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The thoughts start when he’s six. They’re silly thoughts, really, but they still freak him out. Ralph is sitting in the back seat of his parents’ car when the first ever thought comes into his head.
Throw your teddy out of the window.
It’s his own voice in his head, but it doesn’t sound like something he wants to do. He looks down at his teddy, his heart racing. He doesn’t understand; why is this thought in his head? He doesn’t want to throw his teddy out of the window. He loves his teddy. What’s going on?
Throw your teddy out of the window.
No! He says in his head, clenching his hands into tight, trembling fists.
Feeling his heart pound against his ribs, he winds the window up quickly and sits on his hands.
But the thought doesn’t go away as easily.
---
He gets thoughts like the first one for years. They’re always the same sort of thought:
Throw this out of the window. Drop that down the toilet. Throw this off of the balcony.
They’re pathetic thoughts, but they stress him out. Sometimes, he gets close to giving into them, but he always stops himself at the last minute. One time, his mother catches him holding his expensive fountain pen over the toilet, but she just shakes her head and walks away, muttering something about, “boys.”
But the thoughts never change, at least, not until he’s eleven.
On his third day at the nearest private school, Ralph is sat in an English class, chewing on the end of his pen (a cheap biro; Dad won’t let him take his posh fountain pen to school with him in case he loses it), when a new thought suddenly comes into his head.
Stick your pen down your throat so you choke.
His eyes widen, and his chest tightens. The urge to do it is strong, and he finds his hand trembling as he tries to fight the urge to do what the thought is telling him to. His heart is racing so much he can hear it in his ears. He fights the thought all lesson, and, at the end, he shoves the biro right in the bottom of his bag.
The new thoughts plague him all day. In the woodwork lab, when he’s trying to cut a piece of wood with a saw, he gets an even worse thought:
Cut your fingers open with that saw.
He trembles and grips the handle of the saw so tight his knuckles turn white.
Cut your fingers open with that saw.
He puts the saw down, but the thought doesn’t go away. One of the other boys looks at him, and Ralph realises that his face is contorted, and his eyes are full of tears. He tries to smile at the other boy, but he just raises his eyebrows and walks off, obviously thinking Ralph is crazy. Which, to be fair, he might well be.
Ralph quickly realises that the thoughts are so much worse in the woodwork lab: for the entire hour, he is plagued by awful thoughts telling him to injure himself with the equipment. When the lesson is over, he rushes out of the room without looking back.
In the canteen at lunchtime, Ralph finds himself too anxious to eat his packed lunch. The thoughts are still swirling around his head, and, every time one of them comes back to him, he feels so sick that he can’t eat without the threat of vomiting.
After school, by which point Ralph is so anxious he thinks he might actually be sick without even eating first, he wanders down to the bus stop, his legs wobbling, and waits for the bus that will take him back to the village. But, as the bus approaches the stop, another thought comes into his head:
Jump in front of the bus.
He freezes, his hands clenched into tight fists, trying his hardest to ignore the thought, and eventually gets onto the bus with everyone else.
---
When he’s fifteen, a week and two days before his sixteenth birthday, the thoughts suddenly get a lot worse. He goes up to bed after watching a creepy film with Dad (he had to pretend he wasn’t terrified by it, lest Dad laugh at him and call him a wimp), and is lying in bed, trying not to panic about zombies, when the worst thought he’s ever had comes into his head.
Why don’t you cut Dad’s throat open with his razor?
Ralph sits bolt upright, his heart racing so fast he can feel it pounding in his neck. His stomach churns, and his eyes fill with tears. A sudden image flashes through his head of someone slicing his Dad’s neck right open with his cutthroat razor.
Whimpering, Ralph smashes his hand against his forehead, and switches his light on and tries to read. But the thought won’t leave his head, and when he thinks about where his father’s razor is in the bathroom, he wants to be sick.
---
“Don’t you want to eat something, darling?” His mother asks, peering at seventeen year old Ralph down the long dinner table.
He looks down at the food on his plate, feeling his stomach rumbling with hunger, but he knows he can’t eat it. He’s so anxious at the moment that, whenever he tries to eat, his mouth just seems to lose all of its saliva, and he ends up feeling so sick once he does eat it that he worries that he might vomit. He’s so hungry, but he just can’t eat.
