Chapter 4

Full novel for sale at Lulu.

There was silence and then, quite clearly, he heard Fiver speaking in the long grass. ‘You are closer to death than I. You are closer to death than I.’



“So how are you?” I’m afraid the more I talk about my problems the more real they will become. Maybe it would have been better to not come here, to let the forgotten remain forgotten.

“I’m ok.” The rabbit has moved again. It’s sitting back on the filing cabinet, looking towards me. I can do this. I can be here.

“I guess exams are over. How did that go?”

“The one class I didn’t drop out of?”

“Yes. The class that you worked to finish despite your difficulties.”

“I didn’t work and I hardly finished. It’s strange.”

“What’s strange?”

“That everything I had been working towards, everything that defined me is gone and there’s nothing I can do to get it back. I should feel something shouldn’t I?”

“You don’t feel anything?”

“Forcibly resigned. Is that a contradiction?”

“You said that everything had been taken from you, taken by whom?”

“Whatever forces are in my brain that makes it not work anymore.”

“Where do these forces get their powers from?” You want me to say it’s not real.

“It’s only my imagination. I know that. But knowing it isn’t real doesn’t make it any easier. Just like knowing the monster under your bed isn’t real doesn’t make you any less scared.”

“Every monster has to have a source of energy, whether it be from solar flares or electricity or some food that’s ingested. So what is the source for your monsters?”

“Electrical activity in the brain. They reside in the energy spaces between firings of neurons. They shouldn’t have enough energy to be able to overcome the energy barriers of my mind, but statistical probability says it is possible to cross higher energy barriers. So I take pills to raise the energy level of my mind, to make it more difficult for the monsters to cross the barrier, but there is always that probability, however small, that they will get through. And in is in. They are no less destructive because they had a decreased chance of being there at all.”

“Are you familiar with obsessive compulsive disorders?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“Are you familiar with the treatment?”

“Not specifically.” Not at all.

“Well, basically it is comprised of facing your monsters. Many people afflicted with OCD will, say, avoid knives because they have the thought of stabbing another person when they see a knife. They think this thought characterises them as insane and they don’t trust themselves to be around dangerous objects lest they act out on their thoughts. However, these kinds of thoughts occur in all people. But by believing they are going crazy, they are enabling avoidance behaviour. If they were to hold a knife in their hands, though, they would quickly realise that they are not going to stab anybody.” Sometimes when I’m stopped at a traffic light, I want to run over the pedestrians crossing the intersection. When I start feeling this, I put all my concentration into keeping my foot pressed firmly against the brake pedal, afraid that if I relax for even a moment, I will plow right over them.

“What if you do?”

“Do what?”

“What if you pick up the knife because you think it’s all in your head and you do stab somebody?”

“Then you have a different type of problem, but with the same overtones of recognising what your behaviours are, what drives them, and challenging them.”

“I can make real people disappear, but not the imaginary ones.”

“Then you already have an arsenal with which to mount your attack.”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“They’re two completely separate battles. The weapons I use in reality are ineffective against my imaginings. I shouldn’t say ‘weapons’. I don’t want people, real people, to leave, but they do.”

“Why is it you think they leave?”

“There’s an inherent quality of me that people find repelling. At first, my apathy and detachment is interpreted as being open-minded and easy-going, but after a while, they start to see I lack substance.”

“What substance do you lack?”

“That’s what I can’t figure out. I can comprehend, emulate, and manipulate people, but just like when someone eats their favourite dish and a subtle but significant ingredient is missing, they know something is off, even if they can’t exactly decipher the omission.”

“But you’re not lacking any substance. You’re full of it. Only, you haven’t yet learned to recognise it. So, like a lump of clay, you can’t conceive of the idea of the final product of a statue. All you need to do is use the material already available to you, and form it into the desired artefact.” I’m mud?

“I’m disgusting is what I am.”

“Why do you think you’re disgusting?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because maybe you don’t see it and if I point it out than it will be easier for you to recognise.” And that will make it easier for you to not like me.

“I think you are very intelligent and are aware of your beauty and the influence it has on other people and that you use that awareness as an advantage over people.” True, I have a way of getting what I want from people, but I know what I’ve seen in the mirror and there is no way I would ever consider myself beautiful. The first thought that runs through my mind when I see my reflection is one of disgust. My bumpy skin, the furrows in my forehead, the length of my forehead, the red blotches on my cheeks, all remind me of how unattractive I am. On a good day, my physical appearance is more likely to raise concern than illicit attraction. Certainly being asked if you’re sick or if you’ve been punched in the face doesn’t do much to convince me my opinion of myself is inaccurate. Even with my hair done and make-up applied and in low light, I could hardly be considered anything but average. The smallest glimpse of myself can unsettle me, which is why I often cover the mirrors in my house, or avoid looking in them. Yet, men still pursue me. Maybe you have me confused with another patient of yours. Unless. Did you just say I was beautiful?

