RED PARALLEL

Chapter 71: Lucid Psychosis

Song: What I've Done, by Linkin Park.

Wrath. Poison. Blood dripping from the curb, painting the asphalt with scarlet red, scintillating under the moonlit sky. He looked up and saw the ceiling tore open, as if ravaged by the hands of a giant beast. Traviz felt his entire skull cracking in sync just to receive the intoxicating air pulsating in the room. The sound of ambulance reeked like a putrid smell from the edges of his view, and he saw people bustling around him, asking him questions, checking his pupils, carrying the bodies, examining the bodies, reviving the bodies, failing the bodies. Traviz was shunted inside the ambulance along with the two fallen angels, and they plummeted to an institutional hell where hopes were frail and skillful hands later tried their best to remove the bullets. Traviz waited by the corridor, hands cold and sweaty, skull still absorbing the ambient like a sponge. He was the hospital itself: numb, gelid, with pristine but nauseating vibes, carrying the odor of death and torpid existence. 

A doctor sat by his side, speaking words that could not be understood. Traviz spoke the language of the dead, the language of the criminals, the language of the sinful. Still, something in the doctor's body invoked the message that they had managed to revive the fallen angels, who were now resting and recovering from the obnoxious and invasive procedure. They were concerned with the after effects, surely, the side effects, surely, all the fucking effects that followed a near death event. Surely. But Traviz didn't understand the doctor. He didn't believe they had made it. Because it wouldn't make sense.

Because Traviz had shot both angels. 

Traviz saw himself holding the gun, snapping it open, watching as the bullets carved a cave in their soul and a bottomless tunnel in his own. He saw the blood pouring out of their spirits. He saw his body connecting to their departure, he saw ghosts and their veils dancing around and ascending to their proper sky. Phants was cold to the touch, still like a fainted doll, forehead absent. G.klo' was shrunk, all his massive body reduced to dry branches of a fallen tree. Traviz saw everything. Traviz knew everything. Traviz stumbled upon the truth, and the truth spoke to him with simple words: "You did this."

"... officer, and I would like to ask you some questions."

The doctor had disappeared and now a mustache man stood tall near him, bearing down at the murderer as if Traviz was an adolescent looking for his parents, waiting for his parents, screaming their names, muffling their names. Traviz looked around the corridor, unable to form words or sentences, unable to explain that the Silver Boy had jumped joyfully to his left hand and impelled him to shoot twice, although there were no bullets left. Miracles happened every once in a while, and his life was nothing but the product of a marriage between improbability and whim.

"He's not responding, chief," said another voice. "Maybe we should leave it for later."

Traviz stirred in his seat. There were beads of sweat pooling down his back, clamped by his jacket, a random form of clothing he had once dressed milleniums ago, when he was free, when he was happy, when everyone had not been killed, when everyone still believed in the word "belief".

"...called state of shock, chief."

The blood from the asphalt, the blood in the core of hell, their content, their mass and biology, poured back into his eyes and he was overwhelmed by a sense of hilariousness and the incapacity to make sense of reality. 

Traviz laughed, picturing his vocal chords tearing up from the effort of existing.

"This doesn't sound good, chief."

"I suggest we take him to the psychiatry ward," another voice spoke.

Then, something in his chest stuttered, and there was real voice. 

"The shot was clean and well executed," Traviz said, catching everyone by surprise. The melody of his voice danced alien around his body. "I'm such a good ass shooter. Ha."

---

"... called Posttraumatic Stress Disorder with Secondary Psychotic features," another voice spoke. "... suffering from the trauma of seeing two close acquaintances on the verge of death, and now he's detaching from real life facts and immersing himself in a story in which he's commited two murders. Any sensory and behavioral deviance is related to his current condition, and what he's trying to do now is a clear token of that."

Traviz had tumbled the water drinker of the office upside down and was smiling gleefully, pants soaked. "I think this cleans the blood very effectively, don't you think? I just need a squeege, if you don't mind."

"And he's speaking like a fancy ass dude," Nate's voice spoke. 

Traviz sat next to him and patted his shoulder. "I'm gonna kill you soon as well, my brother, so I suggest you don't trigger me, especially when it comes to my choice of words because that is quite indelicate, if I'm being honest. The word trigger was an intended pun, because I will pull any trigger if that's what I'll have to do to keep the ones I love as dead as my mother. Who I killed when I was seven, if I'm not mistaken."

"God."

Blood scurried down Nate's forehead, and Traviz burst into tears. He had done it again.

"Relax, bro, I'm okay, nothing happened--"

Cats engulfed by a red sea, the toil of swimming not enough to keep the waves at bay, Christian O'Brien smearing whipped cream along the shore of scarlet piss, there was no shampoo, just two Dobermmans pleading for mercy, and Traviz heard Phants, and Phants heard Traviz, and they talked before they kissed, and the alarm sounded, the siren of the ambulance crushed their bones and made peanut butter roadway a mess where G.klo's slipped on a banana clip and fell like the angel he was-

"CALL THE DOCTOR, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE--"

Beatrice was her name, Beatrice O'Brien, such a wonderful mother, leaving sons behind like the leaves of autumn, and then people stepped on the leaves, the cars zoomed over the child and the child yelled of pain, caps and kicks flying like autumn leaves, so many autumn leaves...

"Autumn leaves... Angels falling on my autumn leaves..."

They wrapped a cold metal around his wrists, and he lay down on a plastic mattress, legs and arms locked. The ceiling pulsated and there was clarity in his thoughts. Traviz was proud. Someone should be proud of him, too. 

"I'm amazing. I'm a great shooter. I didn't miss the aim. I'm a great shooter. I didn't miss the aim. God, I'm amazing." 

Christian O'Brien would be really proud of him. If only he was alive. 

Beatrice O'Brien would be really proud of him. If only she was alive.

G.klo'.

Phants.

Phants.

Phants.

Phants.

"Would I be something to you if I died, Troy?"

"Sweetie, it's okay. Danielle, give me the syringe."