Back for You (Watty Awards 2012)

Chapter 9

It was the first time I’d seen Arthur around the cemetery in days. I found him hanging upside down from a tree branch by his knees, blowing on a very confused child’s hair. The poor kid was whipping his head around, complaining to his mother that the zombies were bothering him. He wasn’t too far off base, but his mother ignored him.

             I leaned against the trunk of the tree. “Penny’s gone.”

            Arthur stopped messing with the kid’s hair. “Whoa, yeah? Well shit, good for her,” he said, looking back at me from his Spiderman position. “I’m sorry—I know you guys were pretty close.” He hoisted himself upright and dropped off the branch, landing in front of me. “Don’t look too down—ya still got me!”

            I smiled, but said nothing. Arthur had Penny’s maternal instincts on high alert for some reason, and I trusted her.

            “I haven’t seen you in a while—how’s progress on your Cross Over?” he asked, giving me that irresistible grin. I felt myself stiffen instantly; I wasn’t letting Penny down that easily.

            “Yeah, I was trying to spend as much time with her before she crossed as I could, so… not much to report.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. “I’ve barely even seen you around here these past few weeks.”

            “Well, without you around I had to occupy myself around town!” he winked and pushed his hair back. Something about the small gesture reminded me so closely of Jason’s mannerism. I shook myself out of it.

            “I’m sure you were just fine without me, you seem to have no problem entertaining yourself,” I nodded towards the kid, who was now weaving in between the headstones, bored, waiting for his mother to stop gabbing with her friend, “A kid? Really?”

            “Kids are the most fun! All bark and no bite, those little things.” He beamed and I rolled my eyes. He tossed an arm around my shoulder. “I missed having you around. We should hang out, have some fun,” he suggested as we trudged down the walkway.

            My eyebrows quirked up. “Fun, as in screwing up people’s games at the bowling alley or trying to give kids panic attacks?”

            “Ah, lighten up! Come on, you might have fun. Being in Limbo is way more forgiving than being alive; it’s a blast. Besides, it will give me the chance to spend some time with the prettiest girl I know.” He flashed his perfect toothy grin and brushed my hair away from my face. My cheeks flared, but I shook my head and ducked out from under his arm.

            “Thanks, but I’ve got to play catch up. Rain check?” I gave him as polite a smile as I could muster and started walking down the path.

            “Okay, but you know… one of these days I’m going to get you to pay up for all these rain checks!” he called after me.

            “Noted,” I grumbled, not bothering to turn around. I closed my eyes and focused, feeling the breeze pick up around me as I dusted, leaving the cemetery. I had major plans for today, and I was going to stay focused no matter what.

            Next stop, therapy. After the accident, Jason’s mom forced him to start seeing a therapist. It was the one thing that she and I have ever agreed on—Jason needed professional help. I hadn’t had as much time to pop in on him at school, but the past few times I saw him he seemed a little brighter. At least he was eating now, anyway, Lena made sure of it.

            Jason and Lena kept the promise I heard them make a while back. In the few instances I was able to check in on them at school, Jason had her back every step of the way, and Lena always packed an extra lunch to make sure he was eating. He did manage to open up to her a bit, but it was still no substitute for the help of a psychiatrist.

            And so, I invited myself to sit in on his therapy session that day. Sitting there on the couch next to him I felt weird, intrusive. Like I shouldn’t be there. Truth be told I shouldn’t, and it felt a little bit like Cross-Over-cheating, but playing fair was what landed suckers in Limbo forever. I was no sucker.

            “You’re looking better today, Jason,” the psychiatrist said from her heavily padded chair. She was a stiff older lady with wiry hair and an interesting taste in clothes. I smirked; I was willing to bet money that this woman had at least five cats waiting for her at home. I cast my eyes around the office and focused on her desk. Lo and behold, there was a cat-shaped pencil cup, a cat calendar and a few professional black and white photos of Siamese cats. These were undeniably her only children.

            Too easy, I thought. Just because I was dead didn’t mean I couldn’t spot a Cat Lady from a mile away.

            “How do you feel right now?” Cat Lady asked him.

            Jason was silent for a long time. “I don’t know."

            “Do you not know how you feel, or do you not understand what you’re feeling?”

            “I just don’t know,” he paused, then realized she was waiting for him to elaborate. I sighed and even though I knew he couldn’t feel it, I put my arm around his shoulder. This wasn’t easy for him. “I don’t feel much of anything, I guess. Most of the things I can feel are terrible. Lately they’ve been even worse… it’s like I’m losing my mind or something.”

            “You’ve been through a lot. It’s not hard to understand why the bad feelings have consumed you. What in particular makes you feel like you’re losing your mind?”

            “I’ve been hearing some stuff,” he muttered. He dropped his head into his hands and his fingers tangled in his hair.

            “Hearing what, Jason?”

            “Voices.”

             The entire room froze. I couldn’t move, and a quick glance at Cat Lady told me that even she was worried by what she heard. Jason was hearing voices? This is what I did to him?

             “Tell me more about the voices.”

             “They started a little over a week ago… It’s whispers; just loud enough for me to hear. They come and go, but when I hear them they’re constant, over and over again for hours."

            “What do the voices say to you?”

            “That I’m a murderer… That she’s gone because of me. That I don’t deserve to be alive. That I should just end it and make the pain stop. It’s all true. All of it.” He was shaking.

             I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and didn’t want to. It didn’t seem right to me. Jason had never been suicidal. Suicide was something that he was always so strongly against. And now he was hearing voices telling him to kill himself. Now, he was broken beyond repaid, because of me. My heart was breaking all over again.

             “You believe that the voices are right?”

             Jason’s lips quirked into a dizzy half smile and he stared down at his fingers, much paler and skinnier than they used to be. “They’re getting harder to ignore.”

             Cat Lady finished writing her notes in Jason’s file and I stood up, walking over to see what she wrote. ‘Progressive signs of schizophrenia. Suicidal thoughts marked by the hearing of self-antagonizing voices.’ She slid a small prescription pad out of her desk drawer and start scribbling on it.

             “Jason, I’m going to give you a prescription for olanzapine,” she tore the page off the pad and handed it to him. He was mentally exhausted, it was written all over his face. “I’d like to start you with a low dose, taken once daily. Take it in the morning, before you start your day. It should help you to not hear those voices anymore.”

             He nodded, but it was clear that he had shut off. He was deteriorating faster than I thought. Suicide? It was unthinkable, but then it dawned on me—The reason why Arthur was still in Limbo was because the people he was meant to help died before he could get to them.

             I needed to work faster.