Weeks of boredom.

Weeks of kissing Doc's inflated behind and still I'm not allowed to punch him again. I've been a good girl. Don't I deserve a treat? The first attempt didn't even leave a bruise.

Alice is being eaten by school preparations. I mean, how are there that many decisions?

It's not as if it's a wedding.

I guess you can say I'm going through the motions. Can you blame me? Trapped inside a two-way mirror, watching the cogs of our brain backflip over algebra. No thank you.

Every so often, I find I'm waiting for his return. Mr. Dark. He hasn't appeared in ages and I'm bored. Maybe he's just like me – wrapped up in pointless musings of psychology. From time to time, I almost feel sorry for him. I wouldn't want to be trapped in Dr. Light's brain either.

Talk about torture.

Hell really does exist.

Just because Alice hasn't spoken to him doesn't mean I haven't been studying him. He isn't orientated by people like most Doctors. He's here for the science, the curiosity. To Mr. Dark (I can't decide if calling him Bohemian is worse), I am that curiosity. And he is mine.

Crossing my arms on the dining room chair, I blast him out of my head. I can't afford to waste valuable thoughts on him.

Besides, he tried to kill me.

I tried to kill him too.

Ah, stop it. This is just unhelpful now.

Although, he is the only decent company around here. Thanks to Alice renting us out to school, there are to be no more midnight jaunts for me. Did I mention how boring she is?

Yesterday made things even worse. Alice saw Dr. Light being delivered a new batch of pills from one of his shadier contacts. Those blue suppressants. I've been meaning to talk to him about it, to talk to him on Mr. Dark's behalf. Someone has to.

It might as well be me.

After all, I know what it feels like to be shut out of your own life.

'We're sharing,' Alice reminds me haughtily. As if I could forget. Sharing is one word for it. Purgatory is another.

Inside our head, I catch her smirking. It sets the room alight. When was the last time she smiled liked that? Freely, genuinely. Without a single fear of being judged.

We've already had our therapy session today, which was fun if listening to two idiots mutter manufactured words to each other can be called fun. Using what little control I have left, I manoeuvre our legs out of the chair. Rough, Fall air hits up from the open window. Life seeps into me, expanding my ribcage. Out again. Inhale. Savour. Exhale.

'We're going to have to come to some agreement,' says Alice as I pace along the floorboards, hopping to avoid the lines between the wooden panels.

Otherwise I'll fall, fall down through the ground.

'About this,' she continues. She doesn't seem to realise I'm not listening.

'It's unfair. You deserve an equal amount of time in control. It's your life too'. I stop. It takes me a good few minutes to digest her words.

Unfair. I have been equally unfair to her.

'Why do you care? You've never cared about...'. She refuses to let me finish.

'I have always cared about you. You have to know that by now'.

'Fine,' I snap. This conversation is already too many blocks down mushy lane for me. Even though all of this, I've done because I care about her.

She is my best self.

'But I want no part of this school business. You can sit on a bench in the corner eating lunch by yourself for all I care'. Which is a lot. Not that she needs to know that.

'Okay'. I swear she's laughing. Honestly, if we weren't the same person, I'd totally punch her.

It's that moment I figure it out. What she's doing. She's trying to stop me talking to Dr. Light.

So much for equal control. When will she understand that this body only needs one mind?

Stalking out of the dining room, the bodice of a vase soon greets me. I scowl harder. Everything in this house echoes the Foundation. It's a luxurious padded cell and I am their prisoner. That's my role anyway. For now.

Being a prisoner never really suited me.

Grey clouds chase me in reflections until I lasso them for my own. They are my weapons just as much as this house. These moronically expensive vases coupled with those manicured rugs are my armour.

Slamming open the kitchen door, Dr. Light is leaning on the counter, warily eyeing a cup of coffee. He is nettled by my stare. I know Doc'. I didn't expect to show up here either. The soft edges of his face tell me all I need to know.

"Alice, what are you doing here?" When I skip closer, the neutrality sinks into a glare.

"Oh, it's you".

"It's so nice to be missed". His frown doesn't move. Trying to elicit a smile from him is like trying to draw blood from a stone.

"What do you want?" He's debating whether or not to drink the coffee (which may or may not be drugged). His eyes are hummingbirds, zapping back and forth.

"He deserves a life," I start. Harvard blinks a few times until he realises what I'm talking about. Who I'm talking about.

"He doesn't deserve anything".

"Stop taking the pills. You're trapping him, your Mr. Dark".

"Trapping him is kind of the point. I'm not going to stop taking them and would you stop calling him that?" he growls. The counter rattles slightly.

"Not a chance," I grin. He shovels ten pounds of sugar into his cup, causes a large spillage.

"I'm not arguing with you about this," he says.

"Really, because that's not what it sounds like".

Watching him grapple with the kitchen roll isn't as satisfying as punching him the face. But it'll do.

He's my puppet now. He has to obey the same way we had to answer his invasive questions.

Mopping up the brown puddle, he holds my gaze.

"He is a monster," says Light. In my heart – if I have one – something strains. An unimaginable yearning like the pull of the moon.

"He is part of you," I insist. "That makes you a monster too".

Dr. Light's glare intensifies – if that's possible – burning a hole in his coffee cup. He studies me, picking amongst my mannerisms in a silence that is designed to make me feel uncomfortable. Too bad it isn't working. Much.

"You are nothing like Alice". I am her monster, that's what he means. She is a delicate flower, while I am the thorn. That's how it's always been.

"You don't deserve her," I shoot back, catching him off guard. Again, to re-iterate, I am not an idiot. Love is merely hormones and human chemistry – absolutely impossible to miss.

