When I was young, I was always fascinated by the mind. I took a lot of my interest and put it into watching psychological thrillers and listened to a lot of different bands that created these epic albums of psychedelic music that always made you think about its true meanings. At some point, I was given the opportunity to begin studying for a career in the psychology field, which allowed me to learn even more about the ways the mind works.
About three years into my studies, my professor, Dr. Cohen, assigned me a project where I was to go into the local hospital and interview various patients about their mental state following their sicknesses or procedures. While some may view that as an invasion of privacy, I always took it more or less as an opportunity to learn about the mind in its most delicate state: while the body heals itself from traumatic experiences.
Upon arrival at the hospital, I was offered three different patients by the Hospital’s Director. The first two were fairly generic. Mr. Shinoda was an old veteran who was in the hospital to have his pacemaker checked. He told a couple of interesting stories of his time fixing aircraft after they were brought back from the war. While I didn’t show it to pay the man respect, I secretly felt bored about the interview. I’d studied the effects of PTSD on other individuals for a while, so talking to him was nothing new or intriguing to me.
The second interview was a bit more engaging. Mrs. Bennington had arrived with a moderately severe case of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) due to having been suffering from repeated concussions due to her boyfriend. Her story was a very interesting one that had slightly unnerved me, having recently gotten out of a bad relationship myself. I had questioned about how she wasn’t saved from his wrath earlier, but according to a passing nurse, she was so brain damaged that she was incapable of seeking assistance. She was 32 and had developed dementia due to it. While I did feel bad for her, a part of me was thankful for the chance to study how dementia and repeated concussions had affected someone not too much older than I was.
However, it was the third interviewee that made my time there memorable.
I walked into their room and was greeted with an individual who was wrapped up like a mummy, bandages obscuring their features to the point that I was unable to tell if they were male, female, or somewhere in between. They were staring directly at me, with eyes that conveyed a mix of fear, confusion, and interest.
“Hello,” I said. “My name is William Bourdon. I’m a psychology student up at the university. Do you mind if I sit down to talk to you for a bit?”
They didn’t answer verbally. Instead, moving nearly imperceptibly, I watched them nod their head. As I strode across the room to sit in the chair, I could see out of the corner of my eye that they had turned their head to watch me, their eyes locked onto my form as if it was the most interesting thing in the world.
I pulled the chair up next to their bed and sat down. Giving them a once over, I took a deep breath to begin talking when they spoke up.
“Who are you?” they asked. Their voice was raspy, a loud whisper.
“I’m William Bourdon. A psychology student.” I replied.
“William…can I call you Bill?” they asked, their eyes now missing both the fear and confusion, replaced by nothing but intrigue.
“Yes, I don’t mind,” I said. In truth, I’ve never enjoyed being called Bill or Will or any of the short pseudonyms my name draws. However, looking at this mangled body of theirs, I decided that they had earned that right.
“May I ask you a few questions? About your condition and your experience.” I asked.
The individual’s eyes unfocused for a moment, a gesture I took to mean they were debating internally about whether they were okay with my questions or not.
After a moment, they replied. “Yes, of course. I imagine you’re very curious to what caused this predicament, aren’t you?”
I smiled kindly, trying to make sure they knew I wasn’t a threat or anyone to fear. “I must say, it must have been one hell of an experience.”
They chuckled, or at the very least I think it was a chuckle. Their laugh sounded like sandpaper being rubbed against Velcro. “Well, ‘Hell’ is as close a term I can think of to describe what happened. Where do I begin?”
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” I proposed.
“Yes, very well. It was about five months ago when I awoke to find smoke filling my apartment. I had lived alone for years, so when I woke up coughing, I was surprised to be sure. After I gathered my composure, I started going down a list in my head, starting with what was the most important thing I needed to do, which was obviously getting the hell out of that burning apartment.”
I sat and listened to their story intently. They seemed like an avid storyteller, having chosen to describe every detail they could remember. I surmised that they likely assumed I was interviewing them to help the police figure out their situation.
