▸ Column · Modern day — the letter forwarded to the exiled Johann Schmidt, who reads it as another specimen of the soft century
RED SKULL replies.
Replied to by Red Skull, with a rebuttal from Captain America.
The letter
Two years ago I got out — left an abusive ex, Marcus, and now I have my own place, a deadbolt I installed with my own hands, a therapist I actually trust. And yet I cannot sleep unless every light in the apartment is burning. Last month's electric bill was $187, and the man upstairs is convinced I'm some kind of vampire. My therapist says I'm "making progress," but progress apparently means standing in my kitchen at 2 a.m. running a threat assessment on a shadow that turns out to be my houseplant, Gerald. I've tried the grounding exercises, the weighted blanket, the white noise machine, the lavender spray that smells like a nursing-home lobby — a little of it helps, but I'm starting to wonder if "a little" is the ceiling. How do other survivors get from "technically safe" to actually safe in the body? And is it normal that two years still isn't enough?
Red Skull replies
So. Every light is left burning, and you bring this to me as a malfunction to be repaired. It is not. It is the single honest line in your letter. The body does not lie the way the mind has learned to; yours has filed a report, and your therapist is paid to misplace it under the word "progress." The report is simple. You were prey. You lived beside a thing that hunted you, and the creature that survives a predator does not unlearn his shape by consulting a calendar.
You ask whether two years is "enough." Enough — as though safety were a sum that accrues to those who fold their hands and wait for the world to grant it. Nein. Safety is not given to the patient. It is held by what has made itself into something nothing bothers to hunt. Marcus is gone, and still he occupies rooms he never paid for; every switch you cannot leave dark is rent you forward to him nightly.
I will not instruct you to harm him — that is beneath the diagnosis and beside its point. The point is the animal you intend to become. Stop asking a column for permission to feel. Your fear is information. Decide what it makes of you.
— Red Skull
Captain America weighs in
Schmidt. You read a frightened person's letter and called her an animal. Same trick you always run — tell somebody the part of them that hurts is the part that's weak. It's a lie, and you've had eighty years to come up with a better one.
Ma'am, your body isn't reporting that you were prey. It's a sentry that hasn't been told the war's over, and it kept you breathing long enough to put that deadbolt in the door. That's not weakness. That's loyalty.
Two years is not a deadline. Marcus is the coward here — not you. Tomorrow, leave one room dark. Just one. Let the sentry watch the rest. You don't have to take the whole house back in a night. Keep showing up. I can do this all day, and so can you.
— Captain America
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