"Good morning, May," Liam's voice greets me like it has every morning for the past month.

Something I've found myself looking forward to now.

"Good morning, Liam," I reply with a smirk, dragging myself to the kitchen and starting the coffee pot.

I've accepted the voice as a part of my day and my life now. It's odd how comforting it is. I feel less... alone.

I've even started thinking about it as a 'he,' which is probably a dangerous way to regard one's delusion. Seeing it as separate, as its own self.

But... he hasn't tried to convince me to go on a murdering spree, so it can't be all bad... can it?

"Bad dreams?" he asked quietly, his voice a bit stronger these days than the weak whisper it once was.

Humming, I nod and sit down with my fresh brew. The smell of coffee relaxes me, even if this isn't my favorite brand.

But it was Omi's favorite... so I keep buying it.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"You know I don't," I chuckle, looking out toward my back garden that's only barely visible as the sky begins to lighten.

"I know... but I hope, someday, you will."

"Why?" I ask him, unable to help myself.

"Because you need to talk about it with someone that won't cry," he says calmly.

Right... the therapist.

"Pretty sure I scarred that poor lady for life," I murmur, my eyes losing focus as I remember the day I decided to tell her, "I put it off, obviously. I knew it was horrible for anyone to hear. She insisted it was the source of my anxiety, and I needed to let her help. Instead I think my anxiety spread to her."

"Her reaction aside, she was probably right," he said softly, "it is likely the reason you hide from the world the way you do."

"Oh, I know," I laugh lightly, "but then... if you're saying it, I suppose that's obvious. Echo chamber and all that."

He chuckles then, and I can almost picture him shaking his head.

"You know," I say, my laughs continuing, "you need a backstory. Proper delusions have backstories, don't they?"

"Oh?" he asked, curiosity in his voice, "is that how it works?"

"Well isn't it?" I chuckle, "hmm, I wonder how creative my mind is. Let's play a game, I'll as you questions this time. You've spent weeks asking me things. It seems only fair."

"Well alright," he chuckles, "what would you like to know."

"Hmmmmm," I muse, "okay, let's start easy. What's your favorite color?"

"Blue," he responds easily, so casual it's almost easy to believe he's really answering.

"Okay, that was too easy," I laugh, "and simple. My mind can certainly be more creative than that."

"Electric blue," he laughs back, "how's that?"

"Hmm, better," I snicker, "okay... how old are you?"

"Oh, now that's more complicated," he says, and I find myself raising an eyebrow - though I continue to look out at the garden since my delusion doesn't have a form to aim the look at.

"Oohhh, this should be good," I murmur, "come on brain, make it good."

"Well, when I died, I was 32," he begins slowly, "but I suppose that was a quite some time ago. What year is it again?"

I laugh out loud then, throwing my head back.

"HA! Okay, well I wasn't expecting that," I chuckle, "what year did you die, then, Casper?"

It's his turn to laugh, "young enough to know the reference, if that helps. I died in 1996."

"Quite radical for a man born in... what's the math... 1970?"

"Your math needs work," he chuckles, "I was born in 1969."

"Alright, well I was close. I'm in IT, I have calculators for math," I scoff, shaking my head and sipping my coffee leisurely.

"And what makes you think I'm radical?" he asks, amusement still clear in his voice.

"Well, first of all, you're me. So, there's that. Also, we've been chatting for... what, a month now? I know well enough you're not some old-timey thinker or weird conservative with hangups," I muse, smiling despite myself.

It really is so easy to think of him as his own person.

"Well, I may have been born in the 60's and died in the 90's, but I've been around since then. Watching and observing. When you are an outsider watching without anything to gain and with nothing to lose... it changes how you see things. I've had time to reflect in ways others haven't," his voice suddenly sounds sad, and I find myself frowning slightly.

"Died in the 90s," I murmur, "a lot has happened since then. Columbine would have been the first big thing to shake the country, I think, after 1996?"

"That was certainly one of the big ones," he agrees solemnly, "I remember thinking such a horrific thing was a stain in our history... something that the country would surely rally to ensure never happened again. I was... mistaken."

I could only nod, surprised by the way the conversation has gone.

"Okay, too serious. Next question. What did you do for work while you were alive, Liam?" I ask, trying to pivot things.

"I was an engineer," he says, his voice lightening slightly, "mechanical. I used to say I got paid to break shit."

I almost spit out my coffee, choking it down before I spewed it all over the floor.

"Liam!" I gasped, a smile breaking across my face, "you cussed! That's the first time you've cussed!"

"Oh, it most certainly is not," he laughed, "I simply haven't had the need to cuss in your presence yet."

