Strain

Five

August 2

It took me a few days to completely come to myself. To completely admit that I had had a full blown hallucination. That my madness is crawling out of my skin and into the air. Escaping my breaches and infecting the world. Distorting it.

Lies. Lies. Lies.

And in that time of solitude and mistrust, the thought occurred to me. Maybe Andy was a lie. A hallucination. A distortion of reality. It had to be. It’s not like me to sleep with someone the first time I meet them. Especially when it’s my best friend’s brother.

So it had to be. It was just a dream, a fantasy. My mind spoiling and going rancid with my passing stay at sanity. The final hours. Andy wasn’t real. He was just like his sister. A figment of my mind. Just plainly, a hallucination. My bones lifted, they eased from their shafts and loosened. Became easy to move. Livable again.

My phone is dead. I suppose, I might be too. I don’t dwell on the thought.

I am sitting at my kitchen table. My thoughts are rapid and empty. Knowing that you are going insane can take a lot out of you.

I hear knocking, just another hallucination. I suppose everything is.

Knock knock knock. A little louder. I wonder why my mind insists on being so obnoxious.

Knock Knock Knock. Even louder. I dig deeper into my haze and find myself sinking into the slumber again. A dense depression seems to be showing winds.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK! A minute passes, then BAM! My brain is becoming a battlefield.

“NOAH!” Andy shouts. His voice is cloudy like a ghost. Mistily whispered. I guess I am far closer to splitting than I thought. I keep my face buried in my arms, sick of these mind games, but it is forced out by a sudden rush of skin. “NOAH!” he screams. He looks like he is faintly glowing. “Kate, he’s in here!” he shouts. “We have to get him to a hospital!” My body is vastly limp and eager. For some reason this feels all too real. More than just a hallucination.

Andy’s face blurs but I can still see the panic and fear. He is still speckled and tan.  Angled and tight skinned. I smile at him, and then his arms reach under me. I must be on the floor. Huh, I thought I was in a chair. I’m not able to move any part of me, I am basically immobile. Paralyzed. Dying. My chair haze wears off and I feel the cool linoleum beneath me. My kitchen floor.

When he lifts me, I feel my body roll closer to him. His skin thick and warm. I taste the heat pumping through his shirt into me. Thriving through me.

Kate’s face appears upside down in front of me. Tears start spilling over. “Noah,” she whimpers as Andy carries me out the door.

“KATE! You have to drive; I don’t know where the hospital is!”

She screams my name. I scream hers back but nothing comes out. “Kate! Get in the truck!” Andy screams, and his chest rises with the words. I wonder why this feels so real. Why my brain is so easily able to create such realities. And make them so vivid. It’s incredible. Maddening that I don’t have such strength to save myself from myself.

She rushes off, and then I am inside the truck. In the back seat, my head on Andy’s leg. “Hey,” he slaps me. Bitch. “Hey, stay with me,” I would like to, but I think the better option would be for you to stay with me since you are currently living with your brother and his girlfriend. I have my own house and you can share my bed. “Noah, hey, hey!” He pulls me closer to him, and I want to be even closer.

“What’s wrong with him?” Kate shrieks her voice entire with terror and tears. She is crying, the extremity? Her hands are shaking so bad that I can feel the car swerving.

“I’m not sure,” he says and looks into my eyes. Deep into me and I smile. He notices. He captures it. His face, my face. And that night. I remember it. I remember his body next to mine. I remember him thrusting into me. Kissing me. I want it again. Wait—no. It wasn’t real. This isn’t real; I should wake up any second. I always do in nightmares like this. “He could have split like Brian was sayin’; he could be sick; dehydrated; he might have slipped and broke something; suffocated; I don’t know…”

Kate’s austere mourning ramps up like a screaming dog. Like a mother that lost her child. “Is he going to be okay?” she fairs.

“Kate! I don’t know! Just get to the hospital!” Irritation. But, he looks me in the eyes. I feel something stirring inside of him. Cooling down and heating up at the same time. Igniting with ice.

He brushes my hair back, caresses it. Then anger piles in. Why is he being nice to me? Why is he touching me? I basically told him I didn’t like him the other day. Especially not in this way. At most, I would like to be acquaintances.  But here I am being the slut-fuck I am. I urge my body up but it is still. Dead.

Or near it.

“Hey,” Andy slaps me, but he is smiling. “Wake up!” He pulls the hair  while staring into my eyes, deeper and deeper and I think this is becoming something prominent that he does. “He has the bluest eyes, doesn’t he?” he ciphers.

“Yeah, they turn sort of greenish-aqua blue at night, but in the winter they are storm gray,” Kate says through her mess.

“How long have you known him?” Andy asks. Still, in fact, studying me. It’s as though he doesn’t think I can see or hear anything.

“Since we were eleven. He has been my best friend since.” And her mine.

It’s silent for a while, and guess what, Andy blankly searches me. My eyes. My nose. My ears.

My lips. The lips that kissed him. That did many other things to him. Things I shouldn’t have done. Thing I didn’t do. Because it was a dream. A hallucination.  A fantasy.

We suddenly arrive to the hospital and then I am being toted out of the back seat in Andy’s arms. Wrapped against his chest. Tight to his skin. Touching him.

I feel a cool breeze and then I feel the warm hospital air enwrapping me. The chemical laced vents pumping poisoned breaths.

My ears are fogged, but the tainted whisper of nurses and Kate’s cryptic whines slip through. All the while, Andy is steady at my side. A nice constant he is. Then he is drifting away. Pulled away as I am strolled away. A pinch in my arm, a hug to my finger, a pump in my arm, a sleep to be reckoned. I fall under to the soft beep of my heart. And then the beep beep beep goes long. A strong, drawn out finale. BEEEEEEEEE—not stopping.

It’s the sound of death. It doesn’t hurt, but I feel my kidneys drop, my lungs collapse, my heart explode. I feel the death enwrap. And and and and and and and

The lion has taken the bait. Has taken the kill. And, it’s hard to love a lion. It surely hurts. Something I wouldn’t know much about.

But death is numb. Hollow and empty. Everlasting and ever going. A place where even pain is welcomed, where the sting of a burn is wanted, because the reality is to fierce. Because fear is too much. Just sad and empty. Forever on. Nothing more and nothing less. Sincere death doesn’t hurt. I would know. I have lived it. The Living Dead I was. A robot. No emotion, no pain.

Sincere death doesn’t hurt, but you want it too.

—EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—