“I’m not hungry, Mum,” he says, hoping his stomach won’t rumble and give away his lie. “Sorry.”
---
The thoughts never stop. Sometimes, they’re worse than others, but the graphically violent thoughts are always there. Over the years, Ralph finds ways to banish the thoughts for a while, but they’re never nice, and they always involve hurting himself. For a while he hits himself in the forehead, and then he switches to pinching himself, and he finally settles on biting the skin on the back of his hand.
It does work for a while, but the thoughts always come back, and biting his hand means he always has teeth mark-shaped bruises and calluses on the back of his hand. But no one ever notices, because he always keeps his hands in his pockets when he’s around other people. It makes him feel sneaky, but he doesn’t know what else to do.
---
One day, almost thirty years after the thoughts first started, Ralph is walking into town with Ted when the thoughts start up again. He’s walking along the pavement beside his favourite ever person, when a horrible thought crosses his mind.
Push Ted into the road.
Ralph bites down on the back of his hand, wincing at the sharp pain it causes, but the thought goes. For a few minutes, anyway. And then it comes back with a vengeance.
Push Ted into the road. Push Ted into the road. Push Ted into the road.
Stop it! He yells inside his head, biting his hand again.
Push Ted into the road. Push Ted into the road. Push Ted into the road.
“Sir, are you all right?” Ted asks.
Ralph turns his head. Ted is looking at him, a concerned yet scared look on his face.
He nods, forcing himself to smile. “Yes, Ted, I’m fine.”
Push Ted into the road. Watch as a car hits him. Hear his bones crack. See his blood run all over the road. Listen to his screams of agony. Watch him—
Ralph bites his hand so hard that he actually breaks the skin. He’s never done that before. He keeps his hand up at his mouth, feeling blood run onto his tongue, his eyes screwed up, struggling to breathe deeply with such a tight chest. He’s shaking violently.
He sees Ted looking at him, and moves his hand slightly so it looks like he’s wiping his nose.
“There’s something wrong, sir. What’s the matter?”
Ralph licks as much blood off of his hand as he can, and then quickly shoves it into his pocket. He hopes that Ted doesn’t see the blood. Thinking up a lie, he smiles weakly.
“I just feel a bit sick, Ted.”
“Really?” Ted frowns, clearly worried about him, and Ralph hates himself for scaring Ted.
“Well, it’s not so bad any more, but I still feel a bit . . . odd,” he says, and he isn’t really lying now; the taste of blood in his mouth really is making him feel sick.
Ted puts his hand on Ralph’s arm as though he’s worried he might faint. “Do you want go home?”
“Nope, I’m fine now,” he says, forcing himself to smile. “Really.”
But it doesn’t look like Ted believes him.
---
Ralph isn’t sure how it happened (he was probably drunk; all he remembers is doing karaoke in the pub and giving Ted a kiss, which he didn’t reject, as they were walking home, and then suddenly he and Ted were a couple and everyone in the bloody nosy village was talking about them), but, at some point before his thirty ninth birthday, he and Ted start going out.
Ted doesn’t feel comfortable up in the big house, so Ralph moves into the cottage with him. It’s much smaller than the big house, but it’s much more comfortable, and its small size calms Ralph’s paranoid thoughts about someone breaking in and murdering him in his sleep.
He just wishes the other thoughts would go away so easily.
---
One night, Ralph wakes up in the middle of the night, and instantly finds his heart racing and his chest tight as he tries to inhale. He sits up, longing for the panic to stop, but it won’t whilst the thoughts keep running around his head. One in particular is making it impossible for him to calm down:
Suffocate Ted with your pillow.
Shut up! He screams inside his head, but the thoughts don’t stop. If anything, they get worse.
Suffocate Ted with your pillow. Suffocate Ted with your pillow.
He bites down on his hand, and hits himself in the forehead at the same time, but it doesn’t make the thought stop. It won’t go away. All the pain does is tell him that this is definitely not a dream. Ralph continues to bite his hand, but he finds his other hand drifting towards his pillow.
Suffocate Ted with your pillow. Suffocate Ted with your pillow. Suffocate Ted with your pillow.
