Falling Falling Stars

01 - Forty Five

AN: Make sure you've checked the tags/warnings! Efnisien's intrusive thoughts and his past actions can both be very confrontational at times.

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Efnisien had forty four books in his plain grey melamine bookshelf. He used to have more, but Dr Gary found out that he'd bought some more true crime books during his bad patches, and encouraged him to throw them out. Efnisien placed them all in a metal bin in a shitty park and set them alight and someone called the police and Efnisien was sectioned against his will for forty eight hours for being resistant to arrest. Dr Gary vouched for him, got him out and threatened to remand him back to Hillview if he didn't 'pull it together.'

Now, he obsessed about buying true crime books, because he knew he shouldn't.

'It's still a de-escalated obsession,' Dr Gary said. 'Obsessing about buying true crime books for an hour isn't obsessing about killing someone. That's progress, Efnisien.'

Dr Gary was about the only person in the planet who could say that, and Efnisien would only scoff at him fifty percent of the time.

That's progress, Efnisien.

Progress to what?

Efnisien sat at the cheapest IKEA table he could afford and stared into a room that had no windows and a grey couch. Efnisien didn't care about colours – except red, the best colour, and he wasn't supposed to own anything coloured red, not even a fucking pen – and he didn't care about furniture. His parents had left him a decent stipend and he'd never touched it except to pay bond on his shitty apartment.

He worked four hours six days a week watching surveillance videos streaming to his computer on behalf of a big data company and fifteen hours a week transcribing academic lectures and recordings for one Professor, one Associate Professor, and one PhD student who could afford his rates. Dr Gary had found him the Associate Professor, and the rest of the work had come by word of mouth.

He thought about hurting animals intentionally multiple times a day, but never for more than a couple of minutes. Sometimes only a few seconds. He thought about killing the people he worked for even less. He thought about burning down the apartment building often.

He ate five times a day - or was meant to - because his stomach couldn't handle large meals anymore. He ate porridge cooked with water when he remembered. He was careful with too much raw fibre. He forgot to eat all the time. If he thought about why he had to eat five meals a day, which was most days, he thought about shoving his fingers into his entrails like he'd done in the hospital after he'd been stabbed, and he splayed his hands across his belly and wished he could do it again.

It had been so visceral and soft and squishy, and it had hurt so fucking much. It had been the brightest thing in his life at the time. Like a flashlight in his eyes, but it was coming from his guts instead.

The nurses thought he'd been killing himself, and maybe he had been, because he wouldn't have cared if he died. But he just wanted to know what it felt like to feel the wounds Crielle had made, to press his fingers in along the path of the knife, to hear the wet squelch and he'd press his hand to his belly and realise his breathing was getting shaky and he was getting aroused.

Dr Gary didn't have him logging his intrusive thoughts because he had them too often. But he was meant to log when he had intrusive thoughts about hurting himself, hurting other people or animals for longer than five minutes.

Monday was bad. Efnisien owned forty four books and on the whiteboard tally sheet for the day on his fridge, he was up to fifty vicious, short little lines. At least four point one hours spent thinking about hurting himself, hurting others, hurting animals. Four point one six six six six six six recurring.