Zeke’s fingers danced among the flowers, barely touching them as rays of sunlight played across his skin. It felt so real. Everything did. The smell reminded him of every other garden he’d ever visited. The sun’s rays were as warm as ever. And the subtle chirp of birds was music to his ears.

  He even saw a fat grey squirrel – not unlike those he’d grown up around – dart by and climb one of the nearby trees.

  It was perfect. Idyllic. Everything told him he should have been happy. He should have been relaxed. So, why was he shaking? Why were his muscles so tense? Why was something in the back of his mind screaming at him to wake up?

  “Zeke? Are you okay? Is it another episode?” came a melodic voice before a gentle hand settled on his arm. He turned to see Zora smiling up at him. Her expression was reassuring, but the tightness around her eyes showed that she was worried. It was a common thing, these days. All too common.

  He unclenched his jaw and forced himself to relax. It wasn’t easy. Nor was it terribly effective. But the effort wasn’t entirely wasted.

  Letting out a sigh, he said, “I’m fine. It’ll pass quickly enough.”

  “Should I get the physician? I worry for you.”

  Zeke shook his head, then turned to find a stone bench nearby. He sat, letting his shoulders sag beneath the weight of his infirmity. His once proud muscles had slowly withered into nothing. How long had he been like this? How long had it been since he’d broken?

  Years.

  Maybe a decade.

  There were good days where he felt almost like himself. When they came, he could briefly let himself forget that he was crippled. Not in the body – it still worked the way it should – but rather, it was his mind that consistently betrayed him.

  That first year had been the worst, though. For months at a time, he’d truly believed that he was someone else, that he’d died and been reborn, only to descend into Hell. That delusion persisted despite the physicians’ best efforts. They tried everything – medication, apothecarial compounds, alchemical potions, and even therapy – but nothing had worked. He’d raged against his confinement in the sanitarium, never once thinking about how his actions affected his friends and family.

  Or how it affected Zora.

  She had been there through it all. Sometimes, she’d been accompanied by her sister, Zara. At other times, she was alone. But she’d remained by his side despite the certain knowledge that he was broken, that he would never be the man she’d once known.

  It was madness.

  It was love.

  She had listened as he explained the things he saw. The silver-masked, split-tongued monsters that plagued him. The flickering of reality. The accusatory people he felt certain he should know but could not remember.

  And yet, she never judged him. In fact, she had never given him anything but love and understanding, promising to remain by his side through sickness, health, and recovery.

  He loved her for it.

  But in a way, he also hated her for staying. She deserved more. She deserved better. A man who wasn’t a decrepit cripple who required constant supervision was a start, but it certainly wasn’t the end.

  And after so long, Zeke knew he could never be that. He knew he could never give her what she needed.

  Zora sat next to him, her hand on his back. Zeke felt so small. So frail. Over the years, his body had deteriorated down to nothing, and he was little more than skin and bones. He knew that if he looked in the mirror, he’d see an unrecognizable face staring back at him. His hair had lost its luster, his skin was sallow, and his cheeks hollow. If he weighed even a third of what he’d weighed before, he would have been incredibly surprised.

  And yet, as wretched as he had become, Zora remained by his side.

  “I wish you would leave,” he sighed. “You’re still young. You can have a life, Zora. A real one with a real man.”

  “I have a real man. I have a life,” she insisted.

  The words made him sick. They twisted in his gut like writhing snakes trying to escape their confinement. He forced down the rising bile in his throat, the acid taste staining his tongue. He swallowed, trying to banish it, but it did no good.

  Then, he ran his hand through his thinning hair and leaned back. Once again, he sighed. He’d spoken to Zora about the situation before, and on multiple occasions. He’d argued for her to leave – especially in the beginning – but it was the one thing he wanted that she would never give him.

  And he still couldn’t figure out why.

  Zora was still a beautiful woman. Even after everything, she maintained the luster of youth. Doubtless, she could leave him and, within the hour, have a hundred suitors knocking down her door. Even with the stain Zeke had left on her reputation.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Rarely, Zeke ventured out into the city. When he did, he saw the furtive glances. The accusations in the other citizens’ eyes. They knew he was broken. They feared what it meant that someone like him – a man who’d once epitomized strength so fully that his name had become practically synonymous with the word – could fall so hard.

  He had been a hero.

  Everyone said so.

  That knowledge had been ingrained in his mind, even if he didn’t remember any of his purported deeds. Indeed – he could remember nothing about his life, save for vague, residual emotions. Even his love for Zora was without a base. Instead, it was a formless feeling that, in the beginning, he’d questioned thoroughly.

  In the end, though, her actions had confirmed what he felt in his heart. She had proven her love by staying by his side, even when logic told her to do otherwise. Even when he knew that her refusal to leave was entirely irrational.

  Perhaps that was what love was - accepted irrationality.

  He looked around the garden. It was a tiny place. Barely more than twenty feet across. But it was his lone consistent outlet from the mundanity of the rest of his home.

  Zeke had only been allowed out of the sanitarium for a couple of years, and in that time, he had learned that his home, despite being a luxurious place, was just as much of a prison. Certainly, no one called it that. They didn’t refer to the sanitarium in that way, either.

