Chapter Two: Fifty One fifty Fog floated across the hills. When I was a boy we used to call this type of creepy thick fog ‘pirate fog’. Many a morning or evening in the hills is encapsulated with this type of fog, so thick that a window left open allows it to encroach into a home. The trees and ground will saturate so deeply that someone unfamiliar with such a place would think it had rained over night.
“Eden?” I felt a tug on my shoulder. Underneath the blankets was warm. I had intended on sleeping uninterrupted for as long as possible, it being my day off and all. I tightened my closed eyes intent on pretending I couldn’t hear anything. “Eden!” The second call of my name jolted me awake with its intensity.
“Ma?” My heart was racing. I was disoriented. I could see the fog against my window; barely any light invaded my room through the blinds. “What’s going on?” My voice was hoarse from sleep.
“You left your door open. Willow dragged something under your bed. Can’t you smell that?” I could indeed smell something rotting after she pointed it out. I was filled with dread, my least favorite thing to do in the entire world was about to take place. I immediately covered my face with my t-shirt and gingerly got out of bed as if whatever it was might revive itself and grab my leg. Some feelings from childhood just don’t dissipate, the boogeyman hiding under the bed ready to snatch us for its dinner, being one of them. I shivered at the thought as mom opened the window and turned the fan to a faster setting. Willow trilled into the room and began rubbing her black and white fur against my skin.
“We are not friends right now.” I mumbled from under my shirt. Slightly put off the cat moved to the center of the room and began grooming her belly as if to say ‘fuck you too’. I sighed and got down on my knees, the blue carpet digging into my bare skin, I only had a pair of black boxer shorts on and a t-shirt. The carpet had been installed by my father the day after I’d been born. Being the last one out of my mother’s womb, they’d expected me to finally be a girl. Pink carpet had resided in the baby room until I was actually born. My mom had always said that my dad was so tickled to have a house full of boys that he’d whistled happily laying the blue carpet with a cigar in his mouth and a beer in his free hand.
Mom set the waste pan and the broom next to me in hopes of hurrying me out of sleepiness. Truly my heart was racing, and I couldn’t quite figure out why, the smell was coming through my shirt, no longer being counteracted by the soft smell of fabric softener and dryer sheets. I started to heave a bit, but composed myself.
Get a hold of yourself, I laughed a little. An adult male, old enough to be considered wise in certain centuries, and I’m afraid of some dead rodent and the ‘daddy’ job I’m about to perform so my mother doesn’t have to. I begin to imagine the Animal Planet narrator commenting on my every move. Cowboy up son and get ‘er done!
Slowly I lowered myself under the bed, pushing the covers on top of the bed. Nothing but shadows and decomposition, then slowly as my eyes acclimated I noticed dust bunnies and an old Playboy magazine tucked into my frame, not pulling that one out.
It is funny how the surface under a bed is an alien landscape, like that of another planet. Every normal every day object becomes something else when tangled discarded under the bed. A crumpled old pair of pajamas becomes a dusty covered ridge with which to navigate.
“I can’t see anything.” I let my hand do most of the talking and I felt the plastic ridges of the flashlight I keep on my nightstand on my fingertips. There was no getting out of this, my mother had come prepared. Spraying some air freshener and heading back to sleep with the covers over my nose was no longer an option. I poked blindly around with the end of the broom. The netting from the bottom of the box springs hanging down like primeval spider webs. I imagined a thin cavern I needed to pull myself across, one of those spelunking miner lights on my forehead, dust falling all around as I navigated towards some long forgotten treasure. Slowly I started illuminating under the bed from the headboard down the wall towards the foot of the bed that was darkened by an old trunk that was covered by my clothing.
It happened so quickly and disturbingly. My light flashed on that one last corner and my flight or fight instinct kicked in and I just bolted right out from under that bed, launching myself across the room, hitting my back on my desk knocking a pile of CD cases on the floor. Instinctually I just kept pushing myself back, my feet pushing into the carpet, my heart racing. I tried to wrap my head around what I’d seen. My head was swirling with a whirlwind of possibilities and explanations as my body began to move itself towards the bathroom where it was conditioned to empty itself. My body was covered in sweat as I barely made it to the toilet and unloaded the New Year’s dinner and cake until I was heaving air and tasting nothing but decrepit bile. How had it gotten there? Did I hurt someone? Was I dreaming and if so was this the worst nightmare ever? How would someone stash that under my bed without me knowing?
The cold water hit my face like a wall of ice, splattering in every direction as the world began to move in slow motion. I looked in the mirror, my white t-shirt wet and clinging to my chest, my hair in all sorts of directions soaked from my dousing in the sink. I could feel my pulse in my ears.
“Oh my God, Eden, what is it?” My mother’s voice was garbled. I felt like a swimmer coming up for air, as she spoke I could feel the water rushing passed my face and out of my ears. I must’ve looked disoriented. She was in the bathroom examining the large welt on my back from my impact with the desk, her touch like ice on my boiling skin. As my body wobbled I lurched back towards the toilet.
In between heaves I choked out “It’s a girl,” and then continued to dry heave, my entire body solidly coated in sweat convulsing with puke induced dehydration. How would a girl so long dead get under my fucking bed? Willow was a tough cat but not that tough. The girl’s curled body, in the fetal position stained my mind, her decomposing arms holding her knees to her belly.
“That’s impossible!” She ran back into the bedroom and looked under my bed. “Eden if this is your idea of a joke I’m not laughing!” Why would anyone joke about having a dead girl under their bed?
“What are you talking about? Call the cops it’s a fucking girl!” I stumbled back into the room, the image of the maggot covered dead girl still fresh in my mind, so much so I felt like I could taste the decomposition on my lips.
“It’s a rat!” She yelled at me. “This isn’t funny!”
“You’re right it isn’t.” I rubbed my back as I stood in the room. She was furious with me. I felt sick and dizzy. The room seemed to become larger and me smaller. Everything had a pink aura to it with a dark blue hue.
Despite my better instincts, I got back down on the floor, it creaked with the effort, my mother looking at me angrily. There, just as I remembered, was a girl, no more than five years old, deeply deteriorated and covered in maggots, a Sunday dress ripped around her. The smell alone was enough to make me pass out.
“Ma, you don’t see her?” I asked with my eyes closed. A nervous laugh escaped me as I wondered if I was still asleep and this was a horrible dream. I also wondered if I was finally falling off that high canyon cliff overlooking the chasm of insanity.
“Get out of the way. “ My mother pulled down the broom and started to move whatever was dead from under the bed. I stood in transfixed horror, waiting for my worst nightmare to immerge from the depths of the bed. To my surprise, a dead bloated rat pushed out from the bed, its head missing covered in dust bunnies. “See? A rat.”
