Patreon May Exclusive - "Conditioned" - Part 4 (Patreon)

There’s plenty to worry about.

It doesn’t take long for Steve to get dressed. He’s not distracted by thoughts of dinosaurs, he’s not wrong-footed by second grade spelling words.

The crackle is back. Moments after returning to his bedroom, Steve picks up on the pillow’s crackle. He holds it to his ear, like a kid listening for the ocean through a sea shell.

But he’s not a kid, not really. He’s eighteen years old and under some kind of spell.

The crackle prompts the return of Steve’s erection. He removes the pajamas and looks down at his penis, almost afraid to touch it. And he thinks; it’s just trying to play catch up, it’s just remembering what it’s for.

Steve pulls underwear over his fading erection, and then adds jeans and a plain red T-shirt. They look ordinary, and yet they’re not clothes from before. His mother has given him a new wardrobe to go with his new mind.

He turns his attention to the pillow, and its crackling disc. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. What’s up with that?

Proximity, decides Steve, proximity to something. The connection was good (bad for Steve) when he was in the living room, but it’s weak in the bedroom. A lose connection, a faulty Bluetooth.

“Stevie, I’ll be through in five minutes,” Mom calls from the living room.

Steve calls back, “Okay, Mom.” Even though his mouth feels dry, even though he’s sure that his future is on the line, right here and now.

Five minutes, give or take. He fingerprints his way back onto the laptop, and then pauses, wondering what to search for.

Himself.

And he endures a tortuous moment when he can’t remember his last name, before it comes, popping from his lips like a cork from a bottle.

The search engine brings up real life. No social media – his presence on Facebook, Instagram and the rest has disappeared. But she couldn’t delete his high school commencement from the Internet.

There he is, from just a month ago, his face along with the rest of his graduating class.

He scrolls through the story and then back up to the photo. Where are his friends? What do they think? That he and Brooke just disappeared?

His heart patters in his chest, leaving him with a feeling, a near-certainty, that he’s lighter than air, that he might just invisible.

Thank God for the graduation story. Something real for him to hold onto.

She wasn’t able to wipe all of him away.

Oh, Mom.

Steve puts Brooke’s name in the browser. More evidence, this time about her success at the regional gymnastics finals. Steve shakes his head; his sister had placed the top ten, and he doesn’t need the story to tell him that; they were all there, cheering her on. And Brooke had a chance to try out for the Olympic team at nationals.

He thinks about his sister in the living room, reduced to struggling with a 20-piece puzzle.

Oh, Mom. What have you done?

There’s an abrupt sound of footsteps in the hallway and Steve’s bladder threatens to give way. Wouldn’t that be perfect, to confront his mother just as a dark shadow spread across the crotch of his pants?

“There in a tick,” Mom says, and then she’s closing the bathroom door.

And the moment saves Steve from being reckless. There will be no confrontation. There will be a plan. Because Mom doesn’t need to know about the crackling pillow. She doesn’t need to know that Steve has his memories back. Not yet.

He closes the browser and is standing by the bathroom door when Mom opens it. Because he’d like to run those spelling words in the living room, if that’s okay with her.

And so that’s just what they do, and Steve pays attention this time to how his mind fogs, regresses when he’s back with the music, until he forgets, swept up once more in his seven-year-old moments of the spelling words, acing the test, soaking up his mother’s praise.

For the rest of the morning, Steve continues to study in the living room - some of that dreaded long division, and then social studies with a dip into the history of Memorial Day – and then it’s time for lunch, back to the kitchen for a cheese quesadilla, a bowl of blueberries, and some Trail Mix. He laughs at his sister – silly, messy Brooke, who is better off when it’s finger food instead of using silverware – and he doesn’t complain when Mom says it’s quiet time, meaning a nap for Brooke in her room and a lie-down for Steve in his.

“Just close your eyes and listen to the music,” says Mom. “You don’t have to fall asleep, but no screen time.” She gives him a hug and Steve goes to his room, leaving the laptop on the coffee table.

When Steve lies down on his bed, it’s mere seconds before the crackles bring his eighteen-year-old mind back. He exhales with relief – Mom could have come with him to the bedroom and discovered the broken speaker for herself, but she didn’t – and then Steve is surprised to find that a part of him is sad to have lost the sweet, silly feelings from before.

It’s not that being Mommy’s good boy feels bad, after all. Quite the opposite.

But it is a lie. It is a warped fantasy, being played out without his consent. And without Brooke’s.

Steve checks at his bedroom door, eying the empty hallway, before creeping to his sister’s bedroom, holding his pillow at his side. The crackling continues, and he grateful for the nightlight so he doesn’t stumble, doesn’t knock his shins again the bed. He gently pulls her pillow away - noting the sweet melody that tells him kindly and insistently that he should lie down right now and listen – and tosses it across the room.

It shouldn’t take long. He puts his broken pillow beside Brooke’s head, watching her stir. It shouldn’t take long, but as his sister’s eyes flutter open, Steve understands that he really has no idea how long it should take for her mind to return. Perhaps his pillow had crackled for hours overnight before he started to remember his past. Before he came back to reality.

The other possibility, as Brooke’s eyes open properly, and her mouth opens in surprise at finding her brother beside her in bed, is that Brooke doesn’t come back at all.

Steve holds an urgent finger to his lips. Don’t yell.

She will scream. She will laugh. She will say something loud, because as Mom points out, little Brooke hasn’t quite mastered her inside voice. And then their mother will hear, she will come running, and all will be discovered. And Steve is far from ready for Mom to know what he knows.

Brooke frowns at her brother. She looks annoyed. But is it at the interruption of her nap, or is it something bigger?

“Are you okay?” he whispers.

“What…” She rubs at her eyes. “What’s that weird noise?” She looks down at her rainbow pajamas. “And what the hell am I wearing?”

Despite everything, Steve grins. There’s no stumble in Brooke’s voice, no lisp.

“It’s Mom,” he whispers. He shakes his head. “She’s kinda gone off the rails.”

To be continued...