Molly stayed in her room for the rest of the day and I hoped that I hadn't offended her. I had planned on apologizing, but my mind was so worried about the fifth voice that I lost track of time. It was midnight before I realized that she must've gone to sleep. The over-activeness of my brain wouldn't cease even after turning off the generator for the night. I was in my room, pacing by my bed as the voices went about their constant chatter. Their conversations acted as annoying background music as I thought about what had happened that day. I couldn't get the kiss I shared with Molly only hours before out of my thoughts. The feel of her skin and lips, the way she tasted, the way she smelled, every little sound and shiver she made in response to the things I did to her. It was driving me crazy.
There was no way I was going to let myself sleep with the state I was in. Horniness had erupted inside me like a volcano, and if I forced myself to close my eyes, there would be no telling what I would wake up to. I thought back to the night the fifth voice first appeared, and the pain I was in when I woke up. If I fell asleep, that might happen again. I would see those shadow creatures again. I might hurt Molly, or go out and kill zombies until I am exhausted beyond compare. All I had to do was stay up until it went away. Simple. For the next hour, I forced myself to think about the worst turn-offs possible, but I always found myself thinking about kissing Molly after a few seconds like I wasn't even trying.
After countless failures, I resorted to waiting it out. I slumped against the wall on the floor and pushed my uncomfortable erection down against my thigh underneath my loose jeans. I had taken off my shirt back when I thought I was going to sleep tonight but gave up halfway through undressing once I realized that the horniness I was feeling was worse than normal. After so long of being hard, each throb was like a sharp pinch, and yet it still wouldn't go down. My eyes were tired as I sat in the dark, but my mind stayed laser-focused on the memory of kissing Molly. Suddenly, I wasn't sitting in darkness anymore. That strange and faint blue light appeared, seemingly coming from nowhere.
But I knew where it was coming from. My eyes were glowing. I began to sweat, not knowing whether it was a sign of the painful restraint I was about to feel or only the worry of it. I stood up and walked out of my room to the bathroom to prove my suspicions. I looked in the mirror above the sink to see that I was right. My eyes were piercing me through the reflection, their color an agonizingly unnatural cyan. I hesitantly opened my mouth to see that my teeth were sharper than they were before as well. I closed my mouth immediately after confirming that the hell I had been trying to avoid was about to start and my breath became heavy. Was I going to go through another mutation? Was I going to go running off into the night again, massacring zombies left and right?
I then became aware of how silent my mind had become. The constant chattering of the voices I had come to love was no longer there and was instead replaced with faint whispers. Preventing myself from falling asleep had stopped nothing. But at least I didn't have to wake up to searing pain out of nowhere and would be conscious when it happened. I just stood there in front of the mirror, waiting for that awful voice to make itself known. 'You've been waiting for me, I see.' I glared at myself in the mirror as if it was my reflection that was speaking to me. "Let me guess. You want me to kill." The voice responded in a relaxed tone. 'That sounds absolutely splendid. If you would prefer that to the alternative.'
I raised an eyebrow, slightly. "What do you mean, alternative?" The voice laughed. 'Do you even know why I'm here? You seem to think I'm the one leading you back to insanity, but in reality, I'm the one preventing it.' I became interested in what he had to say but I remained skeptical. "Oh, really? How, exactly, are you preventing it?" The voice seemed amused by my questions and said, 'By providing you with release, Kane. If you haven't noticed, if I wasn't here, you wouldn't ever again let yourself feel release.' He continued, taking my silence as a request for more information. 'Ever since you got out of prison, you've been a wreck of pent-up anger and stress. And yet, you've done nothing to alleviate it. Every day you tell yourself not to kill as many zombies as you want to, to avoid getting consumed in it, or whatever excuse. Every time you feel lust, you shove it deep inside or rub a quick one out, never once taking your time or letting yourself enjoy it.'
It was odd for me to come to grasp that this thing was a part of me and knew me better than I knew myself. He continued to spill more truth like a fountain while I stood still. 'Every damn day, you do something that enrages me further. You didn't kill James when every fiber of your being wanted to. You haven't so much as kissed Molly until today. You overthink and worry about things that you can easily fix. Erin tells you everything you want to do in your subconscious, yet you barely listen to him. Even now, you're choosing to lose sleep. You see, I'm not just here to tell you to kill. I'm here to force you to have some kind of release. Killing is the simplest and the best way to drive you into exhaustion. But, if you would prefer an alternative this time, I'm feeling lenient today.'
I shook my head a little. "You think you're preventing my insanity? Every time I force myself not to do something, it is because doing it would make me insane." The fifth voice didn't react to my accusation as if he expected it. 'What do you suppose, pray tell, would happen if I wasn't here to force you to feel relief?' I hesitated but he answered his own question before I could. 'You would go crazy, and you would die. The antidote wants to mutate, and it can only do that properly if you provide a healthy environment in your blood. How can your blood be a good environment if its pressure is constantly spiking wildly from the restraint you put on yourself? The antidote is going to mutate whether you want it to or not, and if you continue to refuse my help, then the next mutation could inevitably kill you.'
I processed this information for a moment. "You were in my head before I received the antidote. If your intentions for me now are to make me feel relief, then what were they back then?" The voice sighed as it reached back into his memories from years ago. 'The same as it is now. Back then, your schizophrenia was what was stressing you out. Hallucinations were taunting you. I had to tell you to kill them, otherwise you would've died of fear. All I've ever been doing is helping you.'