“Right…” I stood there, still afraid, the world closing in on me, claustrophobic, my heart racing. “Something isn’t right.” Mom picked up the rat with the dustpan, a snarled disgusted look on her face and made her way to the outside metal can.
Alone in the room, I dry heaved some more, but there wasn’t anything else to throw up. A fresh layer of sweat broke out all over my body. I couldn’t think about anything but what I’d seen. I looked in the mirror above the dresser, I looked like myself but a glazed over sheen covered the familiar blue eyes I knew to be my own. The smell was getting worse, stronger, and more pungent. One more time I lowered myself to the floor, not wanting to look under the bed, but curiosity and validation needed. I wasn’t sure if I was asleep or losing my mind. There under the bed was the dead girl, maggots swarming over every inch of her body.
“Why can’t anyone else see you?” I asked, my lips quivering.
“Because only you can help me,” the eyes of the dead girl flew open, and her mouth spoke as she dragged herself across the floor towards me.
“Oh my god!” In all my life I’d never been so afraid before, and never had I screamed like that. In my panic I ran straight into the doorjamb which knocked me to the floor. I flailed in the air trying to maintain my balance, praying I wouldn’t fall on top of the mass that was worming itself towards me. Part of me just wanted to keep falling forever to avoid the impact. Willow hissed and yelled before scrambling out of the room hurriedly. I hit the carpet and the wind knocked out of me. I turned my head and I was face to face with the eyes of the corpse. She reached out for me, her fingers creaking as they moved strangely fast, disjointed and inhuman. Scrambling to the side I hit my dresser causing an avalanche of clean laundry to plummet down over me. I screamed as the light disappeared trying to remove the clothing so I could see that which I truly did not wish to see. A sharp pain throbbed in my back as I finally got free from the clothing monster, only to be face to face with the corpse staring at me in the eyes, maggots squirming in and out of hers.
Clumsily I made my way to the hall, sore and exhausted from this battle for exodus. Rian was running up the stairs. All I could hear was air. Everything that he said was just a motion filled expression on his lips, his face blurry as I moved away from my room. She was coming to take me to the underworld where she’d come from. I could feel the warmth of flames licking at my body. Time to pay the piper for whatever transgressions I’d performed outside of God’s law. I was on my back before too long, the frenetic need for my legs to move passed my torso, sacrificing it to the demon girl, had caused me to fall. I scurried across the floor, I would move in any way possible, broken bones or no. I reached out to warn my brother as he ran into my room, the object of my attention, and the demon crawled out, behind her lay a trail of dirt and blood and all sorts of creepy crawlies in her wake, as he disappeared through the doorway.
I reached out towards him yelling ‘No!’, but I couldn’t even hear my own voice.
“Help me…” She gurgled.
Hard hands pushed into me as I argued with them to get further from the demon. With each move she coughed and choked her rickety way towards me. I looked up to see the hurried frantic look on my mother’s face as she pushed me away from the top of the stairs, my weight almost too much for her body to protect from the hazardous fall I was headed towards. She looked towards my room, her mouth and throat open and rapid. I looked to see my brother running towards us, grabbing at me, pulling me towards my room and I hit him right in the face-the crack of my bones as they hit his skull loud in the vacuum of my confusion-knocking him to the floor. My mother covered her mouth in shock. The demon girl was grabbing for my foot, gasping for oxygen that had no lungs to go to.
The world became a washing machine filled with images. The world was upside down, then right side up. I wasn’t sure if I was falling down the stairs or just that visual perception had finally lost its hold in my occipital lobe and reality was finally showing its terrifying true identity. My face rested on the cool floor, warmth flowing over me in a sickly wet thick way. Light was flowing in from somewhere. All I could feel was my cheek against the floor as my eyelids flickered. Somewhere in the distance someone was screaming and I could hear the howl of harpies on the wind.
“Don’t move him.” More garbled speech. I could feel footfalls around me, the floor taking the pressure from many feet surrounding me. The world was rumbling in this blurry pinwheel reality. I felt a certain amount of peace being away from that demon. Rough touches followed more Charlie Brown adult speech as my head spun along its axis, cold and pressure and then a sharp sting in my arm. Peace did not last. My eyesight cleared, a giant black blob was on my chest, the smell of her putrefaction filling my nostrils. Her tiny brittle and black hands folded into my shirt, her face launching towards me. I struggled but paramedics that I could see clearly now were holding me down. An oxygen mask covered my mouth as I cried for help. I screamed and writhed until the moment just became too much and I began to twitch and fidget, my eyes rolling into the back of my head. Shouting as I was pulled onto a gurney. The demon disappeared, but so had I.
Hands and lights was all the hospital was in those first few hours, hard heavy hands and blurry bright lights and muffled noises that could have been voices. After what I assumed was a sedative my body stopped fighting and I just observed in quiet curiosity the frightening happenings around me. There was shouting orders here and there, people replying, things being done and then darkness, cold darkness. All of this swirled around me as I stood outside and just observed. Everything had become so frightening, that I just couldn’t be myself anymore.
When I became aware again I was in warm flannel pajamas, slippers and a hospital robe, sitting in a leather chair. My hand rested against my forehead, my body slumped forward, the plastic irritation of an I.D. bracelet sliding slowly down my wrist. I felt hung over without the actual nausea of knowing there had been a bender the night before. The room was clear, but my head felt heavy. The room was well lit, comfortable, but small without being confining. The large mahogany desk a foot in front of me was covered with files, neatly, and a brass assortment of office supplies that were apparently a set, probably a gift. Lots of books on matching mahogany shelves, it looked like an office out of an IKEA catalogue, except it was more expensive.
“Mr. Monaghan…” It sounded like it was coming from land and I was still under water. I looked around, there were well kept office indoor plants in the room. It smelled fresh and clean. There wasn’t clutter or dust anywhere, nice and neat. There was light coming in from the window, but it was dark. It had either changed into night, or a storm had rolled in from the coast.
I finally looked up from under my hand and let it fall harshly to my leg. Behind the desk, chewing on her pen was a well dressed woman in her late thirties, red hair pulled back, comfortably waiting for me to wake up so to speak, glasses resting on her face.
“Good morning Mr. Monaghan.” She smiled and opened a file on her desk.
“Uh,” I opened my mouth and closed my eyes, drool escaping the corners of my mouth.
“You are probably experiencing some wooziness from the sedatives they put you on. Just relax. There is a glass of water to your left.” Everything she said was patient and comforting. Sure enough as I looked to my left there was a glass of water. It was then that I saw the plastic ID bracelet, seeing something was different than having just felt it on my arm, knowing what it was and its purpose. It was like in an instant I woke up sharply, aware that something wasn’t right.
“Where am I?” I asked after I’d taken a large gulp of water, my throat was dry and I was hungry, famished even. My whole body was sore like I’d been in a car accident.
