Unhinged

by Shelley R. Pickens

  As usual, during a lunch cycle, there are tons of people sitting around chatting as they eat their lunch. I begin to search for Logan as I try to figure out why he chose this memory to show me. I finally find him, sitting on top of the lunch table across the way, shooting the breeze with his baseball teammates.

  He's healthy and gorgeous in the dark green T-shirt I love and his usual jeans. He is smiling and laughing at something one of his friends said, acting like a teenager without a care in the world—just as it should be. Sadness fills me as I see how great his life used to be. Until I came along. Of course, this would be one of his happiest memories, one that doesn’t include me. Seeing this memory reminds me how much he gave up to be part of my cursed life, how unfair life can be when it comes to love.

  As I watch him talking, I see that he intermittently goes from looking at his friends to checking out something behind him. He's done it four times since I began watching him. Whatever fascinates him can't be something he hears, because the cafeteria is as loud as usual. I look around, curious as to what keeps making him look behind him. When I finally see what holds his gaze, my mouth drops open like a bad scene in a movie.

  Two tables back from Logan, surrounded by empty chairs, sits me: eating silently and making no eye contact with anyone. As usual, everyone is avoiding me like I have the plague. I help this notion take root by placing a constant look of scorn upon my face, contempt for the world shining brightly in my blue eyes.

  I walk closer to my memory self and notice that I am wearing darker eye makeup than usual. I only do that when I am nervous, so I’m guessing today must have been my first day at this school. So this is one of Logan’s favorite memories—the day he first laid eyes on me. Gratefulness and love fill me. What I thought was the worst thing that could happen to him, he sees as the best. Perhaps we are all destined to fall for that one person that is able to see us as we wish we could see ourselves—perfectly imperfect.

  My eyes tear up as the need to save Logan almost breaks me. I can’t lose the one person that loves me unconditionally, the one and only boy that may ever love me. I want to hug Logan, hold him close and protect him. But I know this is just a memory, a copy of something that has already happened. I hug myself to ward off the threat of things that cannot be, and hopefully, preserve the desires that must prevail.

  From outside, I hear a sudden deep thundering in the distance. It sounds just like a freight train as it echoes throughout the rafters of the old cafeteria. Logan and I are the only two people that turn toward the roaring sound. I run outside to see what's coming, though deep inside I already know. I race as fast as I can to the outdoor courtyard attached to the cafeteria building and jump up onto one of the circular metal table where seniors eat. Up ahead in the distance, I see a black swirling tornado at least a mile wide making its way towards us—and it’s aiming straight for the school. Out of nowhere, Logan appears beside me.

  “It's almost here,” he states calmly. “You have to leave, now.”

  “I can't. I have to figure out how to get rid of the tornado before it hurts you.”

  “It's not me it wants,” he says sadly, as he takes my hand into his.

  Even though I'm afraid to ask, I know I have to. “Who’s it after then?”

  “You. It's coming for you.”

  For some reason, this answer doesn’t surprise me. No matter how hard I try to have a normal life, the darkness always seems to find me. That’s the reason it’s called a curse. “It's okay, Logan,” I say in a soft voice, squeezing his hand for reassurance. “I can handle it. Just please go back into the cafeteria. I don't want it to take us both.”

  Logan opens his mouth to protest, but I silence him by placing my fingers over his lips.

  “You are already my hero, Logan. You've saved my life and my soul just by loving me. Now, it’s my turn to save you.” I kiss him lightly on the lips, then take off running towards the tornado. It isn't long before I’m swept up within its strong hands and my world is once again thrown into chaos.

  * * * *

  My world spins round and round until I want to puke. I’m not hurt by anything within the darkness of the howling winds, just overwhelmed by vertigo. Finally, I’m slammed down onto a hard surface. I lie there for a minute, waiting for the world to stop spinning, hoping to regain what little balance I have left before I try to move. The air smells like mildew and feces.

  As I look around, everything is still dark, save a hint of light coming through a very small window at the top of the room. I sit up, but I don’t move since I am unsure of where to go or what to do. My eyes adjust to the darkness, but I still don’t see anything. This has to be someone’s memory, so why isn’t a ‘someone’ in here?

  As if on cue, a loud scraping sound invades the silence. I cover my ears; the noise feeling like it is scraping against my soul. It’s worse than nails against a chalkboard. I look around, but still see nothing. After a grueling twenty or thirty seconds, the scraping sound ceases, only to be replaced with a cackling. So there is someone else in this room with me.