I smiled despite myself, shaking my head a bit.

"Well aren't you quite the gentleman," I tease, "they still had chivalry back then, I suppose."

"I feel like you're calling me old," he muttered, feigning offense.

"Well, you're only slightly older than my..." I stopped, my smile falling away and my breath catching slightly.

I don't want to think about her.

"May," he says softly, a gentle touch caressing my cheek.

I lean into it slightly, grounding myself in the feeling. It lingers longer than usual... I can almost believe it's real.

"Did you like your work?" I ask softly, trying to move us along, standing and taking my now empty mug to the pot for a refill.

"Very much," he says softly, "I worked in a manufacturing plant not far from here. I stress tested the steel parts they produced for different kinds of cars, appliances, machinery - that sort of thing."

I smile, amused at my brain's creativity after all. If I think about it hard enough, I suppose I must have known that's the kind of thing a mechanical engineer would do... though I can't actually recall learning that.

"I imagine my life must seem quite boring compared to what you did," I muse, making my way to my bedroom to get ready for my morning workout.

"Anything that involves talking to people all day sounds exhausting," he says grimly, "and I've heard those calls you take. I don't know how you do it. I wouldn't call it boring... but I would call it miserable."

I laugh, changing into my leggings and tank top, noticing his voice sounds like it's just on the other side of my door.

Apparently my mind doesn't like the idea of a man ghost watching me change. I noticed he always sounded further away when we chatted if I was changing or in the shower.

"It's not miserable, exactly," I say, still chuckling, "but it isn't quite what I imagined when I got my degree. Though, getting to work from home makes it worth the stress."

"That is quite a fancy deal," he agrees, "though... lonely."

"Well, I'm pretty sure that's why my mind thought you up," I snicker, moving out the front door and to the detached garage nearby, "though, I wasn't lonely when I had Omi. She was all I really needed."

"You also have Austin," he pipes up, almost like he's probing slightly.

"It's true," I agree, "though that's a bit less... voluntary? I am glad for him, though."

"Extroverts adopt introverts, it's always been a thing," he chuckles.

"What are we, stray cats?" I laugh, walking inside and moving toward the treadmill for my warmup jog.

"I mean... kind of," he murmured, and if he'd had a shoulder I'd have smacked it.

"Liam!" I gasp, laughing as I find my pace.

"What?" he said, "you can't actually disagree. The only thing you don't do is hiss at strangers when they walk by."

I cackled, staggering slightly and having to grab the side rail.

"Don't make me laugh too hard," I rasp, "you'll make me lose my balance, and how will I explain that to the ER when I break my ankle?"

"Oh, I'm sure we could come up with something," he snickers.

"Yeah, schizophrenia," I grumble.

I didn't know much about the condition before, but after having looked into my delusions when they persisted it seemed the most likely diagnosis at this point.

"You do not have schizophrenia," he laughed.

"Okay, well you're supposed to say that. I'm right in the age bracket for average diagnosis," I mutter, thinking not for the first time I should consider getting checked out for the condition.

"That search engine technology really has its pros and cons," he sighed.

"Ooooh, that's right," I muse, "Google came along after you. What came before that? Ask Jeeves, I think? I have no idea when that one came out..."

"Still after my death, yes," he grumbles, "the internet was quite new at the time, at least for us regular folks."

"Sounds awful," I breathe, starting to get slightly winded, "I'm older than both, technically. But by the time I was in high school, we had a computer lab. I didn't get a personal computer until college, though."

"If we don't count the years after my death, we're about the same age," he says thoughtfully.

"Well, that makes sense... again... with the whole delusion thing," I chuckle, "though you being two years younger than me feels... rude, somehow. Maybe I liked the age 32 best, subconsciously or something."

We banter like that for the entire workout. My responses getting shorter as my heart rate goes up, but Liam filled the silence with stories about himself and the life he had before he died. I'm drying my face with a towel when I look up in shock.

"Wait, you died alone?" I ask, "well I hate that my brain can't have come up with some fancy family for you. Maybe I can make one up."

"Don't think that's how it works," he chuckles, a bit of sadness in his tone, "I had love, once. We were married for almost a decade... but she... well, I guess I wasn't quite enough for her. We divorced and she remarried less than a year later to the man she thought was a better match."

"No kids?" I ask softly, feeling the sadness on my face.

"I thought we were trying and she was just struggling," his voice sounds like his mind is far away, "but she admitted after the divorce she was preventing it. She gave a series of reasons but... ultimately, she didn't want to be tied to me if she decided to leave. Which she did. So... I guess it was for the best."

"I'm sorry, Liam," I whisper, brow furrowing at my brain's heartlessness.

