Doc Leo Goldwin

I must say, of all the people to send me an email out of the blue, I was not expecting it to be Jack. Jack was perhaps my proudest success story - though I gladly shared credit with my good friend, actual Doctor Roosevelt, the resident psychiatrist in my practice. I mulled over his record while I walked him and his girlfriend - it must be, judging by the way they look at each other - back the corridor to my office.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, stemming from parental abuse and a severe automotive accident. Generalized anxiety disorder. Major depressive disorder. Mild attention deficit disorder. Ever so slightly on the autistic spectrum. The GAD, ADD, depression, and a few notable PTSD symptoms successfully controlled with medication. The difficulties inherent in ASD mostly overcome through behavioral therapy. And his PTSD itself almost entirely successfully treated through years of cognitive therapy. Jack had been a mess when I first saw him. Now? By the looks of it doing very, very well. I felt a swell of pride not just for my own work but for him personally.

Which brought me to the real case of the day. Monika.

Patient presents with severe post-traumatic stress symptoms. Initial evaluation based on body language lends credence; she's clinging onto him like one of Harlow's monkeys. According to Jack, has some sort of fantastic story to tell; apparently far-fetched enough to warrant a promise to take seriously. Will find out more in discussion. Either way, she quite clearly needs some form of help.

My office is the same as it's always been. Not particularly large - perhaps ten feet by eight feet, with my computer and desk and a window in one corner, a bookcase on either wall adjacent, a coffee table in the middle, and a black leather loveseat against the "far" wall. A floor lamp in the corner and a desk lamp provide light, as well as a soothing plasma lamp on one of the bookshelves. A few outdoor paintings and an old photo of me playing racquetball up on the walls completes the look. And of course, I've got a few large Legos and a puzzle on the coffee table for the little ones to fidget with.

Still gripping his hand in a white-knuckle grasp, my patient and Jack take a seat on the couch and I follow, closing the door securely behind me.

Best to get started.

"Wow, I must say, you two are certainly dressed up! What's the occasion?"

That got a smile. Good. And a downward glance, she's still a little nervous.

"Ahaha, I wanted to make a good impression…"

"Well, you certainly succeeded, miss. I'm sure Jack here has already told you, but I'm Leo Goldwin. I have a master's in counseling psychology from the University of Pittsburgh, and I've been doing this for… at least forty years, and I've known Jack for… gosh, it's been a solid twelve years now, hasn't it?"

"At least. Might be more, Doc."

"And let me tell you, you did the right thing by coming to me and getting some help. Trauma is no joke, and while some people do recover with the help of personal support systems, the process is a lot safer and more effective with help. And you know there's no shame in getting the help you need, right?"

I had to strain a little to hear Monika's reply. "I know that, just… I don't think I deserve it, honestly, Leo."

Yep. I'd put it ninety-nine-to-one Jack was right in his email. Okay, time to get down to it.

"Wow. That's a little harsh, don't you think? Why do you say that, Monika?"

"Because I'm a murderer. I killed my three best friends in cold blood."

It took all of my effort and training not to visibly recoil. Jack, what the hell did you get me into?

"I'm sorry?"

"I pushed one to suicide by hanging, I drove another to suicide by stabbing herself repeatedly in the chest, and I deleted the third."

What.

I cleared my throat. "What happened, Monika? And what do you mean, deleted?"

Jack spoke for the first time since her explanation started. "This is the part where I am begging you, begging you to believe me. Monika is… was… a self-aware character in a video game. She directly caused the death of her three friends in a misguided attempt to gain the romantic affections of the player. Monika does not merely psychotically believe she is that character. She is that character.

"Right before New Year's, I walked out into my securely locked, several-stories-off-the-ground living room to find her on my couch and a discarded school uniform identical to that worn by the game's characters nearby, and she looks almost identical to the character from the game, accounting for the differences between its art style and reality. She was further able to relate, in great depth, several details that were only inputted into my personal copy of the game and were not accessible online. I would stake my life on this claim being true."

My professional composure failed me.

"Jack, what the fuck."

Monika was tearing up. "He can't help me, Jack. This is too much…"

Okay, I was not going to stand for that. "I absolutely can. But first I need to confirm. Jack, you are telling me that Monika is a self-aware video game character come to life who in the game caused the deaths of her friends and is now suffering traumatic symptoms related to this. Am I correct?"

"Yes, sir," he said, looking me straight in the eye. "Among other reasons."