He catches himself halfway there, the anxiety so bad he can barely breathe, and, instead, slams his hand against the headboard with such force his knuckles click. He lets out a cry of pain, and is suddenly aware that tears are running down his cheeks.
Suffocate Ted with your pillow. Suffocate Ted with your pillow. Suffocate Ted with your pillow.
He hasn’t felt this bad since that time when he was seventeen, when his anxiety was so bad he thought he was going to die. His stomach is churning; he wonders if he might throw up. He bites down even harder on his hand; the pain that shoots through his hand is unbearable, but he can’t get the thought to stop.
Suffocate Ted with your pillow. Suffocate Ted with your pillow. Suffocate Ted—
“Ralph?”
Suddenly, the light has been switched on over the bed, and Ted is sitting up and staring at him. Ralph takes his hand out of his mouth and tucks it under the duvet.
“Ralph, what’s the matter?” Ted leans closer to him, and his eyes widen. “Are you crying?”
Ralph shakes his head, but more tears spill down his cheeks.
Ted shuffles closer, and puts an arm around his waist. Ralph leans into the touch. “It’s all right. Did you have a nightmare?”
Ralph, grateful that Ted has just given him a lie he can go along with, nods his head.
“You poor thing. Do you want to tell me about it?”
Ralph shakes his head. Ted smiles like he understands.
“Do you want a cuddle?”
Ralph smiles weakly, wiping his eyes on his sleeves. “Please.”
“Hang on,” Ted gets out of bed and hurries into the en suite bathroom. He returns with a bundle of toilet roll, which he presses into Ralph’s non-bitten hand. “Here you are.”
“Thanks, Ted.” Ralph says, giving him a weak smile.
Ted smiles his lovely, handsome, loving smile back, and Ralph almost forgets that the awful thought telling him to kill Ted is still circling around his head. Almost.
Once Ralph has finished cleaning his face up, Ted pulls him into a careful hug. They lay down like that, and it makes Ralph feel so safe to be beside his partner like this.
He’s still worried that the thoughts might get worse again if Ted falls asleep before he does. Luckily, he falls asleep first.
---
“Ralph?” Ted says, coming into the living room whilst Ralph is watching some dreadful reality TV programme (he’s actually getting quite into it, but he won’t be telling Ted that, because Ted thinks reality TV is awful and once called it “A load of old bollocks.”).
Ralph looks up, and sees Ted’s face. He looks nervous, and Ralph immediately starts to worry that he might have hurt Ted without realising it. But Ted doesn’t look injured, not that that stops him worrying. Nothing ever stops him worrying.
“Yes, Ted?”
“Can I talk to you about something?”
Ted comes and sits down next to him on the sofa, picking up the remote and switching of the telly. Ralph’s heart is racing even faster; he’s slightly concerned that he might faint.
“Yes?” He says, more than a little apprehensive.
Ted takes his hand and squeezes it.
“Ralph, this is going to seem like a really strange question, but I need you to answer me,” Ted says, and he pauses for a few seconds, just staring at Ralph, before he says, “Why were you looking up psychopaths on Wikipedia?”
Ralph turns his head to look at him so quickly that his neck clicks. His heart is racing so fast he can feel it in his neck.
“What?” He says, his voice hitching. “How do you know that?”
The moment the words are out of his mouth, he knows he’s just admitted that Ted is right. This is why he’s an idiot; he should’ve just denied it. He hates himself sometimes.
“I was looking on the search history, and I saw it.”
Ralph frowns. “Why? Why were you on the search history?”
He’s really starting to feel sick now.
“I was trying to find this really good gardening blog I’d looked at the other day,” Ted says. “Ralph, why were you looking at it?”
Ralph sighs and wraps his arms around his chest. He doesn’t say anything.
“Ralph?”
“I was just interested,” he finally says in a tiny voice.
Ted frowns. “Are you sure?”
Ralph’s eyes start to sting, and, the next thing he knows, he’s broken down, and is sobbing hysterically. Tears pour down his cheeks, and sobs catch in his throat, and he starts to wonder if he’ll be able to breathe much longer, he’s crying so hard.
“Ralph!” Ted says, alarmed.
He can’t bear it. He can’t keep this to himself any more. He has to tell someone. He has to tell Ted, or he thinks he might actually throw up.