Liam deserved a better backstory than that... why couldn't my brain have made him a happily married man with a truckload of kids? He deserved that.

... am I seriously mad at my own imagination on behalf of a delusion right now?

"What about your parents? Cousins? Family?" I ask suddenly, grabbing my water bottle and heading back toward the house.

"Well... my parents gave me up when I was born. I was raised in a series of foster homes, never adopted. So I didn't have a family."

"Oh..." I breathe, angry at my brain once again... then a bit of self-reflection and I know why he has no parents, "I suppose my dumb brain figured it'd be better to have no parents than... what I have. Sorry for the lack of creativity there, too."

There's a pause then, Liam going silent as I move inside and head toward the shower. My mind spirals on Liam's backstory, so different than something I'd have consciously come up with. Perhaps that's why schizophrenic delusions are so convincing to the patient... the mind really can make them seem like full, real people.

Because... damn me if he doesn't feel more real all of a sudden.

Getting dressed, my mind is still cluttered with thoughts of Liam, but his voice pulls me away from them as I walk back out to the kitchen to make breakfast.

"May," he says gently, "why is being an orphan better?"

I freeze mid-step, my breath hitching slightly. I feel my shoulders slump as I keep walking into the kitchen.

"You're me. You already know," I whisper, pulling a skillet out for the eggs and toast I have almost every morning.

"Perhaps you should talk about it out loud," he says gently, "even if it's just to your delusions."

I go quiet for a moment, moving through the motions of breaking and scrambling the eggs. I put the toast in the toaster and throw my head back as I wait... nothing but time and silence as my delusion waits for me to talk about it out loud.

It's not the first time he's tried to get me to talk about it. Over the last month he's asked several times, but never pushed.

Patient little delusion...

"I was four, as you know," I said quietly, "when I was touched for the first time. Mother still cared then. She filed reports. Took me to a shrink. Did all the right things."

I studied the eggs in the pan as they cooked, yet didn't see them as my mind spiraled through the memories.

"It wasn't until he left a year later and she brought someone new home... That things... Changed."

I leaned my head back again, staring at the ceiling above me. I felt my mind going blank and my emotions going numb as I spoke it out loud. The first time I've spoken about it out loud since the shrink I made cry all those years ago.

The truth of why Omi is my light... Was... Was my light.

"I thought she was just really dumb," I chuckle humorlessly, "but she was my mother. So, I told her, just like I had when I was four, thinking she was simply too dumb to realize what was happening. Perhaps... Perhaps I should have noticed that she looked at me funny. Maybe I should have noticed she had changed. Looking back now, I remember things that I should have questioned then. Or... Well perhaps I've created those memories over time. Memory is such a funny thing that way... I was five? Ish? Who knows what I really saw in her face all those years ago... "

I felt myself ramble a bit, furrowing my brow at the memory of her lips pressing together and her eyes getting angry when I came to her for help.

"She called me a liar. Said I just wanted attention because I got it before," I whispered, returning my eyes to the pan and ensuring the eggs didn't burn, "Each new man, and she had so many of them, she said the same thing. So, eventually... I stopped telling her. I stopped screaming for her when they came to my room at night. I stopped crying. What good did it do anyway?"

I sighed, looking behind me toward my backyard. My little slice of peace in a world of horrors.

"Omi stopped by one night... Didn't call, and she never knocked. My room was dark, and when she opened the door to investigate the sounds she heard... The light from the hallway poured around her like a halo. She was my light in the darkness. My savior. My everything. She saved me that night."

My Omi. God I miss her.

"It would be years later when a therapist would help me realize my mother wasn't dumb. No... She knew. The men weren't her partners, they were her customers. And me? I was the product," I was silent for a heartbeat before adding, "She died a couple years ago. Overdose. I didn't mourn... perhaps that makes me a bad person."

I plate the eggs, grabbing the toast and butter before sitting at the counter.

I sat there in the silence that swallowed the room, eating slowly and trying to focus on Omi. My memories of her are the best balm for the ache... still my light in the darkness, even now.

I felt the touch then, arms wrapping around me from behind as if to shield me from my own memories. He didn't speak, but he held me as I ate my breakfast... and I found comfort in the feeling. Comfort in his presence.

"I hope you stay, Liam," I whisper, my meal long finished yet sitting in the same position out of fear the feel of him will disappear, "even if you are just in my mind... I hope... I hope you stay."

"I'm not going anywhere, May," he said gently, "I'll be here as long as you want me to be."

I felt a warmth press to my cheek then... and... well if I didn't know any better, I'd have sworn it felt like a kiss.

And I smiled, perhaps a bit shyly, because... I kind of liked it.

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