“I started to gather up what I could, starting with my phone to call the emergency services. Somehow, when I had attempted to call, the line was busy, making it impossible to call for help. To me, it either meant that the fire in my apartment was so bad that the lines were filled with concerned callers or that something must have been seriously wrong elsewhere. However, I couldn’t take the time to think about it, y’know with the fire and all.
“At that point, I grabbed a blanket and ran into the bathroom, quickly using the shower to soak the blanket all the way through and used it to drape over my body for protection. I had left the water running, some corner of my mind telling me that it’d be of help if the fire spread in there. Exiting the bathroom, I came face-to-face with the burning flames licking at the underside of the bedroom door. I went to the window and began attempting to get onto the fire escape. I could hear smoke alarms and other people screaming for help down below. My senses were drowned in the sounds of people burning while I attempted to flee with my life.
“Climbing onto the fire escape, something hit me in the back of the head and knocked me out.”
“Do you know what hit you?” I questioned.
“I did learn it eventually. Truthfully, I’m more glad I made it to the fire escape before anything else happened. But, again, least of my worries. When I woke up, I found myself in a room. It was all white, and only had a bed in it. The door had a bolted lock. Coughing up what soot remained in my lungs, I began to attempt to leave the room, but I found my body so wracked with pain that I blacked out again.
“I came to not too long afterwards and found a small note on the bed next to my head. It took every ounce of my strength to move my arm to pick it up.”
“What did it say?” I was intrigued. My own head was swimming with theories, ranging from the patient being found by another renter who had saved their life to everything the patient was saying being entirely made up due to the delirium pain relieving drugs tend to cause.
“It said ‘Stay calm, just rest, and don’t leave the room.’” they replied.
They took a moment to look into absent space, another gesture I took as them attempting to get their facts straight.
“Not a moment later, a man entered the room. He was handsome, tall, and had dark hair. He was wearing these kind of welding glasses. He also had the scars of burn marks on his hands and arms, all wrapped up with bandages that seemed to be yellowing from extended use.
“When he entered the room, he quietly walked over and sat next to me on the bed. He took a moment and then began to speak in a soft but entrancing voice. ‘Hello, Alexandra. I’m Tracey. How are you feeling?’ When I went to reply, even more pain shot down my throat, preventing me from speaking. He nodded and added, ‘Don’t worry. You were in a bad fire. I was the one who rescued you after your fall. I found you in the alleyway outside and pulled you to safety. You’re in my home, recuperating from your injuries.’ A lot of what he said didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I recognized that I was safe from harm.”
Alexandra, they had said their name was. I was talking to a female. I jotted down a note on my journal to remind myself next time to ask future interviewees’ names before they start anything else.
“Go ahead, you can continue,” I told them.
Their eyes flicked around the room, momentarily startled, by what I couldn’t imagine. When they refocused on me, they seemed to calm down.
“Where was I? Oh, yeah, Tracey. Tracey would periodically come into my room to help me drink some water, clean up a wound or two on my body, and talk to me to help keep my sanity. Being cooped up in that room started to make me feel agitated, so one day I asked him if I could leave the room. He had responded with a quick and loud ‘No!’, almost as if it was more of a anger-fueled command rather than a normal response. He made the excuse that I was still too weak to attempt to move.”
“Why did Tracey keep you locked in a room when you needed medical assistance?” I asked.
“Tracey believed that he was enough to keep me from dying. There were times where when we talked, he would go on rants about how our country’s medical system was a sham, that they couldn’t help me like he could. The way he reacted seemed almost obsessive, like he couldn’t bear to live without me.”
I must have looked confused, because Alexandra said, “Tracey had also told me he had spent countless hours trying to find ways to help me. I started to feel guilty about wanting to leave, so I stopped asking the question.