“I was looking it up b-because I think I’m a psychopath!” He sobs, covering his face with his hands. It feels awful to admit it, yet, at the same time, telling Ted what he’s been hiding all these years makes his chest feel a little lighter.
“What? You’re not a psychopath, Ralph,” Ted says, frowning.
“Yes I am! I get these violent thoughts in my head telling me to h-hurt people, Ted, fucking horrible thoughts that are really graphic.” Ralph cries, digging his fingernails into the skin on his forehead. “And I’ve been getting thoughts like this since I was about six, and that’s when psychos s-start, you know. And I’ve—”
“Ralph, Ralph, Ralph,” Ted says, grabbing his hands by his wrists and moving them away from his face. “Calm down.”
Ted looks like he’s about to say something enlightening, when he gets distracted, his eyes on Ralph’s hands.
“What’ve you done to your hand?” Ted cries, tightly gripping Ralph’s bitten hand by thw wrist before he has a chance to put it back in his pocket.
“Nothing,” Ralph mumbles, but Ted doesn’t believe him.
Ted carefully holds his hand and looks at it; Ralph watches his eyes linger over the teeth marks, the calluses, the bruises, and the scarring from the one time he bit himself and broke the skin. Ted’s eyes widen.
“Bloody hell. Have you been biting yourself?”
Ralph doesn’t see the point in trying to lie, so he just nods his head. It makes his head spin slightly.
“Why?”
“It helps make the thoughts go away,” Ralph says, looking down at his hand. “Biting myself. It helps make them go away, until the next one comes along, anyway.”
Ted looks like he wants to cry. “That’s awful.”
Ralph shrugs. “I deserve it.”
“No you don’t!” Ted says, horrified. “Don’t say that, Ralph. You don’t deserve it.”
“Yes I do!” Ralph cries, rubbing his eyes again. They’re really starting to hurt. “Psychos like me—”
“Listen to me, Ralph,” Ted says firmly, putting his hands on his shoulders and looking straight at his face. “I don’t think you’re a psychopath.”
“Why, though?” Ralph sobs, longing for the tears to stop. “I’ve looked it up, and—”
“It’s nothing like you at all,” Ted says firmly, cutting him off. “I read that page you were looking at all the way through, and you are not a psychopath. The reason they do violent things – and I mean do, Ralph, not just get thoughts about – is because they’re trying to get an emotional response. But, when they don’t, they get more and more violent. If you were a psychopath, I would’ve come across you in the garden when you were young squashing worms and pulling the wings off flies. You would’ve been violent at school and hurt people. By your age, you could’ve even murdered someone.
“But that’s not you, Ralph. You wouldn’t hurt a fly. Really. There’s no way in hell you’re a psychopath. I promise. And, even if you were, I’d still love you.”
Ralph looks at Ted. His eyes are shining. He hasn’t seen Ted look this sad since his wife’s funeral three years ago.
“So what have I got, then?” Ralph says, his eyes filling with tears again, feeling so hysterical that he can’t even register Ted’s lovely comment. “Because there must be something wrong with me.”
Ted sighs. “I think you’ve got OCD.”
“What?”
“It’s short for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.”
“Yes, I know that’s what it stands for,” Ralph says, sniffing, feeling a little irritated. “But how can I have that? And how do you know about it, anyway?”
“Mrs T-Ted had it,” Ted says, his voice wobbling slightly as he says his late wife’s name. “She got all these thoughts about our children dying, and it made her so anxious she started cleaning the house obsessively to stop the thoughts, because she thought if the house was clean, then they wouldn’t get ill and die. She was so scared all the time, and there was nothing I could do to make her feel calmer. It was horrible to watch.”
Ralph sniffs. “Really?”
“Yeah, it was awful. But things got better pretty quickly once she opened up to me and we went to the doctors. She got diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and put on antidepressants at a high dose that really helped her anxiety, and went to therapy. And, even though the OCD never went away, it was so much milder and so much easier for her to deal with. Really.”
Ralph thinks over what Ted has just told him, making a further futile attempt to wipe his eyes, but the tears are still flowing. It makes a lot of sense . . . but then something occurs to him, and his stomach clenches.