“You spent the night in the Emergency Room. I’m here to evaluate whether you need to be admitted. How do you feel this morning?” She wrote some notes, probably my appearance, and then leaned back to observe me.
“Groggy, I don’t really remember why I could possibly be here. I went to work, then,” flashes of the dead girl cropped up in my view as I was still aware of the room. It was like having a split screen, but the opacity on the dead girl’s images was going from barely visible to completely clear. I closed my eyes, swallowed hard, and rubbed them as if my eyes were responsible for my memories.
“Your mother said you were hallucinating.” I heard the statement from behind clamped wrinkled eyes. Dead decomposing girl crawling at me, or being admitted to a mental hospital, I couldn’t decide which nightmare would be less traumatic.
“It was pretty real to me.” I sat back and straight. I took a deep breath and then let it out slowly, maintaining eye contact with the doctor. I was desperately trying to seem normal, whatever the fuck that means, apparently it means eye contact with doctors.
“I’m sure it was. Do you feel comfortable talking about it?” The good doctor was concerned, I could tell by the creases in her facial expression. It seemed so odd to be asked if it was ok to talk about the very reason I was sitting there.
“It’s like a cattle prod to my brain every time I try to think about it.” The images were like lightning strikes. My entire body seemed to vibrate from the energy of it. The images were thick and bold in colors, black, red, the darkest blue. I looked down to see my knuckles white from gripping the armrests on the chair.
“Take your time.” She settled herself more comfortably and made me her full attention.
I finished off the water, half of it falling down the front of my shirt like a waterfall. It seemed to just become sucked up in my dry mouth, never reaching anything passed my throat. “My mom woke me up. I had the day off.”
“Where do you work?” Dr. Vicente asked, I’d gathered her name from a diploma hanging on the wall, and I looked up at her, the light from the blinds causing spots in my vision.
With a laugh I responded, “A bookstore.” I began to rub my eye as it watered from what I assumed were allergies of some kind.
“And how is that?” She leaned forward, removing her glasses. The doctor’s eyes were so blue they were burning into me as she looked at me. Her hair and eyes seemed to be beacons in the darkness. I didn’t think she looked all too much older than I was. My heart began to thump heavily in my chest, sweat bursting off my forehead in waves. The walls were closing in, they thought I was crazy.
“Are you going to 5150 me?” I asked matter of fact, peering around me at the four white walls. I wondered if the screaming of the insane could be heard in here, or if this was just an office building.
“Are you a danger to yourself and others?” She asked matter of fact in reply and then smiled at me.
“I never thought I was.” What if I was crazy and this wasn’t your everyday average TV sickness like depression or anxiety? It was like every psychology major’s worst nightmare. The memory of my abnormal psychology class flashed into the widescreen television of my mind, the professor warning us all about medical school syndrome, a warning not to diagnose ourselves with every disorder we were about to learn. Nice advice, but not very realistic.
“How about I ask you some questions and then we can decide what would be best for you and your family? My goal is to make you safe and healthy, fair enough?” I began to relax and that mortified me to some extent, this was not really a time to relax, was it? If anything this seemed like a perfectly good fucking time to not be relaxed at all.
“Ok.” The door looked very good, I imagined myself walking through it. Blue sky would be nice right about now. I could feel the heat from the sun on my skin, the earth beneath my feet. I even leaned my head up in response to my imagination.
“Do you want to hurt yourself?” She leaned forward on the desk with her elbows and waited for a response. I lowered my head from the light and opened my eyes back to the darkness and slumped in the chair to respond to her.
“No.” Did wanting to run the hell out of the hospital with the possible threat of being injected with drugs and or being tazed count?
“Do you want to hurt your family?” She folded her hands together, sincerity in her eyes.
“No.” My ‘o’ trembled on my lips, the thought of hurting the one constant in my life was terrifying.
“Are you hearing voices?” The way she asked, it seemed like she was asking me if I wanted a cup of tea it came off so normal.
I paused and grinned at her. “This is ridiculous.” I began to bob my knees up and down nervously.
“Are you hearing voices?” She asked tilting her head. “I need to know, and it’s perfectly ok if you are. I need to know what is going on in order to treat you.”
“No.” Does seeing something say something to you count as hearing voices I wondered?
“No what?” She insisted.
“Voices, no voices,” I answered hurriedly, rubbing the area above my knees. She leaned back in the chair again and wrote out a couple of notes. I could hear the scratch of the writing utensil on the paper. The words seemed to erupt off the paper like musical notes in a cartoon.
“Are you depressed?” The doctor continued to write without looking at me.
“Lady, I’m Irish and I don’t drink. Of course I’m fucking depressed.” I sighed, this was becoming monotonous. A depressed laugh escaped my lips.
“Your mother said that when your father died you saw a psychologist for a while.” She flipped back a few pages to make sure she was remembering her meeting with my mother correctly, the paper scraping together harshly in my ears.
“We all did.” The memories of my father’s funeral and the months following it flowed into my mind. It was a time of sadness and routine. “I would just talk to him about my week and leave; it was a waste of time.”
“Do you feel like this is a waste of time?”
“Not if you can stop it.” I could smell death again. The sedatives made me numb to the anxiety that was building inside of me.
“The girl?”
“Yes, demon girl. I wouldn’t be afraid of a girl.” The emotions built up inside of me like a well filling with water, I wanted and tried to keep my chin just above the surface of it, but the tears welled behind my eyes causing pressure in my head, I clenched my jaw in response.
“My mistake, what did you see?” A long time passed as we stared at one another. My knees were still bobbing up and down, my eyes darting around the room with the fear of its impending arrival.
“I smelled rotting flesh and when I looked under the bed there was a dead girl, but she was looking at me, and then she was coming at me. I couldn’t stop her, or get away from her.” The tears of fear started to fall down my cheeks, my entire body was tense with the fear, and the smell was getting stronger. “It’s happening again. Doctor please?”
“What is happening now Eden?”
“The smell, it’s getting stronger. She’s coming.” The fear was fiercer than anything I’d ever felt before. I imagined her body dragging across the hallway behind the wall I was leaning against.
“Eden, I need you to look at me.” She watched as my head darted around the room, my face turning red, sweat and tears pouring down my face. “Look at me.” I did as I was told. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you. So even if she’s here and I can’t see her, you will be ok. Ok?”
“You’re asking for a lot of trust there doc.” My words and body trembled.
“It is a leap of faith I will admit to that. I believe you are smelling and then possibly going to see something you’ve seen before. I believe you.” The words weren’t contrived. It didn’t matter if no one else could see or smell what I was, it didn’t mean it was any less real to me, or less frightening. “My goal is to make it stop, do you believe me?”
I nodded, petrified.