I haven't missed a thing.

"You've killed people. You are the disease in her brain. You are the worst part of her. Who are you to decide what she deserves?" The kitchen flanks my side, all twisted knives ready for use.

"Someone more than you," I say and before he can reply, I whisk myself away.

Upon my exit, the entrance flares to a wooden volcano. As burning as I am. He's wrong, more than he can know. There is no worst part of Alice. There is only me.

'Did you get all that?' I ask Alice. I let her listen in, to hear her lovely Doctor's words. Hopefully, now I won't have to see her get hurt. She doesn't reply.

'Alice?' I crane my neck – and my mind – to see where she's hiding.

'Why would he say that?' I can hear her sniffling voice. Tissue paper inside my head.

'You're not a monster'. Stop. I stop on the stairs. Breathe once, long and hard, the air so heavy it crushes my lungs.

'I am a monster,' I tell her. 'The world won't let me be anything else'.

She doesn't even try to contradict me. 

The rest of the day is my own to command.

Neither Alice nor Doc' dare to bother me, while Mum rushes out at a moment's notice to buy dinner. It's...unusual. There is no other word for it. I've never had a proper evening to myself before. It makes me acutely aware of all my flaws, my insecurities.

Alice may enjoy Detective stories and she may be brilliant at Math, but I'm lost. I have no hobbies, no interests or desires.

Except to bring the Janus Foundation crumbling to its knees.

Perhaps I need to get a life.

While I flick through an assortment of TV channels, my mind hurtles at one of the adverts. Big blue waves encompassed in sand. Huge jet engines that can take you anywhere in the world.

Travel has never really occurred to me until now. Never appealed. Until now.

As I munch a stray apple, I imagine the beach. I imagine riding in one of those bumpy Tuk-Tuks in the height of Spice City. I want to disappear to faraway places and make out with ice-cream on every continent. I want to learn to drive.

Jobs though, I'm not so sure. I'm a teenage assassin, hire me? Private killer sounds like it'll pay the bills. Army? Perhaps not. I'd probably fail the psyche test, for some unknown reason.

They should let me in. They should try. Nobody is the perfect image people want them to be.

Mr. Dark waltzes into my head, unannounced. His bottomless eyes glisten like algae. Even though we will probably try to kill each other, I want to speak to him. Perhaps he'll give me more useful information about the Foundation. He also seems like a good listener. Maybe if I tied him to a chair, I could tell him about my day without the fear he might kill me.

It's those damn pills – I've got to get rid of them. For all our sake's.

Well, mostly mine.

Dr. Light is useful tool, so there's no reason why Mr. Dark can't be one as well.

Mum prepares dinner – pizza – late and we spend a good hour awkwardly chewing melted cheese.

Mum asks me about going back to school and I am forced to indulge her. All the same, the evening is strangely enjoyable.

I prefer Fall to Summer. Watching the darkness arrive early as it coats suburbia in a beautifully murky sable. Black as dried blood.

A lever swings inside our head, making me wonder whether the Foundation have discovered the bodies in the van. Or whether they're still rotting there.

No wonder I struggle to sleep these days.

After Mum and me wash up to the magic of Billy Joel's Uptown Girl, all my senses are wired. Waiting for the next surprise.

'I don't want to see Light like that,' says Alice.

We're sitting under our bedroom window, just beyond the reach of the moonlight.

'He isn't a monster'.

'He tried to kill you,' she points out.

'He's interesting'. She sighs, exasperated. More like my Mother than my other personality.

'He tried to kill you so he's interesting. Of course'. My smiles etches away, scooping itself out of existence.

'I meant what I said,' I tell her. 'Light doesn't deserve you'. I can feel her blush.

'So why don't you deserve something better?' she asks. I roll my eyes. She's sure changed her tune.

'This is my decision'. I am not going to be deterred on this one. I am stronger than anyone gives me credit for. The Foundation underestimated me. Dr. Light underestimated me.

I refuse to let Alice underestimate me.

Recently, it's been getting harder and harder to switch her off. She's a constant nag, nag, nag.

Pushing up from the floor, I head out onto the landing. Light's door is shut tight. He always shuts the world out. As if he knows it will judge him too soon, without giving him a second chance. I supposed that's why he became the Foundation's puppet. Now, he has a new puppeteer.

I am really starting to love this analogy.

Placing my hands against the door, I ease it open. The room is nearly pitch black, save for the window diffracting streetlights onto the floor. I tip-toe in, close the door as quietly as I can. The pills are most likely in his drawer.

I'm halfway across the room when he clears his throat.

"This isn't your room, you know". Turning around, I find him wide awake, his electrified hair framing a tight smile. I sigh. He must have been expecting me. Sat up all night like a camper.

"Oh, don't tell me you were a Boy Scout," I hiss. I wouldn't be surprised.

"Go back to bed. He's dangerous," he says.

"So am I," I grin, but Light folds his arms.

"I won't let you put Alice in danger". He thinks he's protecting her? Oh wow, that's rich. To emphasise, I aim a snort in his general direction.

"She isn't as breakable as you think she is," I tell him, waiting for the Girl Wonder to contradict me. She doesn't. Good. She has some faith in herself at least.

Light might have replied, but a howl of wind slices our conversation apart. There's no point trying to change his mind. Still, I stick my tongue out at him before I leave.

It seems like the right thing to do.

'Please. Just try to focus on school,' Alice offers, not unkindly.

'School,' I reply. 'Sure'.

In a week, it begins. Another chance for us to splinter until there's nothing left.

Another chance to be judged.

I can't wait.