spent, leaving only the dregs of defeat. "It... I... I can't... think."
He gestured vaguely at his own head.
"My mind... it... it feels slow. Like it's wrapped in... in wet cotton. I feel... dull. And tired. All the time."
"A feeling of 'fogginess' is a common side effect," she said, dismissing his core complaint as a simple, clinical footnote. "It often subsides as your body adjusts."
She leaned forward, her eyes narrowing, just slightly.
"Is she here now, Thomas?"
Her gaze was sharp. Clinical. She was looking for the tics. The involuntary eye-dart. The crazy man's distracted stare.
A deep, shuddering sigh escaped him. A sound of pure, bone-deep weariness. He couldn't stop it—the habit.
His eyes, against his own will, did a quick, subtle, humiliating scan of the room. He checked the corners. The shadows. The space beside him on the couch. A paranoid, reflexive search for the impossible.
Nothing. Just beige walls. Just empty, sterile air.
He shook his head, looking back down at his hands.
"No."
His voice was a monotone.
"She... she doesn't normally... 'perform'... when I'm with other people. You already know that."
He looked up, a last, desperate, stupid flicker of defiance in his eyes.
"It's... it's when I'm alone. Or... or at night. In the dark. Or when I finally start to feel... better. When I have a good day, that's when she comes."
He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial whisper, the very sound of the madness he was trying to deny.
"It... it can't be a delusion. It... it just... it feels... too real. It's not just seeing her. I... I can smell her."
He looked at her, his eyes wide, pleading for her to understand.
"Her perfume. The one she always wore. Sandalwood and something else. Something... metallic. It... it just... appears. How... how can a hallucination... do that?"
Her expression did not change. The empathy did not deepen. The clinical, placid mask remained. She heard his desperate, supernatural plea, and her mind simply... filed it.
She didn't even bother to answer his question.
"It all feels too real, Thomas," she said, her voice a calm, flat, corrective monotone. "That is the nature of the delusion. That is the symptom."
She was done listening. She was done talking. The debate portion of their session was over.
"You are unwell," she stated, not as an opinion, but as a diagnosis. "You are not sleeping. You are self-medicating. You are trapped in a feedback loop of trauma and psychosis. The only way to break this loop... the only way... is for you to take the medication."
Her voice was no longer gentle. It was firm. It was the voice of a final, unassailable authority.
Before he could argue, before he could find the words to protest, Grace stood up. The movement was abrupt, a sudden, decisive end to the conversation. She turned from him, walked the two steps to her large, dark wood desk, and plucked a pen from a holder.
She grabbed a small, white prescription pad.
The sound of her pen scribbling on the paper was loud, a violent, tearing scratch in the quiet room.
It felt like an insult. A dismissal. He had bared the darkest, most terrifying corner of his soul, and she was... writing him a script.
She tore the small slip of paper from the pad with a crisp, efficient rip.
She turned back, her face once again a mask of professional, non-threatening calm. She held the prescription out to him.
"A new script," she said. "This one is for a lower, more consistent dosage. It may help with the 'fogginess' you described, but you must take it. Every day. Without fail."
He stared at the white slip. It was a flag of surrender—a testament to his own failure.
Slowly, his body heavy with a bottomless, crushing defeat, he reached out and took the paper.
His fingers closed around it.
And she didn't let go.
He tugged gently, but her fingers remained, pinching the other end. His eyes, tired and bloodshot, snapped up to meet hers.
Her gaze was serious. The doctor was gone, replaced by... something else. A messenger.
"One more thing, Thomas," she said, her voice quiet, all traces of therapy-room platitude gone. "This... isn't medical. But I've received three calls this week. From the department."
A cold, familiar dread, entirely different from the terror, seized his stomach.
"People have been trying to reach you," she continued, her gaze steady, holding him captive. "They're... concerned. They asked me to pass on the message that they would... 'appreciate'... a call back."
She finally released her hold on the prescription.
Thomas said nothing. He didn't nod. He didn't acknowledge her. He simply pulled the slip of paper free, his movements stiff. He stood up from the couch, the leather groaning in protest.
He didn't fold the script. He just... shoved it. Crumpled it into the pocket of his jacket, a piece of trash.
Without another word, he turned and walked out of the office.
He was in the hallway. The elevator. The lobby. His mind was a cold, white-hot fog of rage.
'A tool. That's all I am.'
He pushed through the building's glass doors and into the world.
'A broken, discarded, fucked-up tool. Left in a box to rust. But when they need something... when a new job comes up... they'll pull me out. They'll try to... 'fix' me. Give me a 'new script.' Wipe off the rust and stick me back in the machine.'