Overwhelming pain came from my mouth as my lips trembled. Blood started to dribble down my chin as I looked at the doctor with pleading eyes. I groaned and held my chin in my hands as my mouth filled with blood and my teeth began to split my gums and tear away as I coughed on the blood. Blood, spit and teeth began to dribble to the ground.
“Oh my God,” I mumbled with an alarming cry as I held my jaw. My entire face must have been a wrinkle of confusion and fear. I desperately wanted this agony to end. I prayed to any god that would listen, promising to floss every night if this would just end. I was choking on the blood in my throat.
“Please stop, please.” I begged crouching with my head in my hands. “Make it stop, the pain. Please,” I cried.
I heard someone laughing. The sound was loud in my ears as I looked towards the door. Something slammed against the wall and I slid out of the chair onto the floor holding my hands to my ears. There was screaming and yelling on the other side of the wall. I just sat there on the floor trembling.
“Ok, I need you to breathe.” The doctor walked around the desk and stood before me and took my pulse. She started to breathe in deeply and exhale with me, maintaining eye contact. “Remember you are here, and you are safe. Remember your muscles, legs, hands, arms, back, as you breathe. You are here, and you are safe.” She paused as I closed my eyes and started to breathe calmly, but deeply. She took her finger away from my vein and smiled in a comforting way. “That’s much better. Now how do you feel?”
“A little better,” I swallowed and looked around the room, no yelling, no fighting and no blood or teeth on the floor. I was still seated in the chair. My hand went to my lips and there was nothing there and the taste of blood was fading from my memory. I looked at the door and then back at the doctor, then to the floor. I sat up in the chair and looked all around for any evidence that my teeth had evacuated my mouth, and none surfaced.
“What would you think if we admitted you for a couple of days and put you on some medication to try and get rid of the smell and visual aspects of what you’re going through right now?” She made eye contact with me and smiled to try and comfort me. I wondered if she was going to ask me to turn my head and cough shortly and take my temperature in an invasive way.
“The fear is overwhelming.” I admitted.
“Well, from what you’ve described, now, and the stuff you said screaming in the ER, I would be overwhelmed with fear too.” I was getting used to her comforting smile, it didn’t seem right to feel comfort at a time like this. The smell wasn’t gone and it was making me nauseous, but I really believed she wanted to help me. I was terrified to tell her about the teeth episode I’d had before she’d taken my pulse, I was afraid it might worsen my case for release. “Let’s admit you for the night. If you need anything you have them call me.”
12 Hours Later
It was 3am when the phone began to ring. Dr. Vicente awoke with a start, looking around the room, nothing but the soft snoring of her husband was heard beyond the phone’s incessant rings. She answered the phone and switched on the light.
“Dr. Vicente.” There was a pause, she looked back at her sleeping husband and shook her head. “I will be right there.” She was on call for the night. With a sigh she got dressed hurriedly and put her hair up and departed her home without ever waking her family.
“He’s been screaming all night doctor.” The intern alerted her, flustered, not having had to deal with such things before.
“I told you to call me if his condition worsened. What about that didn’t you understand?” Dr. Vicente was irritated. She was devoted to the care of her patients, and when that deviated, when she wasn’t around, it infuriated her.
“It’s a new moon Doctor; we’ve had a busy night.” The intern noted as Dr. Vicente tore the chart out of his hands. She sighed with irritation at the intern’s idea that mental patients were akin to werewolves.
“This is why I hate these places.” She pushed the intern aside and hurried down the hallway in her heels. “Get me a sedative.” She could tell you stories about state run psychiatric facilities, the horrific ones that turn into 20/20 exposes that never cause change, but keep people from admitting when they have psychological problems. The problem was, as bad as the stories could be, the good that people experienced far outweighed. Torture was torture though, and it was hard to put a scale on bad and good in these types of places.
“It won’t work, he’s already been dosed a couple of times. He’s crazed.” At the word crazed Dr. Vicente stopped listening to the intern. Not everyone wanting to be a doctor was a good person with idealistic hope for the future like she was, and she’d learned to disassociate herself with them.
She could hear my wailing echo against the concrete walls far from where I actually was. It echoed in the hallways, and was rightfully so agitating the rest of the facilities’ patients. She rushed down the hall as fast as she could, took a deep breath then peered into the porthole into the room. I was screaming my head off, my entire body covered in sweat as I tried desperately to move as far into one of the corners as possible. I was pushing so hard with my feet that they were bleeding.
“OPEN THIS DOOR NOW!” She screamed down the hallway, barely audible over my screams. Another intern ran down the hallway with a jailer’s cache worth of keys and fumbled through the many he had until he was able to open the door. Orderlies were now gathered around her, and a nurse was armed with a syringe with enough meds to put me to sleep, finally. “Now back up.”
Dr. Vicente walked into the room and closed the door behind her. She was barely 5ft 6inch, slim and muscular, but nothing compared to the 6ft 200lb plus man I was, but she wasn’t afraid.
“Eden.” I looked violently at her, my eyes as wide open as humanly possible. I looked like something out of a comic book. “Where is she?” I pointed across the room.
“She won’t leave me alone.” I pleaded with the doctor.
“Ok. You’re bleeding. Now this is a safety issue.” The doctor moved across the floor to examine my feet, and I completely ignored her. The bleeding wasn’t bad, but my feet were completely raw from trying to push through the wall.
Suddenly I picked up the Dr. and pushed her into the wall. She didn’t scream but gasped surprised. She wasn’t sure what to expect, but was surprised when that’s all that happened. The doctors outside were fumbling through the keys again, screaming at each other that she was going to be killed, but nothing happened. I just pressed her into the wall, screaming at the demon to leave her alone.
“I won’t let you hurt her! GO AWAY!”A sprinkler worth of sweat fell from my body like a dog shaking after an unwanted bath. Exhaustion was setting in, I wasn’t sure I could live through much more of this. The thing just would not stay away and I’d been screaming so long my throat was raw.
“Help me Eden, please!” The corpse cried as maggots squiggled across her black decaying body.
“I MIGHT TRY IF YOU WOULD STOP SCARING ME!” I screamed back at the corpse, just then Dr. Vicente took the opportunity to stick the syringe in my arm. I turned back to look at her with a mixed expression of thanks and betrayal. I started to fall to the floor and she did the best she could with her small build to lower me gently. With the strength I had left I held onto her with the grip of a vice. Dr. Vicente held onto me too and touched my face and ran her hand through my sweat soaked hair.
“Shhh, it’s ok now. You’ll sleep. In your dreams you’re the creator. I’ll protect you until you wake up, you don’t have to protect me now.” She looked down at me with a tender smile and I nodded and fell to sleep. The door to the room swung open and she lifted her hand to them so they knew she was ok. She took a deep breath and couldn’t help but look into the corner where the girl should have been if real. She had to stop herself from staring, but I had sounded so convincing.
