saw caused my gorge to rise.
The left side of his head was caved in, completely pulverized, and his eye was dripping down the side of his face like an exploded robin's egg. Gray brain matter dripped from the ruptured hole at the top of his head and shards of skull jutted awkwardly from the ruined flesh, shockingly white even in the red light of the emergency beacon.
"Couldn't trust me with the weapon, could you?" Hobbes said in his monotone voice again. "...or with all those medkits. What if you needed more and I wasn't willing to share them? Well, they're yours now. Not that they'll do you any good. They’re keyed to my biorhythm, so you can't even unlock them, much less use them. But I guess that doesn't matter. After the things you’ve done in the past, killing me is hardly another notch on your belt."
I screwed my eyes closed, unwilling to look at the ruin standing before me. "You're not fucking real. This is the DSD playing with my head. You are not real. You are not real. YOU ARE NOT REAL!" I shouted it the last time, as loud as my lungs would allow. The sound echoed in the small cabin, hurting my ears and making my eyes water. I wiped away the tears with the back of my arm and then opened my eyes.
Hobbes, or the ghost of Hobbes, or the illusion of Hobbes that I was hallucinating, was gone. I was alone again. I slumped to the ground and began to cry. The tears were a mixture of frustration, confusion and despair. My life had been so simple before. I couldn't understand how it had all spun out of control so completely.
"Do you feel alone and afraid, James?" Odyssey spoke quietly, almost as though she were a concerned lover whispering in my ear.
"Odyssey?" It was her voice, but it obviously wasn't something she should ever say.
"Do. You. Feel. Alone. And. Afraid?" She was louder this time and spoke each word slowly and pointedly, as if she were an adult addressing a small child.
"I'm confused." I said, almost certain I was now talking to myself.
"Confused, James? Were you confused when you killed my son and daughter? Were you confused when you killed me? James, did my son's screams for mercy confuse you?" Odyssey’s voice broke into a menacing laugh that echoed around inside of my head as though it were bouncing in the space between my brain and skull.
"I haven't killed anyone!" I protested. "You're a fucking ship, a huge piece of flying metal! I can't kill you, and you don't have kids! Get the fuck out of my head!"
"Now you're just being cruel." Her voice was quiet again. "You don't get to put us away. You don't get to leave us behind, James. Not ever. We're going to be with you forever. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?"
"Who are you?!" I jumped to my feet and pounded on the hatch to my room, slamming the steel bar I somehow had managed to still hold against the impermeable metal bulkhead. "Who the hell are you?!" I waited, but there was no answer.
"Odyssey?"
The hatch slid open in front of me, opening into a suspiciously normal looking corridor, but it was certainly not the familiar hallway that should have been connected to my quarters. My room normally opened out into a walkway that extended both left and right and was lined with doors into other cabins. Instead, this corridor preceded straight outward, as though my bunk were the only room at the end of the hall.
Perhaps I should have stayed in that dark room with the blinking red light, but I was compelled to step out into the relatively bright light of the hall beyond. My door slid quietly shut