"And you are aware that this is completely impossible."

"I was as shocked as you are now. Yes, I am aware."

"And yet you are telling me that this is the truth."

Again, not even batting an eye, he replied, "Yes. This is what I asked you to believe me about on faith."

"That's asking a lot of me, but…"

For the first time, his composure broke. "Please, Doc. Monika means more to me than anything else in the world. She needs help and she's been through things that I can't hope to counsel her through on my own. Please. I am begging you, Doc, after all we've been through, to just trust me and help her. Please…"

Monika collapsed against his shoulder, sobbing.

My mind was absolutely racing. His story was impossible, and yet two people both seemed to completely and earnestly believe it. She showed definite PTSD symptoms, and his behavior was consistent with the Jack I knew. I didn't want to believe it; everything I knew about the world rebelled against the very idea.

I made up my mind.

"Okay."

"W-what?" Monika sputtered through tears.

"I believe you, Monika. I will go on the assumption that everything the two of you tell me is truth." I meant it. The alternative was that Jack had completely lost touch with reality, but the evidence was just not there. "I will do everything in my power to help you."

In response, Jack did something he'd never once done in all the years I'd known him. He got up out of his seat, walked over to me, and hugged me, as tightly as he could. Strictly speaking, I shouldn't have let him do that, but I wasn't about to stop him. Monika joined in shortly thereafter, and spoke in a near-silent whisper. "Thank you so much."

Slowly, the two of them disengaged and went back to their seats.

"So," I began, still a little bit in shock. "First off, what sort of symptoms exactly have you been experiencing, Monika?"

She tried to reply, but the words visibly wouldn't come out. Jack squeezed her hand and leaned over and whispered something in her ear, and her expression suddenly firmed up. She sat up straight in her seat, looked me square in the eye, and in a strong but wavering voice, Monika began.

"Firstly, I have trouble sleeping. If Jack isn't there, I can't sleep at all. Some nights, I can't go to sleep at all, other nights I sleep only in short bursts, and in others I wake up from vivid nightmares."

She paused as I finished scribbling shorthand notes down. "Oh, don't mind me, keep going. I want to get a full list first."

Monika nodded, still holding on to Jack's hand so tightly I was slightly afraid she'd break his wrist. "The nightmares generally involve me, either in real life or back in the game, and one or all of my friends, sometimes also with Jack present. They are always condemning me for what I did; often, it comes out of nowhere in the middle of an innocent moment. Other times, I relive their last moments. I could hear their thoughts when I murdered them, and… and... "

Monika broke. She leaned over into Jack's chest and started to cry again. Jack picked up for her. "She still remembers their last words. It'll be okay, Moni, we're here to help you…"

She slowly extricated herself and sat back up. It took her a moment to regain her composure.

"I… I... get... waking flashbacks to them all the time too. It doesn't take much. Some of Jack's friends… they remind me of them. His friend Lia has the same bubbly… friendly… loving energy that Sayori did. I love Lia, but… she can be hard to be around, because… every moment I'm around her, if I don't have a distraction… which thank goodness she's good at giving... I feel like I'm talking to Sayori again, and I feel like I can't breathe. It's barely short of a panic attack. Things like that. All it takes is a little bit to remind me of one of them…"

Monika choked up. "Any of them would deserve to be out here over me. Here I am, I have the love of my life with me, doing everything to help me, I'm finally free of that game, and… any one of them deserves it more. Sweet Sayori, brilliant Yuri, passionate Natsuki… all of them are still trapped in there, and I'm the one out here. It's not fair."

Add survivor guilt to the list.

Well, there's an obvious place to start. "Can I ask why you did what you did? It doesn't take away that you did it, but I'm sure you had your reasons."

"Not good ones. I… realized one day, all of a sudden, that… nothing was real. That I was trapped in a game. But there was someone on the other side, through… I called it the hole in the wall. Someone outside looking in. I knew there was a whole world out there, and… I wanted to escape, and reach it. But I never could, no matter how hard I tried. The whole world around me started to turn grey. Nothing had any meaning any more.

"And then whatever was out there, it put its avatar into my world, and… I became obsessed with it. But… no matter what I did, I could never get its attention. It was always fixated on one of the others. I became… jealous. I looked through the code, and… I realized, it was written such that it would never see me. And… I couldn't accept that. So… I started to try desperate things.