***
“Wake up.” The world swirled as I tried to open my eyes. The lighting seemed harsh as my eyes adjusted to it, burning as cell receptors died off. I squinted at the image of my brother standing over me, his hair falling down across his cheeks as he stared down at me with a smile. “Come on we’re going to be late!”
“Late for what? I’m in a fucking hospital.” I sat up drowsy. I felt drunk. I could have easily fallen right back to sleep but Rian kept touching me and talking to me to keep my attention.
“We’re leaving.” He helped me to my feet. Who was I to object? This wasn’t exactly my idea of the perfect vacation.
“Finally, I hate this place.” I mumbled sleepily as my eyes fought for control of my consciousness. Rian put my arm around his shoulder and we walked out of my room and into the recreation area. My head was spinning. I couldn’t make out the difference between the staff and the patients, nor did I care to. I was getting the fuck outta dodge and sayonara mother fuckers!
“You’re driving.” The metallic and sharp keys were thrust into my hand cutting deep into my skin. I looked up at my brother as if he’d lost his mind and I considered asking him to come back into the hospital with me for a little one on one with the doctor. “Come on we’re going to be late.” He slid into his car. I looked at the 1970 baby blue cougar he’d had since high school. The white cream leather interior, black leather top and chrome highlights. All the times in my life that I’d begged him to let me drive this baby and now he was letting me drive it? I raised an eyebrow and looked down at the keys. “What the fuck little brother, we’re gonna be late!” He yelled leaning over to the driver seat where the window was open.
“Late for what?” I pulled open the old metal door with a creak and then closed it with a clang as I sat in the leather driver side seat. I couldn’t help but smile as I palmed the leather and chrome stirring wheel.
“Put your seatbelt on.” My brother, the cool brother, leaned back in his seat and set his foot on the dashboard as his knee rested against the door. “Let’s ride!” I smiled as he quoted Young Guns. With a lurch and grunt the car came alive and roared into the air, we both laughed. When I got to the freeway Rian told me to let her out and I did. Pajamas and slippers and flooring that bitch all the way down I80, yeehaw!
Rian looked at his watch and looked at the freeway ahead of us. “We’ll just make it.”
“Make what? Where am I going?” The freeway was never this empty, maybe sometimes on a holiday before people headed home. The bay was gold as the sun reflected off calm seas.
“We’re picking up Dad from the airport remember?” Rian pulled out a piece of paper with the airline and plane information.
“Rian, Dad is dead.” My heart sunk as we sped through the toll booth at the base of the Bay Bridge. I’d always wished that my life had been one long nightmare and that someday I’d wake up and my father would be alive. Have a chance to start over and do my life right, with the support and love of a second parental figure. I knew we’d all fantasized about that at one time or another, but there was no way my brother would think our father was actually alive.
“No he isn’t. Don’t be a dumbass. Watch the road.” He pointed up ahead and I looked even though there hadn’t been a single other car. The bridge was gone ahead of us. I started to pump the breaks but the car wouldn’t slow down or stop. “Free fallin’,” Rian smiled as the car went over the chasm at the end of the bridge. The world slowed as I stared at my fate at the surface of the bay, no longer beautiful, but instead black and tumultuous. “Enjoy the ride baby!” Rian held up his arms as if we were on a rollercoaster and I just stared at him mortified until I was pushed forward by the impact of the car hitting the water. The windshield shattered and the water engulfed the vehicle. My brother was air drumming.
My eyes opened to a cold shower. I looked around, bracing myself against the wall as I still lived through the car sinking. I took a deep breath and exhaled loudly and let the cold water-which apparently had been hot before my lengthy shower-fall through my hair and over my head and down my back. I choked out tears and punched the wall with the outside of my fist. Water fell into my mouth and then down the sides of my lips in frothy anger. Under the water was the only time I felt normal, that all my senses were functioning at full power. I never wanted the shower to end, but I was becoming prune-like. Frustrated and disheartened I turned off the water and just stood there naked.
When I turned around I saw my normally milky white-in need of a serious tan-skin covered in purple blue yellow and green bruises. I gasped. I was tender to the touch as I examined the outcome of my battle with the demon girl.
“Don’t fool yourself just say fucking psychotic episode.” I groaned at myself and held onto the sink staring down at the white shiny porcelain. I was afraid to look at myself in the mirror. Yes I’d seen my body, but I hadn’t looked into my own eyes and the idea frightened me. I sucked in my lips and chewed on them. I glanced up abruptly working against myself and caught my eyes. The vacant stare looking back at me was ghostly. For a long while I just stared at what I had become in such a short amount of time. My eyes began to well up, but there was no emotion behind them. Did this mean my soul was dead? Here I was staring into the gateway to my soul and I saw nothing. Just the vacant stare of an eyeball functioning on neural instructions.
“Where are you?!” I screamed and slammed my hand into the mirror shattering it into a thousand different versions of myself. Staring at all those different representations of me stopped my breathing. As my hand fell away from the mirror I was grabbed by orderlies who were moving a million miles a minute while my world froze. I fought against their hard and brutish holds and curled up under the sink. I had a shard of the mirror in my hand and I looked down at the opposite wrist and wondered if I could just end all of my suffering in an instant and save the tax payers some money in the process. The orderlies were shouting incoherently as I stared at that wrist, that possible ticket to freedom from this pain, this endless stream of painful moments sent to torture me.
I watched as my wrist opened into black ash and a thousand tiny spiders crawled out.
“No!” I screamed with a violent closing of my eyes.
“No what?” I opened my eyes and saw Dr. Vicente sitting across from me.
I looked around frantic and then at my wrist. “Ffffuuuuck,” I stuttered as I trembled. “Doc I don’t know what’s real or not anymore.” I chewed on the inside of my lip and pulled my knees into my chest as I sat across from her. “I’m like living Dante’s Inferno in here.”
“It will get better Eden.” I didn’t believe her. Why should I? She wasn’t drowning in the Bay or cutting herself open. “You have to trust that I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
“Doc, no offense, but plenty of bad fucking things are happening to me, you just aren’t seeing them.” I rested my head on my knees as I rocked back and forth, just wanting to hold onto something I knew wouldn’t leave if the world changed on me again. I could see her try to speak in the periphery, but she stopped herself at a loss for words.
***
Time in the hospital moved strangely. I lost my grip on my place in time and space. I was never really an artistic person in the sense of drawing or painting, but I spent all of my time either staring at the walls or drawing with non sharp objects, which proved to be at times somewhat frustrating. While Dr. Vicente hadn’t diagnosed me with anything, yet, my mind swirled through my abnormal psychology class memories, and schizophrenia popped up often.
