Seven Flames

April 17, 2003 - Second individual session

David emerges from Renee’s house looking like he’s seen God. Or maybe himself for the first time. He fumbles for cigarettes, hands shaking. His uniform seems inhabited differently now—smaller somehow, more human.

He lights the cigarette on the third try. Smoke wreathes around him like incense. I wait in the driveway, understanding that whatever happened in there needs time before it can become words.

“How was it?” I finally ask when his cigarette’s half ash.

“I don’t know.” Deep drag, thinking. “Different. Strange as hell. But also…” He struggles for the right word. “She had me imagine doors. Rooms. Places to put things. The weight. The gun that keeps calling my name at night.”

The admission hangs between us—David’s weapon whispering its siren song. Seventeen suicides. David’s been dancing near eighteen for months now.

“Did it work?”

“Ask me tomorrow morning when I don’t want to eat a bullet.” But there’s something different in his eyes. Not hope exactly, but hope’s careful cousin. “Your turn, Morrison.”

My second individual session. The living room feels familiar now, like trauma sites do after multiple visits. The chair remembers the shape of my body.

“How was your week?” Renee asks. Same blue dress as always. Continuity feels important when everything else is shifting.

“I practiced. The room, being Ezra. It felt like cheating. Like I was abandoning my duty. But also like survival.”

Both things are true. The blue door felt like desertion. Also felt like breathing.

“Ezra breathes when Jay can’t,” she says. “You’re not cheating. You’re surviving.”

“I delivered two more notifications this week. Ninety-eight total now.”

“As Jay?”

“Yeah. But afterward, I became Ezra. I translated poetry I’ve never read, in languages I don’t speak. How is that possible?”

“The mind is vast. Ezra accesses different parts of your consciousness.”

“Feels like lying to myself.”

“Lying to whom? The ghosts?” She lights the candle between us. Every time someone opens their door, I feel it. Like a pulse through the floorboards. “What if you’re not lying but expanding? Becoming more than just one story?”

“Stories.”

“Jay’s story is duty, death, and weight. Ezra’s is beauty, creation, and lightness. Both are true. Both are incomplete on their own.”

“So I need both?”

“You need as many as it takes to survive. Are you ready to go deeper today?”

I nod.

“Close your eyes. Find the hallway. Go to Ezra’s room and furnish it. Make it real.”

The blue door opens easily now, like muscle memory. Inside, I start adding details. A desk by the window. Books in languages I almost understand. A tea service. A comfortable reading chair.

“What else do you see?”

“Pictures on the walls. Not photographs—paintings. Things that suggest rather than document.” I’m surprised by the specificity. “A laptop for translations. Notebooks everywhere. They’re all empty though. All potential.”

“Good. Sit at the desk. Write something as Ezra.”

My hand moves without conscious thought. Words appear on the page in scripts I recognize but can’t quite read.

“Read what you’ve written.”

“I can’t. It’s in multiple languages, overlapping each other.”

“That’s fine. The meaning matters less than the action. The creation itself. It’s proof that Ezra makes things instead of just delivering endings. How does creating feel?”

“Like breathing after drowning. Like the weight is becoming wings instead of chains.”

“That’s healing happening. Creation heals destruction. Ezra heals Jay.”

“Or replaces him.”

“No. Never replacement. It’s integration. Jay remains—he’s essential. But now he has help. Ezra can tag in when the weight threatens to crush everything.”

We work for another hour. Building the room, practicing transitions. It gets easier each time, more natural.

“Before you go, I have homework for you.”

“Homework?”

“Spend one hour daily as Ezra. Fully inhabit him. Write, create, whatever he wants to do. Give him actual life.”

“What if someone notices the change?”

“That you’re writing? That you’re being human? Let them notice. You’re allowed to have a life beyond delivering death.”

The session ends and I feel retrofitted. Not rebuilt—the original architecture remains.

Leaving, I pass Marcus in the driveway. He’s sitting in his car, hands gripping the wheel, practicing breathing exercises. As he walks up the path, the porch light flickers once. Just a filament. Just a warning.

I tap on his window. He startles, then rolls it down.

“Any advice?” His voice cracks like a teenager’s.

I think about lying, giving him some easy comfort. But he deserves truth.

“Trust the process. It really does help.”

Because it does. Strange as hell, against all logic—but it helps.

Marcus nods, gathering courage. I watch him walk to the door. She answers immediately, like she was waiting. His journey begins.

---

Later that night. 11:34 PM.

I set a timer. Find the hallway, open the blue door. As Ezra, my kitchen looks different. The fluorescent light becomes moonlight. Blank paper becomes pure possibility.

I write. Poetry flows in languages I don’t recognize but somehow understand. Some might be Persian. Some might be invented. All beautiful in ways Jay would never allow himself.

