And Close On Down

I come home, the place that has been my refuge, but no more. He has found a way to reach me even here. He? I snort. He is no more than my basest desires given form. He is me.

Ire greets me, somehow knowing with that doggy instinct that I’m torn up. I sink to the floor, hugging him, burying my hands in his fur, wanting to cry, wanting to release some of this anguish, but I can’t. I’m still frozen. What have I done?

And what horrible things I do, pretending it’s him, things that I never thought I was capable of. I never slept around, I never started fights just for the hell of it. Why do I need to act out so much? I was never that repressed to start with, but I’m acting like I was raised in a monastery. Of all the fictional characters, why the fuck did my twisted psyche have to latch on to Éomer?

I throw myself into activity, taking down the dead trees in the woodlot, not fucking with the chainsaw, using an axe instead, so much harder. I haul brush, clear trails, repair everything in sight, trying to wear myself out.

I’m afraid to drink, afraid it will open the door for him. I fall into bed every night, worn to the bone, but I cannot sleep, afraid that he will get out of the prison I have him in while my mind is vulnerable. So I pace the floor throughout the night and when morning comes, I go back into frenetic activity. This won’t work, though, because lack of sleep will leave me weak.

After a few days of this, I can’t take it any more and I make an appointment with my doctor and drag myself into her office. I don’t tell her what the real problem is, because I don’t want to get strapped down to a bed in the loony ward. But one look at my haggard face convinces her to write me a prescription. The pills are strong and when oblivion closes over me each night, I’m calm, sure that if he tries anything, I’ll be too drugged to move.

Finally rested, I look around with clear eyes. What the fuck do I do with myself now? Obviously, I can never see Dave again, I’ve lost even that easy friendship that we had, cause I’ll never be able to look him in the eyes. So that rules out the Firkin, also. Can’t take the chance of running into him, I shudder to think what my deranged personality would do.

I can’t bear to look at any of my Rings stuff. I’ve collected a bunch, so happy that my big break had finally come, and with books I had read and adored in school. A blessing and a curse. I pack it away, I can’t bring myself to destroy it, but I put it in boxes in the loft in the barn. I turn out every square inch of my house, I want no reminders. I find a stash of expensive hair products in the back of the linen closet, under the winter blankets. No idea how they got there, so I throw them out.

The hardest is Éomer’s helm and his sword. I take them to the shop, intending to turn them into useless bits of metal. I raise my hammer, but I can’t do it. They are too beautiful, those guys at WETA put too much of themselves into them and they honored me when they gave them to me. Instead, I take them to Pete, ask him to keep them safe for me. His curiosity is killing him, I can see, but I think the look in my eyes warns him off. I want to rage at him that this is all his fault, his and Fran’s and Phillipa’s, but it isn’t really. He couldn’t know what his tampering would do and if I tried to tell him about the shifting, he’d have me locked up.

When I do dream, sometimes it’s unbearably erotic. Dave as I remember him or Paris from that morning. Sometimes one of them separately and sometimes they merge until they are the same person and I’m not sure who I’m with. And I can’t get my head around the fact that I didn’t get out that morning. I know by now if I wake up in a strange bed, the first thing to do is get the hell out of there, just to be safe. I’d rather sort out hurt feelings later then have to explain my split personality. But I didn’t, I felt so good that morning, so I assaulted him and made the biggest mistake of my life. The thing that scares me is if that means that Éomer is starting to take over my waking mind. If somehow he isn’t buried, that he knew he was with Théodred’s shift and acted on it.

I troll the bars, getting sucked off in alleys by any willing mouth I can find, hoping to keep real desire at bay, so I won’t go crazy and go screw my friends.

I keep alert for any sign that he’s trying to break through, I feel him pressing against me a time or two but I push him away with curses.

The urge to run away again is almost overpowering, but my friends are going through the same thing and I know I can do no less than to see it out. But I want to hurl myself at Bernard’s feet, crying and whining like a five-year-old, why did this have to happen? I want to ride off into the uninhabited parts of New Zealand and never come back. Maybe I should call Orli and lose myself in electronic mayhem for a few hours.

But I don’t do any of that. I stay home, keep to myself, and once I’ve repaired everything I can, I go to the shop and start carving. Horses, I make lots of horses. But one day, I have a beautiful piece of ribbon mahogany under my hands and the piece seems to form itself and when I look at it, it’s warrior with long flowing hair and intense commanding eyes. I take my axe and split it in two and then start a bonfire and put it in there. It hurts because the wood was so beautiful.