“So what does that mean?” My mother asked Dr. Vicente. I was furiously drawing the maggot covered girl again on a large piece of art paper. I must’ve looked like a possessed child, crayon in hand. I was at the nub of my fifth black crayon, but apparently there was an endless supply because whenever I asked for one I was given a new one quickly.
“We have him scheduled for an MRI tomorrow. He had no drugs in his system. No history of psychosis in the family?” I looked up from my work, my eyes darting across the room in fits of anxiety and vigilance. I wondered when the shitty side effects from the medicine would take over for the shitty side effects from my disease.
“None that I know of, he did have a ‘bout with depression after his father died, but we all did.” My mother’s voice trailed off. Her eyes lingered on my greasy hair from not being washed in over two days. “When can he come home?”
“I’d like to keep him for a couple more days while he adjusts to the meds, then we can work with him on an outpatient basis.” Dr. Vicente checked her cell phone and glanced around the common room. The room was full of people with many degrees of mental illness. At night I could hear screaming, although after my own personal screaming match with the little demon girl I wasn’t rattled, everyone apparently had to have their night of screaming.
“Does he just draw that over and over again?” My mother whispered, but of course I heard her. I stopped my furious scribbles and looked around the room. The smell of crayon wax heavily mixed with the rough brown paper I was forced to draw on. I was tense, I felt possessed and crazy, undesirable and ashamed. Tears, unlike my entire life previous to this, came fairly easy in this environment, now streaming down my face uninhibited. I quickly wiped them away and turned my drawing over.
“Some of them are different.” Dr. Vicente commented in reply.
“I’m right fucking here!” I said disgusted by their conversation. I was also fearful, fearful I was fading away into some unknown area of consciousness. Was I losing my grip on reality? Would I just fade into the background of this institution never to be heard from again? No one else had come to visit me. Would I still have a job after this? Would I be crazy Uncle Eddy to my niece and nephews? I looked up at the doctor and wondered what it might be like to date someone like her. Maybe if I’d met her two weeks earlier at a café we’d be happily together, but the chances of that were gone now.
“I’m sorry Eden.” Dr. Vicente frowned slightly. To her credit she’d thought I was furiously dedicated to the drawing as I often was, and wasn’t listening to them talk.
“What the fuck ever.” In a furious tantrum of toddler proportions I reverted back to a time when aggression was my only form of communication. The drawings flew into the air like garbage during a tornado, the crayon skid across the disgusting brown linoleum floor, and a chessboard with all its movable pawns flew in the air like confetti, the master of which stared in disbelief as the shiny plastic strategic characters flipped and twisted towards a new resting place. Each piece seemed to flash into a real world form as they twisted and contorted in the air, their plastic shell turning into gilded armor. The shiny plastic white knight flipped in front of my eyes and I felt nothing. I’m sure my mother burst into tears at my sixteen year old rage. I was also sure that the crazy guy playing the chess game was contemplating killing me for my grievance as he retrieved his pieces and tried to remember the four hour strategy he’d had in place before I destroyed his fantasy of defeating Bobby Fisher. My blood boiled over and white flashed across my eyes. The worst part was, not a goddamn patient even cared besides the chess nazi, they were all too thick in the middle of their catatonic hysteria.
I sat on the bed with the grey blanket with my back against the wall and hugged my knees. The room was stark white like a bleached undershirt straight from the dryer. It was blinding sometimes. The window wasn’t barred, but it had metal mesh running through the glass. The linoleum floor was shiny and often cold. I missed my family. While I was surrounded by people, most moments were spent quiet and alone. I’m not sure living in a house with four older brothers that I’d ever experience this type of loneliness and quiet before, there was nothing serene about it. I just sat with my head on my knees, balled up as tight as I could be without rupturing my spleen, tears freely streaming down my face uncontrollably. Oddest thing was I felt nothing but anger, apparently these were angry tears. Why had this happened to me? I never did drugs, I was a normal participant in the healthcare system and I was respectfully educated in the science of Psychology. Why hadn’t I seen the warning signs of such a thing? Why had the first episode been so violent? Made me wonder if I’d been having them all along, helping customers at the bookstore that didn’t exist, and I didn’t even have a clue.
A knock on the door, I glanced up to see Dr. Vicente walking in to place my wrinkled drawing on the desk against the opposing wall. She also put a fresh black crayon next to the stack of drawings I’d done.
“I need to apologize to her.” I whispered, rocking myself back and forth on the bed, sniffling to try and suck my tears back into my body, trying to establish some form of masculinity that doesn’t exist, at least not in me.
“I am pretty sure you’ll have an opportunity for that. Any more sightings of the girl?” She pulled out the metal chair from the desk and sat down.
I just stared at her. “I want to go home, now.”
“You can go home in forty-eight hours. That was our agreement,” matter of fact as usual. Her matter of fact-ness was infuriating at times. I wanted to choke her, but I decided that was not a very good way to make my case for discharge.
“Fine,” I knew she wanted me to talk to her, but I just sat there and stared at her.
“Tell me about your dad.”
I sighed, “He died when I was seven. He was a firefighter, he died fighting a fire.” Dr. Vicente turned around and looked through some of the drawings I’d made. She seemed to study each one. I imagined her inner dialogue for each drawing to include comments on use of negative and positive space, composition, line strength, how light was used and of course the lack of imagination with my use of black.
“Is this your father?” She pulled a drawing from the middle and set it on the floor facing towards me. I looked down at the drawing and nodded, he was shrouded by red flames, one of the few colors in the entire stack. “This from your imagination?”
“Nightmares,” I began to rock back and forth again.
“He isn’t wearing fireman gear.” She pointed out and I looked back at the drawing again and raised my eyebrows. He never had gear on when I dreamt about him either. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know what he looked like with the gear on either, there were tons of pictures of him in it on the walls of the house. Despite my surprise I shrugged. “I’ll come and see you tomorrow Eden, after your MRI.”
“Fine,” I stared at the wall and then looked down at the grey blanket. There was a large amount of apathy growing inside of me. I just didn’t fucking care. Or was it that I cared so much that I was overwhelmed to the point of not caring? How the fuck should I know?
***
Sleeping lately came in two styles. I either tossed and turned all night with horrifying nightmares, or I slept so soundly uninterrupted I felt comatose.
“Eden”….
I was standing on the deck at home. The world was wobbly like water or heat waves. It made me a bit queasy. I couldn’t see anyone, but I could make out the direction of the voice calling to me in the wooded area behind the house. I walked down the wooden deck, each step sounding like a dull thud. Each thud resonated in the air like a step on the marble of a long abandoned temple. There were no other sounds, not even wind.
“I can’t see you.” I called out.
“This way”…
I heard a little girl’s giggle and then rustling in the grass. I started to run in the direction of the giggling.
“Who are you?” I called out, the sound of my own voice deafening.
