Free IA: Initiate by John Darryl Winston Page A

because we already know that the voices are triggered by emotions … strong emotions. We’ve already dealt with the anger and the fear. Hmmm … let me see. It was the first day of school for an eighth-grade boy with hair starting to grow on his chin. What else could I infer, but an even stronger emotion … love? Besides, you forget, I have a son just about your age.”
    Naz's fingers automatically went up to touch his chin where hair had begun to grow. He didn’t know whether to laugh out loud or ask to be excused to conceal his embarrassment.
    “So, tell me all about it,” she continued with a calming smile.
    Naz told Dr. Gwen about the girl at the drinking fountain and how he stood on guard at the girl’s bathroom and waited for her return. He told her how she appeared from nowhere and disappeared the same way. He also told how he hadn’t been able to find her since. Then he told her about the voices as she continued to write.
    “Naz, could it be that the voices you hear are likely you talking to yourself and that you externalize them as coming from somewhere else?”
    Naz thought back, at the drinking fountain the voice said, “What are you looking at?” He tilted his head and looked puzzled. “I guess … I do hear words that I’m thinking.” As Naz thought further, he added, “But there are times when I hear words that I’m not thinking at all, and the voices are as clear as if someone is actually talking to me. We both keep saying voices, Dr. Gwen, but it’s never voices, plural. There’s only one voice, always the same voice.”
    “What do you hear, Naz? What voice … whose voice?” She continued writing in her notebook.
    “I don’t know. I don’t recognize the voice. I don’t think I’ve heard it before. I can’t explain it,” Naz said as he began to sit up. He was getting louder and noticeably frustrated. “But somehow it is familiar.”
    “Maybe it's from your past, a voice from before you came to live with your mother.” Dr. Gwen had a hunch and habit of never holding back when something came to her. “Your father, Naz, could it be your father’s voice that you hear?”
    “I don’t know!” Naz raised his voice. He was now sitting straight up, holding his head between his hands. He was visibly upset. “I have no memory of him! You know that, Doc! I don’t know what he sounded like or looked like.” Naz stood up and began pacing. “I’ve never even seen a picture of him. No one has ever shown me even a picture of my dad,” he continued, as if just realizing that fact.
    “I think that’s enough for today,” she said, knowing it would calm him.
    Naz stopped pacing and looked at the clock on the wall. He knew there was more time left in his session, and he valued his time with Dr. Gwen, so he calmed himself and sat back down. “I’m OK, Dr. Gwen.”
    Dr. Gwen wasn’t finished, but she decided to change the subject and come back to her theory at a later date. “So tell me about this girl.”
    “There’s not much to tell. I don’t know her name or who she is, and I haven’t seen her since that first day of school.” Naz blushed.
    Still contemplating the origin and possible causes of the voice, Dr. Gwen finished jotting down a few notes then looked up at Naz and said in an assuring tone, "I’m sure she’ll turn up again. Is there anything else you’d like to talk about?”
    “I have been sleepwalking again.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    “First, there was my dream.” He was dying to tell Dr. Gwen about his dream. There was one good thing about the stabbing incident that morning in the Exclave. It seemed to burn the images of his dream in his mind.
    Dr. Gwen resumed taking notes as Naz continued.
    “I was trapped in my bathroom and couldn’t get out. It seemed like there was a tornado coming and things were floating in midair … the toothpaste … the soap … me ! I could hear my mother on the other side of the bathroom door, but I couldn’t make out what she