  “Hello? Who’s there? Come out and show yourself!” I demand.

  Again, I am met with cackling from what sounds like a little girl.

  “Look asshole, either show yourself now or else I’m going to get angry,” I say unconvincingly. Fear and anger appear in my mind before I remember this is a memory. Granted, it’s one of the first I’ve ever seen versus experienced, but still they can’t hurt me. Can they? “Okay then,” I begin. “Either show yourself or I’ll just leave. If you have something to tell me, you better tell me now,” I threaten, despite the fact that I have no idea how to leave, though I doubt that she knows that.

  The cackling begins again, louder now, with the awful scraping sound thrown in for good measure. I’m about to turn around and see if I can find a door, when the cackling is replaced with a high pitched voice squeaking out syllables that may or may not count as words.

  “We can see you,” she mumbles from a dark corner of the room. “We see you, but you are not one of them.”

  I know I am going to slap myself later for it, but I have to ask. “One of who?”

  “The evil ones with needles. They come in white coats to hurt us. But not you, you are darkness. Have you come to take me to hell then?” she asks excitedly.

  “Um…no,” I respond to that bizarre question. “At least I don't think so. Forgive me, but who is ‘we’ exactly?”

  “The voices. They tell me what to do and I do it. But sometimes they disagree, and it gets loud. So many voices; can't think. Can't you hear them too?” she asks, surprised. “They're everywhere and they never leave me alone. Ever.”

  Despite the fact that we are having somewhat of a conversation, she continues to scratch at the bricks within the filthy wall. Her fingertips are already bloody nubs.

  “Why won’t they leave you alone?” I ask.

  “They say we have a job to do, and they won't leave until it's done.”

  Oh. Well that makes perfect sense…to a crazy person. “What job has to be done exactly?” I ask, wondering why I continue to try and make sense out of the senseless.

  “Don't know, don't care. I’ll do whatever they tell me to do. Even when they tell me to do very bad things. Which is a lot.”

  Since I am absolutely certain I don’t want to know what constitutes ‘very bad things,’ I decide not to ask. I venture to something much safer. At least I hope it will be. “How many other people are in here with you?”

  “Ninety-two. But it changes every day. We are used to it. We’re never alone.”

  Alone? Not being alone is having two or three people with you chatting. Ninety-two is a freaking insane party. I look around the empty room and start to freak out a bit, wondering if the people I can’t see are really there or not. If they are here, or maybe even touching me right now, I thankfully can’t see them do it. I try to take deep breaths to calm myself, but it isn’t working.

  “They want me to tell you tha
t yes, they can see you. Oh, and five of them are smelling your hair right now.”

  Oh snap. The freaking other people heard the questions that I asked myself inside my head. Well, that didn’t make anything weirder at all. Completely freaking out now, I start to hyperventilate as I search for the door in the dark room. There has to be a door, has to be a way out of this insane memory. I feel along the dirty wall like I'm insane too, desperate to get out. I wonder fleetingly if that is why the girl scratches as well: she’s desperate to find a way out. But she is never going to get out. She is apparently schizophrenic and in it for life.

  I’m still searching desperately for an exit when my crazy roommate starts chanting. Worse yet, it’s the same chant I’ve heard before, repeated to me through a door by a crazy boy in a mental hospital.

  “He and you, the only two. Death of one, destiny be done.”

  “What did you just say?” I demand in a shaky voice.

  “He and you, the only two. Death of one, destiny be done,” she happily repeats.

  Clarity hits me like a freight truck going one hundred miles an hour straight into my brain. It’s a message, something for me. I have no idea what it means, but I do know that it’s a clue. One that I have to figure out if I am ever going to help the people I love. I run toward the crazy girl and stop just short of touching her. Desperation has completely overridden my feelings of fear.

  “You have to tell me what that means!” I scream. “Why does someone have to die?” I demand, the pitch of my voice getting higher with each word spoken.

  “He will come for you soon, Aimee. You will find him by the house made of light. There, the two will become one.”

  What kind of answer is that? I ask myself. The crazy girl cackles like she made a joke and turns back to face the wall, continuing to dig her way out with her bloody nubs. I am completely dismissed from her thoughts now.

  “Tell me, dammit!” I yell as I move toward her and grab her arm to turn her around, the need for answers fueling my anger. I touch her bare shoulder, where the hospital gown is worn and torn, to spin her around to face me, hoping to have a lucid discussion. I realize too late that wasn’t a good idea.

