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When Eddie is nineteen, he moves to New York City. New York City is somehow even more stressful than San Francisco, or perhaps it's just that Eddie had been used to California, and he starts hearing voices before he's properly settled into his new apartment.
Eddie hates the voices because they are the most obvious sign that something is off, but he learns fast. He quickly adopts the habit of ignoring them, of not responding when he can't see the people calling his name. Sometimes someone actually does call his name from a different room, but even then it is better to appear rude than to appear insane. The voices actually don't use his name all that often, but they also don't say anything worth responding to— they mutter in the corner of his mind or they make a one-word comment. The voices are easy. They're not a problem.
What is a problem, though, is everything else that starts when Eddie is nineteen. New York City is unfamiliar to him. Despite how much he needs these opportunities, despite how much he had once wanted to be here, his mind rejects his reality. Eddie has always lived in a big city, in a world where nobody stares at anybody in particular. Still, he finds it hard to convince himself that people aren't staring at him everywhere he goes, that nobody is spying on him or following him or putting together some epic plot to kill him (because really, a stare could mean anything). And then beyond that, there's the thought insertion: vulgar thoughts that he doesn't register as his, which feel distinctly different from typical intrusive thoughts. It's hard to convince himself that they are, in fact, his thoughts, but he does. They can't come from anywhere else, after all.
It all drags at him, really. Eddie had moved here for the opportunities presented to him, but when actually living in New York he finds it harder to do anything for himself. Suddenly the city is too loud. He is always on edge after leaving California, after the voices and paranoia start. Loud noises start to piss him off. Hell, he pisses himself off— he can barely live with himself. It’s all overwhelming. The voices and thoughts inserted into his mind constantly remind him of his lack of control. On bad days it is hard not to think that his whole life might be over before it's even began.
…
At twenty years old, Eddie meets another Californian at his university. Anne is strong-willed, but she is not particularly loud. She makes Eddie feel normal, as though there is no chance he will one day be part of a depressing statistic. In other words, she is everything Eddie could ever want.
Their feelings toward each other, Eddie thinks, match California better than New York. Anne seems to feel the same way, and she had always meant to move back in the end. So after about two years, they move back to San Francisco.
The voices, the paranoia— it all decreases considerably after going back. For a few months, voices, paranoia, and other psychotic symptoms only happen every week or two, and when it happens it is easier to shake off. Eddie spends the next four years thinking that it was all locational, that he is effectively cured, even when it all starts up again.
It is not California that fixes him. It is not Anne. Nothing fixes Eddie, and it all continues, even returning to New York rates of unstable at times. However, Eddie knows the statistics on psychotic disorders and that is how he decides not to get it checked out. It is irrational and stupid, but he tells himself that if he does not go to the doctor he cannot get a diagnosis, and if he doesn't get a diagnosis he can't claim he has a psychotic disorder, so effectively he can't be too upset about any of it. Eddie is a young adult, and he has his whole life ahead of him. He cannot afford to hear that he has a psychotic disorder, so he copes with it alone.
…
At twenty-five, Eddie meets Carlton Drake, leader of the Life Foundation Anne has recently been tasked with representing. He has the sort of demeanor that Eddie has come to dislike. Drake talks too much, he says too much. Eddie used to have friends like Carlton Drake, but he'd cut contact with all of them after the voices started; he couldn't stand their chatter then, and Drake doesn't have much better luck with him.
Eddie tries to be nice— he does, really. He thinks Drake's accomplishments with the Life Foundation are excellent and noteworthy, and that Drake should be so young puts him on another level. Eddie wants to respect Drake, and he knows he should, but at some point he starts to get suspicious. It's nothing in particular— it's even less than a glance on the street or being followed into a busy shop. Something about Drake just isn't right.
Eddie mocks himself to take the edge off it: What, do you think this kid is going to kill you? Can he read your thoughts, Eddie? Is he inserting shit into your head?
Usually this works, but today he has to excuse himself and go to the lobby. The receptionist, who is having a conversation on the phone, enters a backroom. He can't make out what the receptionist is saying anymore, and that leaves room to speculate— but if he could hear it, he would be over-analyzing…
Eddie hates this. He hates all of this. He wants to punch something, or maybe to scream, but most of all he wants a gut instinct he can actually listen to and a life he can actually be part of.
Anne enters the lobby sometime later and motions to him. They go home.