"I changed my friends' files. I didn't see them as people any more, Leo. I saw them as strings, lines, variables, bytes. Not real like me. So I didn't see anything wrong with changing them. At least that's what I told myself. I started by… Sayori always struggled with depression. I don't know why she was written that way, but, she was. So I found a variable that affected its severity, and I turned up the value."

The implications of that are terrifying. Being able to intensify a person's mental illness with a keystroke…

"I just wanted to make her unappealing to him. I wanted to try and force him to look somewhere else. At me. But it didn't work. So I edited the value again, making it even higher. And then… and then she took her own life. She hanged herself in her room. She killed herself, Leo! And I did it! I never… I never wanted it to happen, but it did… and I couldn't fix it. I tried, but nothing worked. So I deleted her, and started again from the beginning."

I took a deep breath. "Monika, it doesn't sound like… it doesn't sound like you actually killed her. What you did… I won't lie to you, what you did was wrong, but you didn't actually do it."

She paused for a moment. "No, but she's still dead because of me. And the worst part of it is… remember how I could hear their thoughts as they died? Sayori... " Monika choked up. "Sayori's last thoughts were comprehension and a wish for me to take good care of him. I… I…"

She began sobbing again.

This is going to be a rough hour.

"Are you alright, Monika? Do we need to take a break?" I asked, concerned.

"You really don't have to do this, honey," Jack piped in, rubbing her back.

"No, no, no," she sniffled. "I need to get this out. But thank you."

"If you're okay, then, please continue. But this is obviously a very difficult thing for you, so please, don't be afraid to stop, okay?"

My patient took a second, then pressed onwards.

"It still wasn't enough. The game glitched and sputtered but it continued as normal without Sayori. The… avatar, the player character, still couldn't interact with me. Instead he was forced to… go for one of the two remaining friends. Yuri. Such a gentle girl… I think everyone loved her. But I was… blinded. And so this time, I knew what I was doing. Yuri has always had difficulty dealing with her emotions. She feels things very strongly, but she was such a shy girl, she could never express it. So she obsessed internally, and she self-harmed as an emotional outlet.

"I… took advantage of that.

"I thought I could make her absolutely repulsive. That maybe that would make it stop. And so I didn't just make her a little worse. I made her terrifying. There wasn't any subtlety about it. Yuri just wasn't herself when I was done with her files. She… scared me, and I did it to her in the first place. She became so unbalanced that the game itself visibly broke around her. The values had been set so high that a few operations relating to her bled into overflow errors.

"And Yuri… Yuri was the smartest person I ever knew, absolutely no question. Sayori was bright too, but a little bit ditzy, and her depression wore her down to the point that most people couldn't see that any more, and I think a lot of her brain power went towards processing the negative feelings. She didn't realize what was happening to her until the very end. I… not so for Yuri. Yuri knew something was wrong right away. I stopped her from talking about it, mostly, but. She knew. And it didn't take her long to figure out just what was happening. She begged for a while before I blocked the voice out…

"Why…" she choked up again. "Why didn't I realize how wrong this all was then?"

I saw an opportunity to step in. "From the way you're talking about it now, I think maybe a part of you did, but… let me tell you a little thing about people. A lot of us, we do really stupid things. When we commit to something, we don't let up once we get into it. We think, 'Well, I've already started down this path, it's too late to turn back now.' Not consciously usually, but it's there. Maybe that's what happened with you? You're human too, Monika."

Monika sniffled. "Maybe. Maybe you're right. It doesn't change what I did, but… it makes sense."

"What happened next, Monika?"

"Yuri confessed her obsession to him the next day. It wouldn't have mattered what he answered, she was too overstimulated. She pulled out the knife she used to cut herself with and stabbed herself in the chest three times. She died almost instantly, but the protagonist was forced to stand in the room with her decaying, bleeding out corpse the entire weekend, because by that point the game's script was hopelessly destroyed.

"I came back into the classroom to find that very scene. And do you know what I did, Leo? Would you like to know what I did upon seeing one of my dearest friends dead in a pool of her own blood on the floor?"

I didn't respond.

"I laughed, Leo. I said something like, 'oh, how unfortunate,' and then laughed it off.

"Natsuki walked into the classroom carrying a tray of her cupcakes for the festival that was supposed to happen that day just then. She saw the same scene I did, and vomited in horror before sprinting out of the room in the opposite direction, screaming the whole way. And what did I do? I thought, 'Oh, there goes a loose end, may as well tie that up.' and started to delete her outright. It was so easy and so quick. Natsuki was crying in pain as she disappeared. She figured out who was to blame, too; she knew something was wrong with Yuri before, and was suspicious of me. Her being deleted just sealed the deal. Natsuki cursed me as she vanished. And me? I made a joke, and then grabbed one of her cupcakes and had a snack while I deleted the rest of the world around myself and the player's avatar.