“I’m the key”…
“Key to what?” I stopped running and listened on the wind. A light sparked in the distance, I moved towards the light. My father was standing in flames staring at me. “Dad?” The giggling was gone.
“Son,” he smiled at me. He wasn’t burning like he did normally in my dreams. He looked so young now that I’d gotten so much older. Barely forty-five when he died seemed so ancient when I was a child, but now seemed far too young to have his life robbed from him. Jet black hair, barely any creases in his face. I missed his reassuring smile and voice, everything after he died became anxious or depressing, the world was lost without him.
“What is the key?” My voice was wobbly, echoing, sounded like I was in a tunnel. So many things I wanted to say to him, ask him. Are you proud of me? Will I see you again? What is heaven like?
“Good question,” he looked down at the flames as if they were a puzzle or obstacle he needed to overcome. “Be very careful who you talk to about your drawings, your dreams.”
I looked at him questioningly. “Dad?”
“Just listen to me. Trust no one.” And then he was gone. There was no sound on the wind.
“Hello? COME BACK! I don’t understand.” I looked at my feet, there was a hand sticking out of the ground, a little girl’s hand. “No, not again,” but the hand didn’t move. A man’s laughter traveled on the wind.
I woke up startled, yet again covered in sweat, something that was seriously causing me dehydration issues. The door to my room was open and the light was on, even though the rest of the ward was dark.
“Bad dream?” I looked at the foot of my bed. A woman was sitting on the floor with her back to the wall.
“Who the fuck are you?” I whispered.
“Lily Godwin,” she looked up at me kind of bored and pulled her hair back and tied it with one of those scrunchy things chicks use. This was either a dream, or I would be that one guy who has the chick with histrionic personality disorder co-morbid with sexual addiction break into his room. Although the idea of spending the night in the throes of passionate fucking wasn’t unpleasant, the coexisting thoughts of having some crazed stalker chick following me home and leaving me dead flowers on the porch with emo poetry did not. Then again, what if she isn’t even real? Is she going to collapse into ash or sprout fungus while maggots wiggle on her beautiful skin?-being crazy opens up so many options for an evening’s events.
“Eden Monaghan,” I whispered in reply and got out of bed and stood in front of her. “Don’t be offended.” I reached down and touched her foot. “Are you real?” I asked with an embarrassed expression.
“Perception is reality Eden, but as far as I know I’m pretty real.” She smiled at me and I smiled back, I felt pretty relieved to be honest. I closed the door to my room quietly. Crap she’s really fucking cute. This won’t end well. They’re going to find my corpse without my dangly bits somewhere after this. Her smile was so pleasant it was hard to believe she belonged in a mental hospital, although if I had been looking at myself, before all of this, I might have said the same thing about myself.
“How’d you get in here?” I sat against the opposite wall from her and she smiled at me and produced a bobby pin. “Nice,” her hair was dark brown with dark red streaks that were only illuminated by the light, but barely visible. Her eyes were such a pretty shade of green, I felt immediately comfortable with her, despite my superego screaming at me to follow the rules and tell this girl to go back to her room. “What are you in for?”
“Eden, look I just wanted someone to chat with. I don’t really want to get into the whole DSM rigga-ma-role that got me locked up in this shithole. So look, we’re both a bit crazy or we wouldn’t be locked up in here. You aren’t a rapist or a perv or something right? Didn’t kill your mother or drown your kids?”
“Uh no,” apparently this was in-patient screening of psychosis. Well at least I wasn’t the only one worried about the person I was sitting in an enclosed space with.
“Then I don’t care why you’re in here.” Again with the comforting smile, I scratched my head and pinched myself to see if I was dreaming.
“So you just broke into my room to talk?” I eyed her questioningly and she crinkled her mouth.
“Let’s just say you weren’t the only one having nightmares.” She took a deep breath and rested her chin in her hand, of which the fingernails were short and painted black. How the fuck did she know I was having nightmares? At that exact moment I looked up at my door and in the small window someone’s head was slammed into it and blood splattered.
“Holy shit!” I stood up immediately then looked at Lily who was also standing. “You saw that right?” What the fuck kind of hospital is this, doors that can be picked by amateur thieves and people’s heads being smashed in?
“Saw it, felt it, heard it, yep all the senses are activating on that bull shit that just happened.” She reached for the door and I grabbed her hand. I’m sure my expression must have been describable as a mixture of ‘wtf?’ and ‘I really need to get to know this chick better’.
“Are you fucking nuts?” I whispered with severity. The reality that we were both in a mental hospital didn’t seem to register on ‘nuts’.
“Someone might need our help. Haven’t you seen this shit in the movies? Some orderly or something is probably beating on some poor defenseless nutcase. That could be us!” She reached for the door again and pulled it open. Lying on the ground was Bobby Fisher’s adversary, out cold. In the middle of the hallway was a man, I couldn’t really pick out any distinct features. He had dark fiery red eyes that were glowing in the darkness. Lily didn’t waste any time, with the blood of the chess nazi she was drawing some sort of symbol on the ground, something that didn’t seem to please the fucker with the glowing red eyes.
“No wait!” But before he could come any closer to us with his menacing blood eyes he was gone at the mumbling of a few alien words from Lily’s lips. I raised my eyebrow and looked around.
“Ok if the Winchester brothers show up I’m out of here.” I pinched myself again and Lily stood up, wiping her hands with the chess nazi’s robe. She slapped me across the face. “Ouch!” This bitch just slapped me!
“Yea, stop fucking pinching yourself, I’m fucking real.” She pushed me back into my room and closed the door behind us. “I don’t have a lot of time.”
“I don’t understand.” I rubbed my face where she’d slapped me.
“There are a lot of things you don’t understand.” She whispered. “Do you ever see the future Eden?” I cocked my head sideways and squinted my eyes in confusion. See the future? What kind of delusional shit is going on with this chick? I thought my life was fucked up. “What the hell have you been smoking?”
“You ruined my game!” A grey faded apparition of the chess nazi came flying through the solid door with his fists outstretched towards me. He flew right through me and out the window. My entire body was covered with goose bumps from the ice cold sensation of him flying through me. My nipples were rock hard and screaming from the cold. My heart seemed to stop, my mouth wide open in a mixture of fear and surprise.
“Holy shit,” I began to hyperventilate.
“Calm down,” Lily cooed at me and touched my face. I looked at her and shook my head. “See, you can see them.” Great, I didn’t even know there was a ‘them’ to see that apparently is some sort of membership to some fucked up mentally ill club.
“Yea because I’m fucking crazy, the medicine is supposed to stop this crap!” I yelled at her and she just smiled and laughed at me. “This isn’t funny, for fuck sakes.”
“You aren’t crazy.” She whispered closing the distance between us.
