“Time to wake up!” Rosie said, shaking my shoulder. My eyes flew open and I yelled. She put her hands on my shoulders. “It’s me! It’s alright! It’s time for school!”
I calmed down. “Rosie? Oh I had a terrible dream. It was so horrible.”
She nodded at me and ran her hand over my head. “It’s okay Charlie. It’s over. Get ready for school now.” I got up and got my things and headed for the bus.
***
I thought about my dream all through my morning classes. Terri was a girl I’d really liked. She was so nice and had such a great smile. But I’d never been able to tell her. Maybe she liked me too. There was no way to know now that I’d moved away. Sometimes, I thought about her and I wondered what she was doing. Did she ever think about me? In my dream I hadn’t been able to protect her from the Gratitude Doctor. Was he trying to tell me something?
The teacher called on me a couple times in my morning classes and I didn’t even know what the question was. I’d zoned out so much she sounded like a foghorn. Everyone laughed at me when I tried to stutter out an answer.
At lunch, I sat by myself. That’s how I’d been spending my lunches ever since Paul shoved me into the girls’ bathroom. But that day, he and his friends walked over to my table. He smacked the bottom of my lunch tray and all my food went flying.
“I hear you’re crazy now,” Paul said to me.
“What?” I asked Paul.
I stared at him. Was he talking about Dr. Schumann? The pills? How could he know? But then it hit me. In the waiting room, there was a girl I thought I recognized. It looked like she was waiting for someone else. I guess gossip travels fast.
“You heard me. You’re crazy, right?”
I stood up. He didn’t seem to like that much because he and his friends grabbed my arms and started punching me.
“Crazy bastard. Guess mental retardation runs in your family, huh? Is that why you’re dad’s a circus freak?”
I began to cry, and in that moment I’d never hated my dad more. I imagined him dying and it made me feel happier than I’d felt in a long time. A second later, I felt awful. But it was too late. The Gratitude Doctor’s cloudy head filled Paul’s face and he spoke to me in his weird, gravelly voice. It was like the whole world had come to a stop and it was just me and him.
“What did I tell you would happen next time, Charlie?”
“Please don’t do that. Please!” I shouted.
“‘Please’ is not an answer! What did I tell you would happen, Charlie?” he screamed at me.
“You’d make me cut pieces off of Daddy,” I said, quietly.
“So what’s going to happen now?” he asked.
“No! No!” I screeched.
“There’s one way out Charlie. One way to make me go away.”
“What is it?” I asked, tears streaming down my face. I’ll do it. I’ll do anything. Just leave me alone!
The Gratitude Doctor smiled and handed me a pocket knife.
“Life for life. I’ll trade you Charlie. I’ll trade you your family’s life for Paul’s.”
I shook my head. “No. I can’t kill someone. Why? Why would you want me to kill him? Why are you doing this to me?”
The Gratitude Doctor cocked his head at me and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Oh Charlie, don’t you see? I’m trying to make you better. Your whole life you’ve let people like Paul pick on you. You’ve been stupid and weak and pointless. This is your chance to matter Charlie. Stand up for yourself. Do it, or I swear to you this will happen.”
He touched my head and I saw another movie play behind my eyes. In this one my family died in ways so bad I don’t think I can write them down. I don’t know all the words. But it took weeks. They were starving, and there wasn’t much left of them. They were drowning, but they never quite drowned. Pieces got cut off of them but there was always just enough left to keep them going. And behind all of it the Gratitude Doctor was laughing. It was the scariest thing I’d ever heard because the more horrifying it got the harder he laughed.
Finally, Daddy, Mommy and Rosie were begging him to kill them.
Please, Rosie said, weakly, with a shattered throat, and reached out with a skinless hand.
Let us die, Mommy said, kneeling on broken knees and rasping with tortured lips.
I don’t want to feel this anymore, Daddy said, clasping ruined hands in front of a mutilated chest.
And so the Gratitude Doctor did what they said and killed them all.