“If I had any power over anybody, I wouldn’t be alone.”

“But you’re not alone.”

“Yes, I am.”

“No, you’re not. But we will have to continue this discussion another time.” No, we won’t, because you will forget me, and this discussion, as soon as I leave. “Have a good week.”

“Thanks.”



……….



The day before our session, I was on the bus heading to school, tired without my morning coffee and anxious because of the crowd of people pressing in around me, their elbows and bags knocking me in the head.

A girl was sitting next to me. She wasn’t anything special, but she was pretty. Her mousy brown hair hung loose and slightly dishevelled on her shoulders. She was wearing jeans, not too tight like most young girls on campus, but not so baggy as to appear unkempt. I wanted to hit her. Hard. I imagined what it would be like to feel my hands pressing around her throat, to watch her struggle for air, to see her eyes roll back into her head, lifeless.

There was no real precipitation for my resentment. I didn’t like her jacket, even though I never saw it directly, only as a reflection in the window. She was wearing a puffy blue jacket and I could feel the fabric of her jacket touching the fabric of my own black cotton coat. I didn’t want her touching me, she had never been invited. It was fabric rape. If she died in some horrible accident involving a drunk driver, it was because she deserved it. No. She didn’t. She was just a girl on a bus wearing a jacket.

When the bus, finally, arrived at the university and the girl next to me and I stood to exit, I noticed she actually was beautiful. I wanted to follow her. She was taller than me by about five inches and I had to walk quickly to keep up with her. I don’t know what would have happened if I had caught up to her. Probably nothing. She would have disappeared into one classroom or another and I would have gone somewhere else. But I will never know because a group of people cut between me and her and when I repositioned myself to watch her, she was gone.

There were three hours left until I failed my exam. This was a momentous occasion, a day to be celebrated. This was to be my first academic failure. I would like to say I gave up, laziness being more admirable than incapacity, but the truth was I no longer possessed intelligent capabilities. So instead of using the time to engage in some last minute studying, which would have been fruitless anyway, I made my way to a bench nestled between a few extremely large fir trees where I could sit and stare at nothing for the next few hours.

A spider joined me on the bench, half hidden between the wood planks and not more than a foot away from where I was sitting. I was terrified to look away, assuming if I did it would know I was vulnerable and come for me. I could have brushed it off the bench. It would have only taken a moment and it wasn’t a large spider, but there was the possibility it would jump on me and run up my arm to my head and be lost in my hair and bite through my skull.

It was following me. I moved down to the far end of the bench and it came up from beneath the cracks in the planks and ran half way across the wood towards me. It moved directly and purposefully, as if it were on a mission. In a defensive instinctual manoeuvre, my body understanding better than my mind that I was much larger than a spider, I brushed him to the ground reclaiming my bench in the name of naked apes and mammals with opposable thumbs and all creatures with less than eight appendages. The spider ran along the ground towards a small group of plants and disappeared. I lied down on the bench celebrating my victory and hoped the spider wasn’t off recruiting reinforcements for a retaliation as I lounged unguarded.

I closed my eyes and tried to isolate myself from the outside world. But the outside world wasn’t a quiet place. People were constantly walking by, talking to their friends or yelling into their cell phones. I put on my headphones and turned up the volume of the music so that I wouldn’t be violated by an unpalatable mix of noises.

The air was warm on my face, the sky had broken from its morning grey into a cerulean blue decorated with the occasional wisp of a white cloud, the thought of a cloud. I wondered how long I could lie there before someone tried to move me. Probably a good couple of days. When they found me, I would be so still they would have to check my pulse to be sure I wasn’t dead. They would ask my name, if I’m ok, and I would just keep staring up, witness to the stars or clouds or birds or whatever was in the sky that needed witnessing at the time. Eventually, an ambulance would be called and the paramedics would carry me away on a stretcher and admit me to one hospital or another. But when no one was watching, I would escape to find a soft piece of grass to lie on, beneath the sky and the sun. A living death, because there is more beauty in insignificance and humility and stillness then there is in purpose and meaning and laboured motion.

The bench was exactly where I wanted to be. A place where I was free to speak my mind to myself, explore my thoughts without guilt or repercussion. Skip the bad parts, replay the favourites, love whomever I wanted regardless of reciprocation or reality or tangibility. Everything was experienced in a state of intoxication without the distasteful side effect of nausea. I stared at a large stone, about which flies were dancing, and thought to myself, you could get blood from a stone, so long as you don’t mind if it’s your own. I wanted to find a way to stay there.

