Just Don't Die

Just a little help

"Wake up, Blaine."

"What?" Blaine yelped, nearly falling out of the recliner. He opened his eyes and tried to focus on anything in the dim lights. Who just called his name? He brushed it off as his mind slowly remembered where he was and what had happened. Probably some residual auditory hallucinations from the significant dose he had just taken.

The screen was dimmed, and the room was silent. The media must have had an auto-off setting because Blaine was definitely not lucid enough to have done that himself. He glanced at his phone and read 2223. What time did he come in here? How long was he out? He had to really focus to remember when he arrived at the cabin. It felt like it had been days. He'd felt the time dilation the first time he did mushrooms with his therapy, but this, this was like he had completely lost consciousness. Aside from the initial hallucinations, this time was completely different. The vision he had just experienced was real. At this precise moment, he was more sure of that than he was of this reality.

Blaine slowly slid out of the recliner and started his way back to the kitchen. He was starving. The thoughts about what he had just experienced were almost too much. What did it all mean? He knew it wasn't just a fantasy drawn by his subconscious, there was too much clarity in it. Too much detail and overwhelming feelings involved. He wasn't hallucinating; it was too real. It didn't just feel real, it was real.

The steak hit the bubbling pan of butter and garlic as Blaine continued to try to mentally sort everything. The conversation with Kalvin revealed something; he just didn't understand what.

"Blaine, it's about time travel."

"Who's there?" Blaine shouted instinctively, his eyes darting around the room, looking for the source of the voice.

This wasn't just latent hallucinations. Blaine could tell he wasn't tripping anymore; that voice was real. Blaine quickly made his way to his truck in the attached garage and opened the glove box. A Kimber 1911 glinted in his hand as he soft-footed his way back into the kitchen.

"Who are you, and what do you want?" Blaine announced as he cleared every corner of the spacious kitchen. "I have a gun, and I will shoot you if you don't show yourself."

Blaine could smell the steak starting to smoke in the pan. His instincts were on high alert now, but he felt a slight pang of frustration course through him as he knew it was an expensive steak he was ruining. He turned off the burner while he kept scanning the room.

"Blaine, I just need a little help."

Blaine jumped, spinning in the direction of the voice. He looked around the room again but couldn't figure out where it came from. Was this a hallucination?

"Blaine, I'm not a hallucination."

That's exactly what a hallucination would say.

"Then how did you know I was thinking that," Blaine said, smiling to himself about the ridiculousness of the whole situation.

Suddenly, Blaine's stomach dropped. He had read that if someone had the genetic likelihood of schizophrenia, psychedelic use could make that person symptomatic.

"You're in my head, aren't you? You don't really exist." Blaine said to the imaginary voice.

"I really do exist, but yes, I am in your head. Just not in the way you are thinking."

Blaine kept his gun drawn, just in case. The voice wasn't coming from any direction. He could hear it, but it didn't echo like his voice in the high-ceilinged kitchen. Is this what schizophrenia is?

"Who are you?" Blaine tried, still refusing to lower his gun.

"All you need to know right now is that I'm from the future, and you are the only person that can get me to where I'm trying to go."

"Never mind. I need a drink." Blaine said, flipping his steak and turning the burner back on while keeping his gun in his right hand at the ready.

It had been at least 6 months since Blaine had decided that alcohol would be the death of him. Before that, he felt he needed something to numb his despair, and alcohol did the job well enough. He probably would have continued to drink had he not been written up after showing up to work wreaking of whiskey. He knew without a doubt that the only reason that he kept his job was because the nurse manager knew what he had been through and felt sorry for him. Any other nurse in that ICU would have been immediately fired and probably would have lost their nursing license. Blaine went cold turkey that night and hadn't had a drop since, but now that he had been so stupid as to give himself schizophrenia, maybe that would at least quiet the voice.

"I'm not a symptom, Blaine. I'm telling you the truth."

Blaine searched through the cabinets as his steak started to sizzle again. It wasn't burned too bad on that one side. Just a good sear. Then he saw what he was looking for. A bottle in the back behind the glasses was the bottle he was looking for.

"You can't drink me away."

"I can try," Blaine said to the empty room as he broke the seal and uncorked the whiskey. He paused momentarily to look at the label. This bottle was probably close to ten thousand dollars. Kalvin had given him one just like this at his wedding. It was still at home, unopened, because he could never bring himself to drink something so expensive or something so sentimental as a wedding gift, which would always remind him of his sweet Annabelle. If Kalvin has an issue with him opening it, he would just bring him his bottle from home.

He poured a glass and smelled it for a moment, letting the peat and subtle notes remind him of what he had missed. He loved a good scotch, and he probably would never taste a better one than this. At least not one more expensive. He swallowed the smooth brown liquid slowly. He knew he would be getting drunk off of this, especially with his tolerance so low, but for the moment, he wanted to enjoy it.

"You have to know something about this, Blaine. I learned about the graphene shifting technology from an article you wrote."

Blaine spit the scotch across the perfect marble countertop.

"What did you just say?" Blaine said after a short cough.

"I need your help to go further back. You were the only person that we could find that had any insight into being able to do it. According to the article, you learned it after accidentally seeing into an alternate reality you deduced was created from time travel. Well, more specifically, you said this was the alternate reality. The article was pretty quickly debunked as the insane ramblings of a grief-stricken fool, but I knew it was more than that."

Blaine took another swig from his glass, this time swallowing hard. It only made sense that a hallucination would use his vision against him. That's because it wasn't a vision; it was a delusion. Another obvious symptom of his psychotic break. He wondered if all schizophrenics can understand that what they are experiencing is just symptoms.

"I have never written an article in my life," Blaine said, smiling because he found a logical fallacy in his own hallucination.

"Not yet. Over the next week, you will.

It was true that Blaine had wanted to write about his experience from the patient's point of view. Of course, his mind was just playing games with him through the visions and now the voice. He poured and drank another glass of scotch. It was incredibly smooth. He fished his steak from the pan and set it on a plate. He refilled his glass again, set his gun on the counter, and brought his plate and knife to the large oak dining table.

"I'll give you some time, but if you want to get rid of me, I will need your help, Blaine."

Blaine said nothing, clicked on the 70-inch TV facing the table, and found an old episode of The Simpsons because it was his favorite, both in this reality and apparently another. He started to eat his steak, which could have only tasted better had one side been a little less burned. Half the bottle was gone by the time he had finished his meal, and he could barely stumble to the first bedroom he found. He would deal with his newfound mental illness in the morning. It was too much to take right now, even if he were sober. Just par for the course in this shitty life.