“It was a few days later when Tracey started becoming increasingly agitated. At that point, I was able to stand more or less on my own and use the conjoined bathroom. It was at that point that I first saw exactly how bad the fire had hurt me. My face was wrapped up in gauze and I felt entirely unrecognizable. My arms and hands were likewise wrapped. Tracey came in not long after. When he saw I had been staring at myself in the mirror, he got mad and told me to go back to bed, reminding me that I shouldn’t have been up without him as it could have done some serious damage to my body by doing so. Returning to bed, he sat next to me and looked at me. I couldn’t see behind his goggles to look in his eyes, but I could feel this overwhelming feeling of rage and control as he said, ‘If you do that again, and you hurt yourself, you have no one left to blame except you. Do you understand?’ I had nodded. ‘Good,’ he replied, before standing up and leaving, slamming the door behind him.
“I had started to wonder if I had really been saved by Tracey, having seen how possessive he had become of my well being and how I expressed my free will by just attempting to use the bathroom by myself. I think at that point I decided I wanted to escape. So, while he was gone, I began to formulate a plan.
“At what I could only assume was noon (I didn’t have a clock so I could only go off of the sun’s position in the window), Tracey returned with lunch. He sat it down on a table next to my bed and apologized for being so angry earlier. He explained he was just worried about me. I said nothing and listened. When he noticed I wasn’t talking, he turned to me and began to offer me food and drink. When I drank the juice he gave me, I started realizing it tasted just slightly off, so I decided to forgo drinking it. At that point, I had regained most of my ability to talk. So, I asked…‘Why did you save me?’
“‘Because I can’t live without you, Alexandra.’ he replied. He turned around at that point. When he said the words, I knew at that point that if I didn’t attempt to escape the room, he’d keep me there forever. So, I stood up and attempted to attack him.”
Alexandra went quiet there. I waited a few seconds before attempting to pry more information out of her.
“I went to knock him out, something hit me in the head, and I woke up here. That’s all I remember.”
Before I could try to go deeper, a nurse stepped into the room and requested I leave the room so she can do some of her work. I thanked Alexandra for her time and stepped out of the room.
Sitting down outside as I tried to collect my thoughts, I watched as two police officers went into the room. An alarm had gone off. Confused, I asked a passing nurse what was going on. She ignored me and rushed to help.
A few moments later, a police detective came up to me and asked to talk to me in private. We went into one of the unoccupied rooms and sat down. I asked him what was going on.
“The man you were speaking to earlier got aggressive and attempted to murder a nurse and escape the hospital,” he replied.
“Mr. Shinoda? I know he’s a veteran but I doubt he could have done anything that heinous,” I said.
“It wasn’t Mr. Shinoda. Who were you speaking to in Room 104?” he asked.
“A woman named Alexandra, sir,” I answered. I was so confused. The only man I’d talked to was Mr. Shinoda…right?
The Investigator sighed. “Kid, that wasn’t a woman. His name is Alexander Spence.”
The second I heard the name, I recognized it immediately. In the news a few days earlier, the news put out a bulletin alerting the public of an escaped serial arsonist named Alex Spence. He’d been caught attempting to burn down his parents’ home as a teen.
“There is no way I sat and talked to that Arsonist. Who I saw was a victim of the fire, not the culprit!”
The Investigator looked me over. “You’re the kid who was supposed to be interviewing patients to study their brains, right?”
I looked at him and nodded.
“Alright. Have you ever heard of Multiple Personality Disorder?” he asked.
“Its referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder now, sir. But yes, I know what it is.”
“Spence was sentenced to a rehabilitation clinic when we caught him all those years ago. According to the doctors, he has multiple alters. The ones we know are named Tracey and Alexandra. Sound familiar to you?”
I sat there in horror, starting to realize exactly what had gone on. I had sat for nearly an hour talking to a serial killer while one of his alters attempted to explain what happened.
“I thought so,” the Investigator said. “He got caught in the last fire and we were able to save him before he could commit suicide.”
Tracey literally couldn’t live without Alexandra. Tracey was the Arsonist. Every single time that Alexandra had lost focus on me she was likely being replaced by another alter.
The whole time, I was sitting talking to a serial killer, one who believed he, or rather, she, was completely innocent and was a victim.
A knock came on the door. The Investigator stood and opened it. Standing in the doorway was the unbandaged, severely burned man, a scalpel in his hand, smiling at him.
“Tracey wants to say hello.”