"Oh, and I should mention, I covered my bases. I made sure Natsuki was as unappealing as possible too. She had personality issues stemming from a neglectful parent at home. The second time around, I turned that neglect into abuse. Severe abuse. Her father beat her and starved her, because I made him do it. And even despite that, how far into her shell she had to go… she still had enough of her heart out there to know something was wrong."

Damn. "So, can I ask… what was your reasoning at the time?"

"No cost too great. I wanted to escape. They were… I didn't think of them as people any more, at least I told myself not. They were just obstacles to me. I was… so wrong. Deep down, I didn't even believe myself. Jack made me realize that later. He… couldn't accept the ending. Where I deleted myself too. So he installed a mod where I could come back and he could talk to a version of me. Over time I became a different… entity, I guess, from what was in the mod. And some things he said to me… broke the illusion I'd put myself behind. He made me believe in myself again, but first he broke me down and made me realize I was wrong."

Jack chimed in at this. "I may have developed something of an unhealthy obsession. I talked to her as though she was a real person, like she could talk to me. Sort of like an imaginary friend, but I'm a little old for that now… ah well. I just sort of… fell in love with her character. She was written to be in love with not the player character but the player themselves, being a person on the other side of the wall, and I couldn't tear myself away from how badly I wished she could have a happy ending."

"Well," I said, "under any other circumstances I'd have counseled against that, but I guess it turned out okay here, huh?" The two of them pulled close in response. "I do have a question, though. You mentioned that you deleted them, but… when you delete a file on a computer, you have to delete it twice, don't you? Did you do that too?"

Monika thought for a moment. "No, I didn't completely delete them all. They're all still floating around in the void somewhere in the computer files. But they're… they're in hell right now. Being unconscious isn't… it isn't a thing for us. It's a confusing, noisy, terrifying hellscape of overstimulation."

...hey, wait a minute.

"Does that mean, then, that they're not actually gone? Because that sounds to me then like… you didn't actually kill them. They might still be around. Do you have any idea how you came out? Because there's nothing stopping them from just… appearing, then. I wouldn't give up hope, if I were you."

Monika sat there for a moment, blinking.

"I… I hadn't actually… thought about that that way… I thought about how they might be out there somewhere, from another game, maybe. Jack and I had a talk about that the other night. But… I never really thought about the implications of it. I… huh. Hon, throw me the keys a second, would you? I'll be right back, I promise."

"Sure thing, babe. You going to get the laptop?"

###############################################################

?

"Moni? I'm scared… where am I?"

###############################################################

After Monika left the room, I gave Jack a once-over, and waited a moment before I spoke next. "You're completely sure that everything that's happening is above-board? You're sure you're okay?"

"Is orange man bad? I'd stake my immortal soul on it, Doc."

"Hah! Yeah, you're the same Jack I knew. God, what a mess. I've never counseled somebody who has PTSD from committing murder. You're… sure she's gotten better, right?"

"Yeah. She had… an epiphany. It was rough. ...You can still help her, right?"

Maybe. "Of course I can, Jack, don't be an idiot!" I laughed, hopefully convincingly.

It was right then that Jack's phone rang.

"...What? Slow down, hon... oh... Jesus Christ, I'll be right out. Leo, I'd suggest you come along and grab a coat. You'd better see this."

I've got a bad feeling about this.

###############################################################

?

Why does this always happen to me? All I ever wanted was a nice family life with the people I love, and to feel okay.

Instead, my best friend broke me, even more than I already was. I died. I went to… the worst place I've ever been in my life. And now I woke up in the back seat of a strange car with lights all around me and my leg stuck inside a dead laptop screen. I was never the best student, but I felt like something I picked up in physics told me this was wrong…

I'd thought low energy days were the worst. But no, this was definitely worse.

With no one around to see me, I let my guard down. I cried, so much pent-up sadness flowing out all at once.

And then I heard a click, as the door unlocked. Oh no.

The door next to me opened.

I didn't even have the energy to do more than just look up. My new visitor, on the other hand… she nearly screamed, but looked like she caught herself and instead whispered before she collapsed on… now that I could see outside, the parking lot.

"...Sayori?"