“But I don’t do things like cleaning and stuff like that,” he says, suddenly wondering if Ted might be wrong.
But Ted gives him a reassuring smile, as though he can read his mind and knows exactly what’s troubling him.
“I think you’ve got a type called Pure-O OCD, which means you get the obsessive thoughts, but all your compulsions are in your head, not external, like Mrs Ted’s were.”
“Really?” Ralph says again, hardly daring to believe it, wiping his sore eyes on his sleeve.
Ted squeezes his good hand, and kisses his forehead. He carefully runs his fingers through Ralph’s thick hair, looking at him with such a loving expression that Ralph finds more tears running down his cheeks. Ted’s eyes are shining.
“Really,” Ted says. After a long pause, where Ted just looks at him, he adds, “Look, I’ll show you.”
Still holding his hand, Ted leads Ralph up the stairs and into the spare bedroom, where the computer lives. He gets Ralph to sit down on the swivel chair, and kneels down beside him. Ralph watches, wiping his eyes, as Ted types ‘OCD’ into the search engine. He clicks on the link to the NHS website, and shows Ralph all the information about OCD. Ralph reads it through, reading about obsessive thoughts and compulsions and anxiety, and, for the first time in over thirty years, he feels his chest relax slightly, and he can breathe a little easier.
Ted is right. This is him. This is what he has. He isn’t a psychopath. He isn’t evil. He’s got OCD. And the relief this makes him feel makes him start crying all over again.
“Come on, it’s all right,” Ted says, pulling him into a hug, and Ralph realises that Ted is crying too, silent tears dribbling down his cheeks.
Ralph leans his head against Ted’s chest and cries, feeling, for the first time in as long as he can remember, that his life might be becoming a bit easier to manage.
---
Three days after he opened up to Ted about his thoughts, Ted gets Ralph an appointment at their local GP surgery, and they make their way up to the run down old building together. Ralph is anxious as hell, and is trying to ignore the thought of push Ted into the road, but it’s a lot easier to deal with now he can just tell Ted what’s bothering him. He does, and Ted gives him a reassuring smile.
“Well then, why don’t we swop sides?” Ted suggests, smiling warmly at him. “Then there’s no way you can push me, not that you’re going to, but you know what I mean.”
Smiling gratefully, Ralph swops places with Ted so he’s closest to the road. Ted takes his hand, squeezing it tightly.
“Thanks, Ted,” he says.
Ted smiles. “It’s nothing.”
---
Up at the doctor’s, Ted and Ralph have to wait ages for their appointment. They sit together in the corner of the waiting room, watching the clock and trying to ignore the other people in the waiting room who are staring at them, because people always stare at them; Ralph used to find it annoying that everyone in the village is obsessed with his and Ted’s relationship, but it doesn’t really bother him anymore.
But, finally, they get to see Ralph’s GP. The doctor smiles at them, and asks what the problem is. Ralph looks to Ted to talk to the doctor, but Ted raises his eyebrows, and Ralph knows Ted wants him to tell the story instead.
With some reluctance, he takes a deep breath, and says, “Well, uh, Ted, I mean, I, uh . . . I think I’ve got OCD . . .”
Ralph explains everything, including the silly thoughts he had when he was young, and how they became self injurious thoughts, and, finally, how they became violent towards other people. He tells the doctor about how he bites his hand, and how he sometimes plays songs in his head to block the thoughts out, and how he avoids things like knives when he’s around other people, just in case. And he tells the doctor about the constant anxiety that makes him feel sick, and has made him feel ill and shaky for as long as he can remember.
When he’s finally finished, he glances at Ted, who looks so proud of him that Ralph wants to cry. And then he looks at the doctor, who is staring at him curiously.
“Yes, Mr Mayhew,” he says, looking on his computer screen. He smiles. “That sounds very much like a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I can get you an appointment with a psychologist who can give you an assessment, and then we can take things from there. How does that sound?”
Ralph looks at Ted, who smiles.
“Great. It sounds great.”
---
After a few months of meetings and waiting, Ralph gets his diagnosis of Pure-O OCD. And then he gets his antidepressant and he’s starting his therapy in two weeks, and, even though his thoughts are still there and as horrible as ever, he knows things are going to be so much easier now, especially with Ted at his side.