Lately.... I've been seeing people who aren't there. My mom says it's just the pills, just a side affect. But how can you have only side affects and no actual results? I still don't sleep. I think it may be worse now because they are always keeping me up, even if I close my eyes I'll open them and see my dead childhood friend next to me. He starts laughing manically. I think that's why my parents didn't let me near him in the last few weeks of living, the disease had taken over his brain and it wasn't fit that I be with him. I see people I don't know too. There's a lady, with what look to be freshly cut ears missing from her head. She comes every night looking for her baby, she screams at me asking if I took the child and hits me when I say I didn't. I try not to scream back when she calls me a liar because I know my mother would see nothing in the place she was. A recent night though, none of the regulars came to see me. I thought maybe, finally I would get a good night's sleep and maybe the pills were working. It was about one in the morning when I realized the reason why this night wasn't normal. My grandmother, before she died, always said to me in hushed whispers that this family had secrets she would one day tell me, because she knew no one else would. She died soon after and I was left answerless, until that night. I had switched my position 108 times, I counted every time I turned uncomfortably, that night. I felt uneasy, like a presence was there, but I couldn't see anything. There was no giggling or yelling or floor boards creaking, just silence. Then, I opened my eyes and sitting at the edge of my bed was a ragged, worn version of myself I had never seen. His eyes were puffed and his hospital gown wrinkled. There was a cut, on his neck. And open wound that had to have killed him. His eyes, which had been lost in another place, caught mine and he smiled, "Hello, brother."