I snapped out of it, and Paul was still punching me, but I realized I was still holding the knife. As the next punch hit my gut I felt angrier than I’ve ever felt in my life. I took the knife and cut the boys’ hands that were holding me. They yelled and let me go. Paul’s eyes went wide and he tried to run away, but I was on top of him holding the knife over his face and shouting.
He shouted back: Please! Don’t!
The knife was shaking in my hand, and I wiped snot out of my nose. I remembered what the Gratitude Doctor had showed me. I remembered all the terrible things that were going to happen if I let Paul go. But then he started to cry. I let the knife go and it clattered to the ground and I fell down on the ground next to him, crying too.
***
They expelled me after that. Before lunch was even over, I got kicked out of school, and they set up a special bus to take me home. The whole ride there I thought of Terri and my dream. I thought about how I couldn’t protect her. It was so horrible to watch the Gratitude Doctor hurting her. It was the worst thing in the world to not be able to help someone that you love.
When I got home, even before I pushed open the door I knew something was wrong. It was too loose, like somebody had busted it off the wall. When I walked inside I almost threw up from the smell.
Mommy, Rosie and Daddy were dead on the floor. They looked just like how the Gratitude Doctor had showed me. Their skin was hanging in these weird patterns on their bodies, and they looked so so thin. Everywhere you looked on their bodies there was something more wrong with them.
When the police came they found me hugging Rosie and screaming. They had to work really hard to pull me off of her. I asked them later on what I was screaming, and they said that they thought it was: “I was a good boy!”
***
That was how I ended up here, in the hospital. There are a lot of doctors here who talk to me about what happened, and eventually I told them all about the Gratitude Doctor. They listened at first and didn’t say much to me. After a while, they told me about a lot of new words and ideas I’d never heard of before. They said things like “coping mechanism,” “paranoid delusion,” and “projection.”
They told me that there was a bad man who hurt my family, and that the police had caught him. They said he’d kept us locked in our house for three weeks and made me watch while he’d done those things to my parents and sister. The man’s name was Paul. Apparently, I’d managed to get a knife and stab Paul and call the police.
That was the story the doctors told me, anyway. I don’t remember anything like that.
They made me take the pills in the hospital. I fought them and tried to make them stop. I remembered what the Gratitude Doctor had said about taking them, and I didn’t want to. But they forced my mouth open and shoved the pills inside. Afterwards, I would try and make myself throw up, but they would tie me down and not let me.
When I took the pills I saw things, like when the Gratitude Doctor made me see things. As I was tied to the bed I would see Daddy stumbling into the room with his body torn and bloody and he would put his hand on my head and get blood all over me and ask: Why did you take the pill Charlie?
Mommy and Rosie would stumble in beside him and they’d all start asking me together, in one, scary voice: Why’d you take the pill Charlie? Don’t you love us? Why didn’t you protect us, Charlie?
I screamed when they did that. I screamed so loud sometimes the doctors would come in to check on me. But then I’d wake up and they wouldn’t be there. The doctors told me what they thought was real. I told them what I think is real. How am I supposed to know who’s right? All I know is that everything the Gratitude Doctor told me would happen happened. We learned about the scientific method in class. When you have an experiment and it keeps getting the same results, your theory is usually right. The Gratitude Doctor had a lot of experiments that kept being right.
Now I don’t have to stay in the hospital all the time. I just go back to do therapy once in a while. I live with another family and they let me use the computer for a little bit every day. I’ve been writing all this out so maybe it’ll make sense to me, or maybe to you. The doctors don’t believe me, but maybe you will.
But today, we’re doing art therapy. We’re supposed to be making something to put on the Gratitude Wall. It’s a big wall in the Day Room that has a bunch of stars on it with our names on them: one for each of us. Everybody’s star has something on it except for mine. Dr. Gary asked me why I hadn’t put anything on my star. Wasn’t I grateful for anything? Wasn’t there something, at least, I was grateful for?
So I look at the star, and a tear runs down my cheek as I think about my parents and my sister. Because I can’t forget them, ever. They need me to… to remember them, and love them like I do. And I need to remember… the beautiful people they were. I miss them so much.
I miss them so, so much.