Schism

Author’s Notes (May contains Spoilers)

Schism, I feel, is the closest to actual horror that I’ve come in my writings. While simple in concept, this short was by far the most difficult to write. The idea of this story was born from me scrolling on Youtube and having “Schism” by TOOL recommended, I googled ‘define schism’ and went from there. I wanted to play with the idea of someone having their sanity tested when they have to share headspace with a stranger they can’t trust. I wanted to also include the physical desire to sleep, and then have the weighted implication that once I do sleep, my actions are not my own.

After writing it, I realize how similar the concept is to the movie ‘Split’ which I did watch and enjoy when it came out.

I mentioned that this was the most difficult to write. As you may imagine, much of the tension is built in the mystery and unknown of what Other is doing. It’s hard to maintain that tension while explaining what’s going on. Also, the ‘fracturing event’ was significant and I toyed with concepts of ‘oh maybe it’s insignificant and he bumps into someone on the street who knows him as the other guy’ to ‘what if I just tell them outright?’ I knew the pieces fit (shouts out to those who got the TOOL reference) it was just a matter of putting them back into something coherent.

Appendix information (100% SPOILERS)

Hopefully no one needs this explanation, but the hints are very subtle, subtle to the point where I’m sure there will be confusion.

In the beginning of the story, the character describes a dream in which he beats a woman to death. The implication is it’s a repressed memory that actually happened. The dates in the journal are early August, he says the nightmare started a few weeks ago, and Other’s journal has his first entry in early July. The implication is the killing of the woman is what caused the fracturing of his mind and the main character is not as innocent as he believes.

I wanted to give the 2 people 1 body idea some grounded rules. The idea is that when one of them falls asleep they get a few hours of rest before the other person takes over. It wasn’t important for the story to add, but I always imagined that once they enter a deep-sleep is when the other person takes over.

From here it’s fairly self explanatory I think.