Then everything changed. I hadn’t done anything. One moment I was content and observant and with the next breath the world collapsed into a chaotic overload of the senses. There was no blood on the stone. The flies were eating garbage not dancing.

The sun descended behind the trees and the air chilled me uncomfortably. Was this a withdrawal? Withdrawal from what? A drug? A dream? Sorrow mixed with the air and every breath I drew filled me with more sadness. Would I never be able to feel anything positive without fear of what its absence would feel like? Before the sadness could develop into tears, I made my way to the classroom to write my exam.

Sitting still for any period of time is extremely difficult when I am bored, which is often these days. This disquietude regularly occurred during class. It wasn’t always like this, with me doodling in my notebook and blindly copying whatever the professor wrote on the board. School used to be exciting and enjoyable. I engrossed myself in every subject, I gave my brain free reign and it reliably sorted through every problem. And when my brain ran out of problems to solve, it created new ones and solved those too. Lately though, words and numbers have become incomprehensible to me. Even when I can understand, noises fill my head such that there was no space left for any information to be preserved in my memory.

Today it started with an inane whispered conversation between two girls sitting in front of me, the topic revolving around which toppings they preferred on their Subway sandwiches. Then there was the irritating scratching of paper moving across paper while sixty students furiously wrote their names on their test books in preparation for the announcement to begin. People breathing. Chalk scratching. Begin.

I was sitting at the back of the class, at the end of the last row as close to the door as I could position myself, so that I could leave as soon as I had answered as many questions as I could in my current condition; I gave myself fifteen minutes.

I had tried to prepare myself for this. I reviewed the homework, wrote out the formulas. It seemed simple enough. But I found myself staring at the first line of my answer to the first question trying to recall the next step. I knew what the answer was supposed to be, but there was a mathematical function I couldn’t remember how to perform. It was a simple integral I had done a thousand times before, but all I could do was sit and stare at the symbols on the page while my brain tried to organise the pieces into a comprehensible language. Each time the solution was about to make itself known to me, I would forget what the question was and have to start all over again. I doodled on my paper, wrote down some formulas (which I would later discover were correct) and crossed them out. The strain of this simple task was becoming unbearable. It was too embarrassing to leave in the middle of the test, everybody knows the first person to leave isn’t the brightest, so I tried to distract myself from humiliation with more doodles.

There was a poster at the front of the room that instructed in big, black letters, ‘Don’t Pipette By Mouth’. The clock at the front of the room ticked away the seconds, heavily and slowly. The noise of pencils scratching paper combined with the knowledge that I would not finish this exam with merit instilled in me the desire to do something physical.

Maybe I could run back and forth at the front of the classroom ramming myself into the walls. It probably wouldn’t have even fazed anybody, as involved with their test writing as they were. Like those cats who can’t see horizontal lines because they were raised in an environment where they were only exposed to vertical lines so they just walk into bars set up horizontally across their path, a crazy girl running into walls is so outside the scope of these student’s vision that they would fail to see me. Though they might wonder about the persistent, repeating thump, alternately resounding from the walls on either side of the room.

Tick, tick, tick. My enduring presence at the exam was a masochistic reminder of what I used to be, what I should have been able to become, and what I am now - invisible and useless. But I still couldn’t leave.

When it was over, I was expecting a feeling of devastation, but there was nothing. No anger, no self-hatred, no guilt, no depression. For a time, I was an emotional wasteland. Failure begets serenity. With me dropping out of two classes, failing another, and barely passing the fourth, it will be a mediocre finish to what should have been a blemish free academic career. I wanted to finish well, graduate with pride. I tried. But there just wasn’t any room left inside my brain with all the shadows that have taken up residence there.

On the way home, again during rush hour, there was a kid on the bus. He couldn’t sit still. He was crawling on the ground between people’s legs and spinning around in circles. ‘Isn’t this amazing’ he said to his slurpee drinking, young mother. I thought so, even if everyone else on the bus thought the kid was a deviant.

His mother was constantly reprimanding him for not acting ‘normal’. I felt sad for him. He was too young to be feeling like that, without control or restraint, and too young to comprehend what was happening. For a while, I thought he was some part of me, a voice in my head, or an imagining of my psychosis. He might have been.

The guy in the seat next to me was writing in a journal. I was curious what he was writing, so as I looked out the window, I snuck a quick glance down at his notebook. He had written a woman’s name over and over again. Laura. One sketch in particular was very detailed and pretty, the L curling under itself and underlining the rest of the letters. I wondered who this woman was he was obsessing over and if she was thinking about him too. The guy looked out the window and he had dreams and sadness in him. She probably didn’t love him.