  But everyone knew what they were.

  Cages meant to keep people confined for their own good. Or in some cases, for the good of the public. In Zeke’s interests, it was both.

  He’d learned that during his first escape attempt, when he’d killed seven people. Seven innocents. Seven men and women who’d only been trying to calm him down. He had ripped them to shreds, and when Zora finally found him, he had been covered in their blood, weeping in the street.

  They covered that up, though. Anyone who’d seen him in action was already dead, so keeping his involvement secret was easy enough. They didn’t want to sully the name of the city’s hero, after all. Doing that might cause a problem.

  The guilt remained, though. Zeke felt it every day. It didn’t stop him from trying to escape – and to similar results – a second, third, and fourth time. In his mind, he thought he was killing monsters. Those silver-masked demons who had somehow enslaved everyone.

  Sometimes, he wondered if he was right.

  He still saw them sometimes. Just a flicker here and there out of the corner of his eye. When he focused, they were gone, replaced by normal people.

  People like Zora.

  He never saw them with her anymore. She was his rock. An anchor that kept him tethered to a reality that would have otherwise drifted away.

  “Do you have plans today?” he asked, wanting to change the subject.

  She answered, “I have some errands to run, but I will be back this evening. Do you need something?”

  Zeke shook his head, part of him wishing that she would never come back. That way, he could descend fully into madness and forget what he’d lost. He could move past the memories of what he had been, of how thoroughly he had failed. Yet, he couldn’t say it. Not again. And the selfish part of him hoped for her return.

  It was the constant war waged by his two sides, and Zeke knew it was a contest that would not be soon decided.

  Probably never, if his persistently conflicting thoughts were any indication.

  “I think I want to go back inside,” he said.

  “The day is so nice…”

  “I know. But they’re watching,” he mumbled, glancing toward the wall. One of the silver-masked demons had been perched there for the past few minutes, its split tongue slithering in and out of the hole in its mask.

  “It’s not there,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Say it.”

  “It’s not really there,” he stated. “It’s just a figment of my imagination brought on by post-traumatic stress. I know it’s not there.”

  “Then you don’t need to go inside yet,” she reasoned.

  Zeke nodded, but he knew it would just get worse. When one appeared, others would come. For whatever reason, they always felt more solid than the rest of the world. That made it even more difficult to separate fact from the fiction his mind had conjured.

  He suffered in silence for a half hour longer before Zora claimed it was time for her to leave. Then, blessedly, he followed her inside. Even as he watched her dressing, he couldn’t believe that she had chosen to stay with him. He would not have blamed her if she had left. In fact, he would have embraced it.

  However, the love she clearly had for him was a buoy for his spirits, and it gave him some degree of hope that one day, he might recover. As she had often said, the love of a good woman was all he really needed.

  So it was with some degree of sadness that he watched her leave through the manor’s front door. He barely noticed the décor anymore. It was rich. Well-decorated and tasteful. It was also one of the largest in the city, taking up an entire city block. In his better moments, Zeke had often joked that he could get lost in his own house.

  Zora always laughed at that one, which in turn, left him with a flutter in his stomach.

  Even the memory brought a smile to his face. That left him in good spirits as he climbed the steps and returned to the bedroom he shared with Zora.

  It only lasted until one of the people from his visions flickered into view. He passed through her, but he couldn’t ignore it when she hissed, “She doesn’t truly love you. You know that, don’t you? How could she love such a wretch? I couldn’t, and what we shared was far deeper. Do you not remember, Zeke? Don’t you want to remember?”

  “You’re not real,” he mumbled.

  “Maybe not. But the memory is,” she said, stalking beside him as he hurried through the hall. He didn’t know where he was going. There was no escape. Yet, he still fled, resisting the urge to close his eyes and clamp his hands over his ears.

  When they – no, he; the blonde woman with the braid was not real, regardless of how familiar she felt – reached the bedroom, Zeke slammed the door in the vision’s face. She walked through without issue, and when she looked around, she let out a harsh bark of a laugh.

  Zeke couldn’t help himself.

  “What?”

  “You don’t even see it, do you?” she asked. “Of course not. You’re too wrapped up in your own delusions to recognize deception when you see it.”

  “What are you talking about? No. Don’t tell me. You’re not real…”

  “Even if I am a figment of your imagination – I’m not by the way – then everything I say comes from you. From what you see and refuse to acknowledge,” she said. “Do you ever wonder why Zora leaves at the same time every single day? Do you ever wonder why, when she does go, she always wears her most beautiful gowns? Her most revealing lingerie? She spent half an hour painting her face.”

  “She…she…”

  “She likes to look good, right? That’s what you want to say. Fair enough. I myself have a vain streak as well,” the vision said, flipping her braid over her shoulder. “But I know something you don’t.”

  “What?” Zeke asked.

  “The mind of a selfish woman.”

  “I…I don’t understand…”

  “You will,” she said with a giggle. “You very much will.”

  Then, she disappeared, leaving Zeke confused and angry, with nowhere to direct his fury.