Eddie's boss gives him a seemingly easy case, in the form of Emil Gregg. Gregg is Certified Crazy, fessing up to murders that he is in no way involved with, and he won't shut the hell up about it. In fact, he's taken to making videos online confessing to these sins. Eddie had managed to stomach about five minutes of Gregg's crying before he'd gotten too upset and had to turn it off; he had decided he would just wait for the interview instead, and now he is here. Sitting across from Gregg is somehow almost worse, even if he isn't crying right now.
His job is to talk to Gregg a while, try to get into his mind. Eddie offers him coffee. Gregg says nothing. Eddie makes himself coffee and sits, trying to find where to start.
Eddie is distracted significantly by Gregg. Gregg makes presumably as much eye contact as he can, but he is more consumed with looking out the window or at the door. It is hard not to follow his gaze, so he asks if Gregg would like the blinds closed on either of them. Gregg doesn't seem to hear him.
Gregg starts by detailing the murders. He picks his words carefully at first, but he has devolved into sobs by the end. Through his tears he insists that he should be in prison, or dead. He should face something for what he's done, so why won't anybody arrest him? Why doesn't anyone take him seriously?
Eddie swallows. "Um," he says. It is the only thing he can think to say, the only thing that doesn't directly acknowledge Gregg's conviction. "Gregg, how do you know you committed the murders?"
"There's this— this voice. Lord, I know that sounds crazy, but obviously it's real. How else would I know all the details?"
Eddie doesn't know how to answer that. "Have you been hearing the voice lately?"
"No. Nobody's died."
"Have you been hearing any other voices lately?"
"Yes."
"So why do you think this one has stopped?"
"I've been controlling myself."
Eddie has avoided really looking at Gregg until this point, given that Gregg has not been staring at him, but now he has to. "Have you been able to control any of the other voices, or make them go away?"
"No. I've tried."
"Why do you think this would be the voice that would go away?"
Gregg pauses for a while. Eddie begins to repeat his question when he answers, very slowly, "I think—," and stops. A few seconds lapse before he says, "Sorry. What did you say?"
"Why do you think this would be the voice that goes away?"
"I don't know. I don't want to think about it."
"Why not?"
"It might come back if I think about it too much."
"They do that?" Eddie nearly demands it. It is unprofessional, but Gregg doesn't seem to notice the urgency of his tone. "The- the voices, I mean. Do they come back if you think about them too much?"
"I don't want to find out, do I? I quite like not having it," he says, and he smiles for a moment. Eddie smiles too and it's all fine, then, but Gregg stops first and adds, "It means I am not hurting anyone now."
"Do you ever think that voice could have been wrong, or lying to you?"
"Sometimes I do, but I can't believe that. That voice was me. It was in the first-person. I'm not a liar."
Eddie writes that, as well— what a sensational line, though he doesn't think he can include it.
"Are you going to have someone come and arrest me now?" Gregg asks.
"No. You didn’t do anything wrong."
"Please," Gregg's voice breaks, and he starts crying again.
…
A few months later, Eddie is browsing a local forum when he comes across an article about a homeless man that had committed suicide by cop. When Eddie and Gregg had the interview, Gregg was not well-groomed, but apparently afterward Gregg had fallen too far. Even before he sees the name, he knows that it is Gregg, and that Gregg is dead.
Eddie leans back in his chair, thinks about their conversation— their interview. Eddie thinks that at one point Gregg must have been alright, but now the world only knows him as Crazy, as some horrible sort of mentally ill, and he is dead. He can never be anything else. It hadn't been Eddie's job to get Gregg's life story, but he wishes he could have asked anyway, even if off the record.
Eddie thinks about the smile, about the confession that Gregg simply didn't want to think about the voice. He wonders if Gregg really believed that if he didn't think about it, it wouldn't come back.
Eddie finds it difficult these days to differentiate between real voices and voices in his mind. He is not so far gone as Gregg had been, but he is not so sure these days that he would be able to tell if someone really was detailing killings on the other side of his wall or not. Perhaps Eddie wouldn't think of it as an accurate representation of his actions, but it would just seem too absurd to be real— not with his past few years, where everything has the potential to be fake. Gregg's actions, then, don't seem too far off the mark.
Eddie stares at the picture for at least ten or fifteen minutes, until Anne comes home. He wants to think that he cannot imagine Gregg's helplessness in the months approaching his death, but he can. Gregg's story, if it's like all the others, could happen to anybody. It could happen to him. Their realities are not all that far apart.
If Eddie just doesn't think about that, then it's not true. He doesn't have to tell Anne, or admit that maybe Gregg's case really wasn't all that easy (because he's sure someone at work tomorrow will mention Gregg). He just can't think about it. That's all he has to do.