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I sat in silence, alternating my gaze between the room outside and Toby. Since the woman was shot, and Toby saw her with a gunshot wound, is it just a coincidence, or does it have a deeper meaning?
“Clark, this can’t be just a coincidence,” he said.
I didn’t know what to think about it; I knew Toby had his periods, just like me, when he believed in absurd things. Once he tried to convince me that pigeons were small government robots, and that he knows what he is talking about, without any proofs, but after many visits to his caregivers and proving to him by various metods that what he said was nonsense, he simply gave up. But it was never like this. What he said had its basis.
“I know it seems like I’m panicking, like im delusional, but it’s not like that,” Toby said. “Usually, I’m scared of my hallucinations, but this? This is some worse shit.”
“Okay, we’ll see how it unfolds. For now, I have to go back. I’m telling you, paperwork,” I said indifferently.
“You don’t believe me… You just don’t believe me,” he said.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just… I don’t know. I’m leaving now, thanks for the invitation,” I replied, getting up.
As I left the room and took a step on the dubious planks of the second floor, he said:
“This… Our illness, it’s not an ordinary illness. You have to believe me, stop taking the meds, see what I mean,” he said convincingly.
“Sure, I’ll see what I can do,” I said, with another hint of indifference in my voice.
“Even if you don’t do it, you’ll find out sooner or later.”
As I got into the car and closed the door, I kept thinking about what he said, that this illness is not something normal. Of course it’s not normal. Delusions? Hallucinations? Frequent speech problems? Psychotic states? I’m not saying we’re abnormal, but this illness certainly interferes with our lives.
As I drove home, I went into the store to get groceries for dinner, then went home to attend to, ahem, “paperwork.” In reality, it was just an excuse; there was no paperwork, and there never would be. I can’t do them, and I get lost in them, not knowing what is for what. After returning, I left the groceries and sat down exhausted on the couch, the soft mattress and pleasant fabric of the sofa lulling me to sleep while watching TV, even though it was 5pm. I was very sleepy; after 15 minutes, I was already embraced by the arms of Morpheus.
I had a nightmare; I stood in darkness, in a void so dark I couldn’t see where it began and where it ended, and in front of me stood a person… It was Toby. He stared deeply into my eyes as if he wanted to read what I was currently thinking. I didn’t feel like I was dreaming, more like in a lucid dream; I knew I was asleep. We stood like that for about a minute, after which Toby said:
“You will believe me, and I know how to do it, stop taking the meds, stop taking the meds, stop taking the meds, stop taking the meds, stop taking the meds, stop taking the meds, stop taking the meds, stop taking the meds,” he repeated.
In the void, in the catatonic sound of Toby’s voice repeating to stop taking the meds. In the distance, I saw a lots, lots of bright silhouettes, all of them started approaching me at a tremendous speed until I was surrounded by all of them, all repeating one thing to me… “Stop taking the meds.”
During the cacophony of a thousand voices, resembling an orchestra coaxing me towards wrongdoing, Toby advanced step by step, his gaze locked deeply into my eyes. It felt as if he were piercing through my body with his stare, delving into my mind. I couldn’t move, though I desperately wanted to. I wanted to run in the opposite direction, to escape, but my body refused to obey. Toby reached out, clasping his hand around my throat and squeezing tightly.
“What the… Fuck… are you doing?” I struggled to articulate.
“I’ll make you believe, trust me,” he said convincingly. “When you wake up, say that you understand what you hear.”
The chorus of white silhouettes chanting “Stop taking the meds” remained audible in the distance.
“Oh… Fuck… It… Hurts,” I uttered, drifting away from the dream with those final words.
I opened my eyes, finding myself in my living room. I could move my body, but something was pressing down on me, compressing my throat. I struggled to draw in air, finding it more difficult than I had anticipated. As my brain fully awakened, I recalled the words from the dream.
“I… I… I understand,” I managed to wheeze.
Instantly, the pressure lifted from my throat, and I jerked up, falling off the couch onto the hard floor, hitting my head hard.
“Fuuuck…” I cursed at the fall.
My throat burned like hell and continued to ache from the amount of force used; I was fully awake, yet I still felt as if something thight was constricting my throat.
After 30 minutes of panicking, I sat up on the couch, thinking about the dream and what happened. “There is no way it was just a nightmare. What the fuck was that?!” I said out loud.
I got up and went to the bathroom to wash my face with cold water. After washing my face, I looked into the mirror. Shocked, I examined my neck. It was all red and blue. “What the fuck” - I said out loud. After about two hours, the marks disappeared without the trace.
The next day, while preparing food for work, still shocked from what i experienced yesterday (I couldn’t sleep the whole night), I received a call. It was a friend from the circle, the name doesn’t matter; what matters is what I heard.
“Toby is dead; they say it was a suicide.”
The pan, along with what was on it, slipped from my hands, crashing loudly onto the tiles. I stood in silence for a moment that seemed like an eternity.
“He… He what?” I asked, still stunned.
“What you heard, he hang himself, see you around,” he replied.
His voice contained not an ounce of emotion; I know he also had a good relationship with Toby, most likely he was also going through this.
After half an hour of sitting in the chair, staring only at a small point on the wall, I snapped out of it. I called my boss to say I was sick and couldn’t come to work. I work in IT, as an automated tester; they often have replacements for me, so it wasn’t a problem.
For a few hours of sitting and not knowing what to do and wondering why, I remembered the dream.
“You will believe me, and I know how to do it.”
“There is no fucking way…” I said incredulously.
I got up, opened the medicine cabinet, and stared at them for God knows how long. Antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, antidepressants, painkillers for mood stabilizers because of headaches and such, all to alleviate symptoms. Of course, not fully; sometimes I hear things that aren’t there, I fall into sudden depressive states, psychotic states, but I manage with them; hallucinations are limited only to sounds.
After staring at them, I realized that I didn’t take them yesterday, and nothing happened. I decided… I took everything, threw them in the trash, and closed it. “Nothing will happen to me; it’s not something I haven’t already experienced. I’ll manage.” I convinced myself.
I turned towards the living room, after the first 3 steps on the icy cold tiles, because I forgot to turn on the heating through all this, I heard… The first sign of what was to come…
“Well done.”