I sat next to my depressed cellmate who has yet to even acknowledge my presence. The silence was starting to get on my nerves and his lack of care was not helping. The tears kept running down the edge of the mask causing a small puddle to form under him. How anyone could cry that much was baffling to me. I didn’t know what to do so I just started patting his back.

He stopped crying and raised his head to look at me. “Where did you come from?” I didn’t know how exactly to answer that since this is as far as I know part of my mind.

“The door?”

“But how, I locked it.”

“I don’t know. Tim told me to go through the door and next thing I knew I was in here.”

“You can’t trust Tim.”

“I don’t trust Tim.”

“Yet, you are now trapped here.”

“Well, don’t you have the key? You can just let me out.”

“I could but if I open the door then they will come.”

“Who?”

“The ones who wear the mask.”

“The Masked man is gone. We escaped from him.”

“No, you believe you are free from him but he is always here. He lives within us as a memory we don’t wish to remember. We do not feel the pain anymore but we remember what it felt like. It will haunt us and no one can rescue us from it.”

“Then we have to escape it ourselves.”

“Do you see that we are in a cell? We built it to keep others out and to keep us safe within. Even so the pain is here. It lines the walls and sticks to our skin like maggots on a corpse.”

“You are a pretty morbid version of me.”

“Who said I am a version of you? We are one in the same. There is no difference between us other than the fact that you have cut ties with all of the emotions you don’t like. You even separated yourself from logic because the ignorance is so blissful.” He said as he began to weep again.

“I won’t just sulk here like you. I am not you. Now give me the key.” I said standing above him like an enraged parent.

“No.”

I grabbed him by the collar and lifted him up. “Give me the key.”

“No. You will not let them in here.” he yelled.

“Too bad.” I said throwing him against the wall. When I did I saw the key clatter to the floor. I started to walk towards it but as I did he lunged forward and grabbed it and stuffed it into his shirt. The mask was partially broken on the top right revealing some of his bloody forehead.

“You can’t have it!” he bellowed in tears before curling into a ball.

“I’m sorry.” I said sliding my back down the wall opposite of him until I was on the floor as well. “I forgot that you are a part of me whether I like it or not. We were scared and unable to change our fate. I hate that we’re weak but all I can do to change that is get stronger.”

“Well, you can be strong without me.”

“No, we cannot be strong unless we are united. Tim knew this. He wasn’t talking about me destroying myself because of time travel but because my emotions were so unstable. You need to be a part of me. We can’t stay separated forever.”

“We can and will. Now, stop bothering me.”

“You’re a dick.”

“Well so are you.”

“Touche.”

“Are you going to try to take the key from me again?”

“Yes, we need to get out of here.”

‘Well, that’s too bad.”

“Let me guess. I’m going to have to fight you for it.”

“No, you’ll have to kill me for it.” He said taking the key from his shirt and swallowing it whole.

“Oh… fuck.”