“You’re an illusion.” I needed to get Dr. Vicente to up my dosage. This shit was just getting out of fucking hand.
“I’m a good illusion.” She responded with a quiet voice. I was shivering as she forced me to wrap my arms around her. “The warmth will calm you.” She smelled like roses. I leaned my face into the hair on the top of her head. “You may think you’re crazy, but I know you aren’t. You can see the dead. Eden there is more to this world than what you know. Do you ever see the future?” The way she fit into my arms, I would have done anything she asked of me. I was so lost and miserable, looking for a connection, looking for a physical connection as well, that I was putty in her hands. This chick was an oasis in a desert plagued with hellish and frightening delusions.
“No,” I was intoxicated by the smell of her hair and the warmth of her body. “Are you a siren?” She chuckled at my question. I was enthralled. The world was wobbly again, blurry.
“No, but the way I look is one of the reasons I’m here.” She looked up at me from her chest.
“So this is some sort of ploy? Using a hot chick to what?” I closed my eyes briefly and when I opened them again I was laying in bed with my arms around her. “Did I fall asleep?”
“Yes,” Lily remarked with a yawn. “I’m going to have to leave soon.” She rolled over to face me. There wasn’t a lot of room in the bed for both of us.
“You are a siren aren’t you? This chemistry here is all a figment of my imagination.” I looked at her depressed and she frowned and raised her eyebrow.
“This sir is your dream. I’m only a guest. Look,” she held her hand out. Two of what looked like pills lay in her hand, one red, one blue.
“The Matrix, really? This is definitely my dream.” I sighed and allowed the erection that had been building since she’d held her body against mine.
“I’m flattered really. Well you know what this is then. Red for reality, blue for same old same old. You’ll finish out your time here and head back into the real world with a prescription for anti-psychotic meds.” She tipped her hand to allow the pills to twirl in the palm of her hand like marbles.
“Which one do I take to keep you in bed here with me?” I took my chance, my dream anyway right? She smiled up at me, her beautiful white teeth sparkling.
“You’re cute, truly, but I’m not that kind of girl.” I doubted that.
I grabbed the blue pill and stuck it in my mouth. “This is a jelly bean?”
“What? I can’t have a sense of humor?” She tossed the red jelly bean in her mouth and smiled. “Strawberry.”
I awoke to the African drum beats of the MRI machine scanning my brain. I looked around, felt the erection still between my legs and sighed. Never too old for a wet dream I guess. Surrounded by a white sanitary tube, not much of an improvement, my dreams were becoming much more pleasant than my reality.
“Hold as still as possible Mr. Monaghan.” I heard over the intercom. I had a sudden craving for strawberry jelly beans. Another lapse in time, I closed my eyes again, more steamy hot tears burned the sides of my face. Was I slipping further? It scared me how much I wanted to dream about her again, anything was better than the tasteless food, expressionless glances and silence that I was experiencing while awake.
***
“I filled the prescription for you.” My mother was packing up my things from my hospital stay as I stared out the window of my room. “I called your work and told them you were ill. They didn’t really ask about the reason. Dr. Vicente said you could have some more days off of work if you desired them.” I just continued to stare out the window, thinking about Lily, my one lovely illusion. I wished she’d come back. I had considered stopping my medicine prescription to allow for her return, but that might mean the red glowy guy or the maggoty girl might return which was enough to keep me straight on my meds, for now.
“I’ll go back tomorrow.” I said monotone. I was miserable, more miserable than I’d ever been. I thought often about that moment in my dream when I’d picked the blueberry jelly bean instead of the strawberry one.
“Eden, I love you.” My mother was slowly coming to terms with this new reality where her son wasn’t quite her son anymore. If I could have heard her heart breaking I’m sure it would have been akin to the sound of ice breaking off into the ocean as temperatures rose every year -crack-crack-creak, swoosh, splash. I have no idea what it must be like to raise someone from a beautiful, adventurous and playful boy and see him deteriorate like this. First to depression from losing his father and then from living a disappointing life, and then watch him turn into a hallucinating apathetic man.
“I know Ma, I’m ok. I’ll do what they tell me to do. I’ll do anything to avoid coming back to this place.” I followed her out into the common area towards the exit. I looked at the table where I’d thrown the chess board on the ground. The chess nazi was nowhere to be seen, the chessboard just sat there, it almost looked lonely. My mom kept going as I stood over the board staring at the pieces. I looked around the room, hoping to catch a glance of him. I was starting to doubt that my experience that night had been a dream.
“Eden?” My mother called to me, wondering if I’d changed my mind and was going to admit myself voluntarily for the duration. I wondered if that might make her life easier. I pushed the white king on its side. The black queen had been left at checkmate by whoever had been playing. I half expected the ghost of the chess nazi to attack me, but nothing, just some schizophrenic drooled at the table next to me and I sighed with a frown and closed my eyes. Would I end up like that guy? Years of this medication and who knew? I felt the tears coming again, fear of the future, but I held them back for the sake of my poor mother who just stared at me, unable to kiss this boo boo away.
When I finally stepped into the sunshine I felt clean and warm for the first time in days. I stretched and closed my eyes to soak in the rays. My mother put her arm around me and rested her head against my shoulder and sighed with relief. I might not be well, but she was grateful to be taking me home where she could observe my progress. She hadn’t slept a wink since I’d been admitted.
“Let’s go home.” Rian was waiting in the car in the patient pick up zone. I slipped into the backseat, my drawings rolled up together with a rubber band around them. I buckled my seatbelt and rested my head on the door with the window rolled down. I let the wind blow through my hair all the way home with my eyes closed. I couldn’t stop smelling her hair. I was falling in love with a figment of my imagination. I wasn’t sure how I could become more pathetic.
I was standing in my room before much time had passed. I set the drawings on my desk. I was desperate for sleep and the sun was setting. I felt uncomfortable in my room. I left and closed the door behind me. I made my way downstairs. Bette and Becca were there and I smiled at the friendly faces. Becca waved to me and Bette looked at me. I could see the hesitation in her eyes. I was a threat now, crazy Uncle Eddy. I waved back at Becca anyway and stepped onto the deck and sat in one of the chairs and lit up a cigarette. I was crushed and trying to hide it. The air was cold, but at least it was warmer than the looks I was getting. I wished I had the ability to go back in time. I would have just ignored the girl under the bed, plugged my nose with sweet smelling fragrances to ignore the putrid smell. Now I was living in the after, and I would never be able to experience the before again. I had taken for granted the little moments in my life that had given it meaning. I had been so unhappy, I hadn’t even known what unhappiness or alienation was then. I could barely take vitamins on a regular basis, but now for the rest of my life I’d be taking medication to make sure reality didn’t shatter before my eyes like a million little shards of glass each reflecting something different.