He walked, his steps hard, his shoulders hunched.
'How... how could I have been so... foolish?'
The scene change was jarring.
A thick, heavy, oppressive humidity replaced the stale, temperature-controlled air of the office. The sky overhead was a uniform, bruised, and swollen grey. It was a ceiling of unwept tears, promising a deluge.
The street was quiet, insulated by the heavy, damp air. He walked, his destination automatic—the train station.
He looked down at his own hands as he moved. They were pale, his knuckles bony.
'I was a... 'gifted' ...forensic psychologist,' he thought, the word gifted tasting like ash in his mind. 'A promising academic. My expertise... my 'interest'... in the truly broken...'
He'd seen it as a puzzle—a dark, fascinating equation.
He'd wanted to understand the abyss. He'd never, not once, considered that the abyss might wish to understand him.
That was his foolishness. He had been a tourist, an academic, and he'd walked straight into her hunting ground. And she... she had been waiting.
A drop of water hit his face.
It was cold.
Another. Then another.
The grey sky finally tore open. The rain didn't start; it attacked. A sudden, cold, violent downpour that hammered the pavement, turning the world into a grey, roaring smear.
He ran.
He ran the last block, his jacket soaking through in seconds. He bolted into the relative shelter of the train station, his breath misting in the cold air.
The platform was quiet. Nearly empty. One or two people huddled further down, faces buried in their phones, oblivious.
A digital sign overhead announced that the next train would arrive in a couple of minutes.
He was exposed, damp, and trembling, the cold of the rain seeping into his bones. He spotted an empty bench, recessed under the wide overhang, offering the most shelter. He crossed to it, collapsing onto the hard, cold wood.
He leaned his head back against the brick wall, the rough texture grounding him. He closed his eyes.
Just for a second. Just one second... of peace.
"What a complete, and utter, waste of time that was."
The voice was a melody. Clear, articulate, and laced with a bright, cutting amusement. It was right next to him.
'No. No, no, no. Not... not here. Not now.'
He kept his eyes squeezed shut. "You're not real. You're a delusion. You're... you're a symptom."
"Oh, please," the voice chimed, followed by a soft, musical laugh. "You're not 'crazy,' Thomas. You're just... haunted. And I'm real. She's the one who's the fraud. 'Take your medication.' Honestly..."
He opened his eyes.
She was sitting beside him on the bench, as real as any other passenger.
But it was... her.
The young her.
The one from the beginning, from the university library, before he'd known her name, and secrets. Early twenties. Her long, dark red hair was tucked, messily, into a simple grey baseball cap. She wore plain clothes—jeans, a dark sweatshirt. She looked... normal. She looked like a student.
He clung to the desperate, fragile hope that back then, in the quiet of the stacks, she hadn't known who he was either, that they had just been two strangers passing in the dust.
But looking at her now... he doubted it. He doubted that very much.
She was smiling at him, a bright, genuine, innocent smile that did not, in any way, reach her cold, grey, ancient eyes.
"There's no reason for the pills, you know," she said, her tone light, conversational. "I'd never... actually harm you. Not really. What would be the point in that? I just want to... have fun."
She leaned in, her gaze intimate.
"And you... you are the only fun there is. On this entire, boring, stupid planet. The only one who could find me. The only one who could... see me. You must be... the most interesting man alive."
Thomas's heart hammered. He looked frantically down the platform. The other passengers weren't looking. They couldn't see her. He was a man on a bench, staring into space.
He leaned away from her, his voice a low, desperate, hissed whisper.
"You're not real. You died. You... you had an aneurysm. You're... dead."
Lilith's bright, innocent expression didn't change. She just... laughed. A bright, genuine, lovely sound that made his blood run cold.
"I know!" she chimed, as if he'd shared a delightful joke. "What a way to go, right? So... mundane. And here I was, planning our grand finale. Something just... epic. For you. For us."
She sighed, a theatrical gesture of disappointment. Then she stood up, blocking his view of the tracks. She moved in front of him, her knees almost touching his.
His gaze was lowered, staring at the floor, at the rain.
"Honestly, Thomas..."
He felt a finger. Cold, even in the damp air. It touched his chin.
She tilted his head up, forcing his gaze to meet hers. Her cold, grey eyes stared down at him, amused, analytical, and, most concerningly, possessive.
"...this is better. So much better. Watching you... watching them try to 'fix' you... watching you... despair."
Her smile widened, her eyes glittering.
"It's just... fascinating."