The real world intrudes through my phone. A text from Jennifer Walsh: “Checking in. How are you holding up? Heard the group sessions are intensifying.”

I stare at the text. Jay wants to respond with tactical deflection. Ezra wants to share the poetry of transformation. I compromise: “Managing. Different, but managing.”

Her response is immediate: “Different can be good or dangerous. Let me know if you need anything. Professional or personal.”

The distinction feels important. She’s offering help without judgment. I save her number, return to writing.

Another buzz. Harper this time: “I still have your mom’s birthday present. The one we picked out together. Should I mail it or are you planning to see her?”

I stare at the message. Mom’s birthday present? We picked out a present together? When? I check the date—Mom’s birthday is… June something. 14th? 16th? And Harper and I went shopping for a gift?

I try to access the memory. Find nothing. Just blank space where the experience should be.

I type: “Mail it. Thanks.”

Her response takes three minutes: “You don’t remember, do you? The bookstore. Three weeks ago. You were so excited because you finally found that book she’d been looking for. You said it was perfect. You said she’d cry.”

Three weeks ago I was at a bookstore with Harper? Bought a book for Mom? Was excited about anything?

The memory should be there. Sharp. Recent. Three weeks is nothing.

But there’s only absence.

“Sorry. A lot on my mind lately.”

“Jay, you’re forgetting things that just happened. Important things. Things that mattered to you. This isn’t normal stress. This is something else.”

She’s right. But admitting that means admitting the therapy is erasing me faster than I thought.

“I’ll pick it up next week.”

“Will you remember to? Will you remember me asking? Will you remember this conversation tomorrow?”

I don’t respond. Can’t. Because I don’t know the answer.

Harper’s typing indicator appears, disappears, appears again. Finally: “I’m scared for you. Whatever she’s doing to you, it’s working too well. You’re disappearing right in front of everyone.”

I set the phone face-down. Return to writing.

But the poetry doesn’t flow as easily now. Harper’s texts sit like accusations on the page. Evidence of erasure. Proof that Jay Morrison is bleeding away faster than Ezra Harrow can replace him.

The hour passes like moments. My hand aches, the page is full. But the weight feels distributed now. Shared between two selves who can tag each other out.

I make dinner as Jay. Read the poetry as Ezra. Sleep as both. As the space between them.

It shouldn’t work. Creating alternative personalities should lead to madness, not management.

But I sleep without doorstep dreams for the first time in months. Don’t wake to phantom knocking. Don’t feel ninety-eight notifications pressing down on my chest.

Instead I dream of hallways. Infinite doors. Rooms where different selves can rest.

Worth any strangeness. Worth the fragmentation risk. Worth suspicious looks from Command.

Tomorrow is Robert’s first session. Then the others will follow. One by one entering singular, emerging complex.

One window after another glows across the street. Candlelight, maybe. Or contagion.

---

The Things Jay Forgot, Part 3

My first day as a notification officer. I remembered the protocol, the uniform, the script. But I couldn’t remember why I chose this job. What drove me to volunteer for the one assignment every soldier avoids. That motivation—central to my identity for five years—was gone.

Like reading my own biography written by a stranger.

Harper’s face. I recognized her in photos on my phone. But I couldn’t picture her anymore. Couldn’t conjure her image when I closed my eyes. She’d become an abstract concept: Harper. Person I used to date. Important to Jay Morrison.

But not important to whoever I was becoming.

My voice sounds different. Marcus mentioned it last week. Jennifer yesterday. Even Richards pulled me aside: “Morrison, you talking to a speech coach or something? Your cadence is different.”

I listened to old voice messages. He was right. The pitch was similar. The accent the same. But the rhythm, the word choices, the emphasis—all different.

I don’t sound like Jay Morrison anymore.

The notifications are starting to fade. Not the trauma. But the faces are blurring. The names mixing. The ninety-six specific people I swore I’d never forget—they’re becoming abstract.

Private Anderson. I used to remember everything. His mother’s petunias. The neighbor’s lawnmower. The sound of her trowel hitting concrete.

Now I remember the facts: First notification. Indianapolis. Mother. Flowers.

The sensory details—the things that made it real—are dissolving.

I tried to remember the last time I felt like myself. Couldn’t find it.

Maybe it was before the first session with Renee. Maybe before the first notification. Maybe before I enlisted and became Lt. Col. Morrison.

Maybe I’ve been forgetting myself for years. And Renee’s therapy is just making visible what was always happening—the slow death of the person I used to be, replaced by whoever circumstance demanded I become.

Tonight I’ll drink tea and visualize the blue door and step into Ezra’s room and feel peace.

And tomorrow, a little more of Jay Morrison will be gone.

The person noticing will be too busy being someone else to mourn who he used to be.