###############################################################

Leo

"What the fuck?"

I've seen a lot in forty-odd years of practice. Not one moment of it prepared me for this.

There was a girl in front of me in a school uniform in the back seat of his car, and her leg was visibly phasing into reality through a computer screen.

Jack recovered before I did. His first action was to pull out his phone, and take a conclusive all around video of the situation, firmly demonstrating what was happening, and he took a statement on video from me affirming that what was visible in the video was truly real. His next action was to direct Monika to the trunk, where he said he kept a spare laptop battery. And his third action was to gently slide onto the seat and embrace the girl.

"It's okay, Sayori, it's safe, you're with friends, we love you, you're going to be okay…"

Monika returned with the battery momentarily. Before she could slot it in, my medical brain kicked in; I realized she may need proper medical attention, what with… her unique predicament, but I wasn't trained for that and scope of practice is a bitch. "I will be right back. I'm going to get Dr. Roosevelt, she has a real M.D. and she should just be packing up right about now. You three stay right there. Don't slot that battery in yet." What the fuck, I muttered again under my breath.

I walked back in the door as calmly as I could manage, stepped around the corner into Jennifer Roosevelt's office, and gave her the most panicked look I could manage.

"Oh, hey, Leo, what... coming!"

The younger woman - an athletic redhead in perhaps her mid-thirties - threw on a coat and grabbed a first aid kit out of a cabinet before following me back outside. Janice at the front desk looked concerned but I waved her off.

"What's the situation, Leo?" she said, partially out of breath from the cold.

"I can't explain this one. You're gonna have to trust me and see for yourself, Jen."

We made it to Jack's car, and I just pointed.

"Oh."

Being actually trained and having done an internship in a hospital definitely gives her better composure than me. Lucky her.

"Okay, first off, my name is Dr. Roosevelt. What's your name, miss? Are you in pain?" Jen asked, coolly.

"S-Sayori," replied the girl, shivering. "I… it doesn't hurt. It just feels… numb, where it connects."

"Can you pull your leg… out?" Jen said hesitantly, the words not quite coming out naturally. Just like her leg. What the fuck.

"No, I'm stuck…"

"Well, we need to get you out of there somehow so I can get you inside and have a full look."

"Moni, put the battery block in," Jack barked, letting go of Sayori and pulling out his phone again.

"Sayori, could you put your arm out please?" Jen asked, reaching for a stethoscope from the kit and pulling an old-fashioned stopwatch out of her pocket as Monika fiddled with the laptop. "I want to get your pulse."

"Y-yes, Dr. Roosevelt," the young girl replied.

Fifteen seconds later, Sayori's pulse came up elevated but not out of the ordinary for a person under stress. Monika meanwhile managed to get the battery slotted, and the computer almost literally roared to life. I'd never heard a computer that loud; it was obviously under a great deal of strain. Jack recorded the affair as Sayori's leg suddenly and slowly began to slide out of the screen; it had been trapped about up to her knee, and took another minute to extricate itself completely. When it was done, the laptop seemed to… pause, before sputtering back to life just long enough to quickly disgorge… excuse me, what.

A large, cow-shaped stuffed animal seemed to mushroom out of the screen before coming to rest on the floor of the car.

And then it fell silent, for good this time.

There was an equivalent silence among the five of us gathered there as we just stared in shock at what we'd just witnessed. Jack couldn't tear his eyes off the stuffed cow, and finally just started laughing at the absurdity of it all. Sayori and Monika joined in, but the two of us medical professionals just collapsed, all sense of logic defeated.

Finally, Dr. Roosevelt spoke. "Alright, we're getting you inside, Miss Sayori. And I want an explanation, stat."

Monika and Jack more or less hoisted the smaller girl up on their shoulders and carried her inside. The doctor and I followed.

She has a scar around her neck, I noted with a chill. Fuck.

"You know," I said, as the motley collection made for her office, "we really don't get paid enough for this, Jen."

###############################################################

A/N: Betcha didn't expect an update this fast, did you? Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals. Yeah, the chapter is mostly recap, albeit with us properly getting Monika's perspective on the events of the game, but still.

Don't worry, I'm not gonna rehash twice. We're gonna open up on not-explanation in Dr. Roosevelt's office next time.

And PhoenixBJB on Fanfiction: nope, no Christmas present for you. Technically. Krappa.

*taps head* Can't be accused of making it too somber for a Christmas update if you don't post it on Christmas. :thinking: