A Hallucination (730 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.7 on 10 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by goferforhire <goferforhire.at.yahoo.com> (View user info) at 2007-05-05 16:29:13 EDT
You'd like to start this story with "it always comes on a monday" or "it always comes after a good long cry" but you can't because there isn't a pattern. It happens at random. It happens when you are in your room, falling asleep with a smile on your face, or when you are in your car with your teeth gritted and a curse bouncing around for the terrible traffic. When it happens, it always happens the same though, so you cut your losses and start the story there, because that's the most appropriate place and you always start at the most appropriate place because you don't tolerate that William Burroughs shit in your writing, no sirree.
You feel the room disappear first. It's worse when you're standing because you lose your balance completely and the floor hurts even when you can't see it. Wherever you end up in the real world it's the same universal swarm of blackness you're looking at. You don't scream or anything because it's all very familiar and you know full well that you're still in a room, it's just like you're blind or something. If you're lucky, you're already sitting down, or lying down, or holding onto someone for dear life, but if you're not you feel around blindly for a chair or a bedpost and pull yourself into a position that doesn't require any faith. Once you've found something relaxing you focus on your hand because that's all you can see and you wait for the rest to happen.
Next comes the man, 5 minutes or so after it starts, like clockwork. You feel him before you see him, feel the air of him walking past you. He never stands near you because he doesn't like you and he doesn't like to be touched. It makes sense in context, you suppose, because the first time you met him you broke his nose, but it starts to offend you after too long. After the little breeze of him dies, you start to hear his ragged breath, and then you can see him. He doesn't phase into existence like you see in the movies they showed you in school where the ratty little hippy with the long hair drops a tab of acid or something and slowly but surely his hands turn into puppets or spiders. He's just there one minute where he wasn't before.
He's middle aged. You've never asked him exactly how old but you figure he's in his late forties at the oldest. He's bald, poor guy, and a little on the pudgy side but you can see evidence of all the muscle he used to have, lying restless like a sleeping tiger underneath all the flab. His eyes are black you think. Realistically, they're probably brown, but they look black from where you stand. He always wears the same wifebeater and faded black jeans and his belt is brown and looks like it's supposed to look like alligator skin. There is hair on his arms and he likes it. You know this somehow, but he's never told you that either. You don't talk to each other about your likes and dislikes or your personal lives. You talk about death.
After staring at you for a while his mouth moves. It's always a couple of seconds before the words start coming but you never think to cover your ears. They go quickly from whispers to shouts and before you have time to prepare, even when you knew it was going to happen, he is berating you for this that and the other and you can't take it. You close your eyes but you still see him, you close your ears but you still hear him. He says things like "you make everyone around you miserable" and "you're not happy here, you know" and "you are going to die eventually, it might as well be tonight," but you've gotten pretty used to those. Once per occasion he drags out his special insult, his choice cut of vitriolic filth for you to enjoy, and that's what gets to you if anything does. It's something oddly specific. Maybe your girl doesn't love you. Maybe your only calling your friends your friends because they think you're smart. Maybe you're sinking into an endless apathy from which there is no recovery. It doesn't matter. It always hurts.
He keeps on like an endless freight train, and once the wound is open everything else is just salt and you scream and scream- "shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up"- but of course he doesn't. This isn't the worst part but it's the part other people notice.
The worst is what comes next. He shuts up, and everything comes back. Your car, your room, your bed, your girl, your rain and trees and everything is talking to you. It's whispering and it's speaking in tongues, but it's all saying the same basic thing. "You're going to die" it's saying. "You're already dead now, your heart just doesn't know it yet." "There are some killer sharp knives in this drawer man, you should have a look." But of course you never do. You're smarter than that, thank whatever you want to thank. And of course, while all this is going on he is smiling his ass off and it doesn't end until you fall asleep or someone smacks you or screams at you or just says your name really soft like she cares about you, which when you think about it she probably does and you feel bad about what you said about her.
Because that's you, big guy. That's the worst part. You're the old man as much as you're the scared child. The grungy hippy with his long hair and acid tabs, he gets to sleep at night knowing that his hands aren't really spiders and his ceiling doesn't really have vines dangling from it with candy flowers with Janet Reno's face. You don't have that luxury. You don't have that drug. All you've got is chemicals, kiddo, chemicals deep in your brain that swirl and congeal like bad hot and sour soup from that Chinese place with the racially insensitive name (Fun Fun Happy China, or something like that), chemicals that just aren't supposed to be there and no amount of electricity surging through your blood stream or counter-chemicals or old men asking you about your family and your dreams is going to get rid of them.
You'd like to end the story well. You think about lying. You think about miracle drugs and hopeful cures, but then you remember living for months not even realizing you were crazy, just thinking you had a bad experience one day at work, so you slap yourself around a bit and you end it right.
It never ends easy. You usually wake up red faced and covered in thick dry tears, saltier than beef jerky. If you're lucky the girl is there, holding you and running her hands through your hair and kissing your eyes and saying she loves you. If you're not you've ripped apart another blanket with your teeth or your boss is holding a pink slip or your roommate's holding a baseball bat or your family is wearing some kind of crazy concerned expression and you smile and say 'sorry just dozed off and had a bad dream.' But of course they don't believe you and why should they.
User Reviews
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2007-05-07 16:51:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by ChaosJester (user info) at 2007-05-07 09:06:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Pretty...
I thnk that thare's a certain amount of truth and perception to be had in madness.
I think that why I embrace disorder so much.
Anyway, this was well written in a stream-of-conciousness sort of way.
Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2007-05-06 14:29:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-05-06 12:27:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by MidnightToSix (user info) at 2007-05-06 11:33:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
I just can't stand writing in the second person.
Submitted by beeltea (user info) at 2007-05-06 09:50:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i think you need to start seeing a phsychiatrist
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2007-05-05 20:58:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Zebra (user info) at 2007-05-05 16:45:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
http://sagewisdom.org/
**********
I read the whole site dropped here by Zebra. I had heard of Salvia a few times, and now I am
thinking seriously about it. Zebe, is that how you get yer ideas for reviews? Huh?
Imagine that....
Submitted by lechuza (user info) at 2007-05-05 17:43:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Homer: There couldn't be heaven if there weren't a hell.
Bart: Who's in there?
Homer: Oh, uh ... Hitler's dog. And that dog Nixon had, whassisname, um,
Chester ...
Lisa: Checkers.
Homer: Yeah! One of the Lassies is in there, too. The mean one -- the
one that mauled Jimmy.
Dog of Death
Submitted by obscenehaiku (user info) at 2007-05-05 17:03:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Pretty.
Submitted by Zebra (user info) at 2007-05-05 16:45:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
http://sagewisdom.org/