Ghosts With Names
The room was colder than he expected. Not by temperature, but by the feeling it gave — sterile, sanitized, like a room built to peel you open, layer by layer, and leave you bleeding on the inside while your face stays dry.
T. Boy sat in a stiff, armless chair opposite a low wooden table. A single ceiling fan rotated above, not fast enough to cool, just enough to remind you it existed. A bookshelf lined one wall, filled with books whose spines had names he'd never care to read. In the far corner stood a tall potted plant, plastic. It had no scent. No soul.
Across from him sat a woman, maybe in her early forties. Auburn hair, pulled back into a bun. Thick glasses. No military uniform — just a navy-blue sweater and charcoal slacks. Her nametag said Dr. Renee Walker.
She wasn't smiling, but she wasn't unfriendly either.
"T. Boy, is it?" she asked, flipping open a notepad.
He exhaled, slow. "Depends on who's asking."
"Fair enough." She clicked her pen. "But let's be clear. I'm not here to interrogate you. I'm here to talk. That's all."
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "You ever tried talking to a hurricane?"
She paused, considering. "No. But I've studied them."
That made him smile — a genuine one, not a smirk. "Then this should be fun."
She adjusted her glasses. "Tell me about your childhood."
He sighed. "Of course. The oldest trick in the shrink book. You think I shoot people because my Daddy wasn't in my Life or because he didn't hug me enough?"
"I think people act from pain," she said gently. "And I think yours might be trying to tell you something."
Silence hung between them. Heavy. Pregnant with ghosts.
Then he laughed — not loudly, not mockingly. Just a small, bitter sound.
"My dad once locked me up in the store house," he began. "Not for punishment. Just because I was 'too loud and trying to tell him not to hit Mama.' I was six. Mama tried to stop him once. He hit her so hard like he always did, she couldn't eat for two days."
Dr. Walker didn't flinch. "What did you do?"
"I heard and felt her pains from the storehouse," he said quietly. "Sat on a chair in there, holding a flashlight and a toy gun. I used to dream I'd shoot him. Every night. Until I did."
She paused. "You were just a boy."
He looked up, eyes gleaming. "That boy never left."
Dr. Walker wrote something down. T. Boy leaned back again, his face unreadable.
"I wasn't born bad, Doc. I was born... bleeding. And people kept cutting."
More silence. Then she asked something different.
"What does peace look like to you?"
That caught him off guard.
"I don't know," he said after a beat. "Maybe... no doors locked. No footsteps outside the room. No waiting for the next scream."
"That sounds like safety."
"Same thing."
She nodded. "We can work toward that."
T. Boy didn't laugh this time. He just stared.
Later that day, back in his cell, he stood by the small, barred window, watching the recruits jog past the field. His muscles still ached pleasantly from the workout earlier that morning. A strange feeling, that ache. A reminder he was still alive. That he still had a body. That he still belonged to the world in some strange way.
A knock came at his cell door.
He turned. John Slow entered without a word.
"You again," T. Boy muttered.
"You asked to train with them," John said. "You earned some time on the grounds."
T. Boy smirked. "Didn't know I had it in me, huh?"
"You had it. I just didn't know what 'it' was yet."
T. Boy chuckled, shaking his head. "You ever think maybe we're not so different?"
John closed the door behind him, stepping in further. "We're very different."
"Really? You bark orders, I disobey them. You clean the streets, I stain them. But we both know what silence feels like at 2 a.m., don't we?"
That made John pause.
"You ever feel it?" T. Boy asked, voice lower now. "That itch in your chest... like there's a scream caught in there but no one taught you how to let it out?"
John looked at him, then turned toward the wall.
"I've felt it," he said. "Still do. But I turned it into orders. Commands. Discipline."
T. Boy tilted his head. "And what if all you built turns out hollow?"
John didn't answer. He walked to the door.
"You'll be visited again tomorrow. More therapy. Stick with it."
T. Boy raised a hand in a mock salute. "Aye, Captain."
Before he stepped out, John glanced back.
"You're not beyond saving, Boyle. But the clock's ticking."
As the door shut, T. Boy sat back down on the cot.
"Clock's been ticking since I was six," he whispered to no one.
And for the first time since his confinement, a tear — just one — slid quietly down his cheek.
To be continued....