  My hand instantly freezes in place on top of her shoulder and we are both unable to move. It is almost exactly like what happened when I touched Logan and Dejana as they lie unconscious. But it doesn’t make any sense. I am already in a memory, already part of something that doesn’t really exist, so why can I touch her? How can I feel her as if she’s real?

  I feel an electric current pass through my hand from the now stoic and silent crazy girl. The white light starts from beneath my palm and spreads out until my entire hand is translucent. The light builds, bringing heat that courses throughout my hand, still cemented to the crazy girl’s shoulder.

  In no time at all, my hand burns like it’s on fire. To my utter dismay, the light does not stay in my palm. It starts to move up my arm, as well as throughout the girl’s body. Neither of us can move to escape the heat coursing through our veins. The white light gets brighter and brighter until I have to close my eyes to shield them from its intensity.

  The heat attacks my entire body. My mind registers the intense pain, even though I know it can’t be real. As the seconds tick by, I am more and more certain that touching her may in fact be my downfall. I have no idea what’s happening, or how to stop it. Seconds after that thought, the light consumes the darkness and everything it contains. Soon, the dungeon and the crazy girl are sucked into oblivion and everything disappears.

  * * * *

  I awaken on the floor of Logan's room, disoriented, but alive. The darkness in his room seems more intense now after the explosion of light within the memory. What was that? I wonder. Well, whatever it was, I am definitely not going to touch a psycho in a stolen memory again.

  I sit up and make my way over to Logan’s bed. He's still unconscious, but he’s breathing. If I didn’t know better, I would think he’s sleeping. I climb onto the bed with him, lost in the hopelessness of everything. I hug his torso, soaking his shirt with the tears that are cascading down my face. I should have known better, I can’t save him. I can’t save anybody. For some unknown reason, these awful memories are making their way into the minds of the people I love. The problem is, I have no idea how in the world to get them out.

  Beneath me, I feel Logan grumble in his unconscious state. I wish again that there was something I could do to help him. All I seem to be good at is finding the problem, not that I can do a damn thing about it. Logan begins to thrash as he grumbles, battling some inner demon that I couldn’t save him from.

  “Logan, quiet please or your parents will hear you,” I plead, but it doesn’t work, he only thrashes more at the sound of my voice.

  “Aimee, no!” he screams.

  A flood flows down my face as the hopelessness once again engulfs me. I can’t help him. I can’t save anybody. I’ve doomed all I love to this hell. If I have any hope of saving them, I have to figure out where this house of light is and what this ‘one death’ crap is all about.

  From outside Logan’s room, I hear a door open and his mom call out his name. As much as I hate it, that’s my cue to leave. “Hang in there, Logan,” I say through my tears, stalling a bit to gain the strength I need to say goodbye.

  Before it is too late, I fly to Logan’s window, open it quietly, and throw myself through it, landing on the overhang just underneath his room. I manage to get the window closed just as his bedroom door opens and his mom enters his room. I see her run over to his bed, asking him what’s wrong, her panic increasing when she doesn’t receive a response. His father comes in right behind his mother, holding a cell phone to his ear. I can hear him talking with a 911 operator. Even though the hospital will have no idea how to help him, I at least know that he will be safe for now.

  “It’s only for a little while, my love,” I whisper to the unconscious Logan from my perch just outside his window. Even though he’s out of it, I’m still convinced that his heart can hear me. I allow myself one last look at the only boy I’ve ever loved before I jump to the ground and blend into the darkness.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ~ Even Demons Have Friends ~

  Since my car is still at Anchor hospital with Mary, I have to run all the way home from Logan’s house. Luckily, he doesn’t live far from me, just one neighborhood over. As I make my way home, my thoughts are as dark as the night that surrounds me. What first began as one person going crazy at school, has skyrocketed to everyone I care about being taken from me. No, not taken, ripped from my heart and left to a horrible fate; a fate they have to fight alone within their minds. Worse yet, I am powerless to stop it.

  Without the help of Dejana or Logan, how can I possibly find this other person who is part of my destiny, or figure out why someone has to die because of it? And what in the world did she mean by a house made of light? The more I try to find answers from the insanity, the more my hopelessness thrives. I have lived for so long, clinging to the fact that I need no one, only to come to a point in my life where I can’t move on without another person’s help. If I can do this alone, I have no idea where to begin. And if that isn’t a cause for desperation, anguish, and melancholy, I don’t know what is.

  I finally arrive at my empty house and pull the keys from my pocket to open the front door. I turn on the light in the foyer and longing for Mary immediately hits me. No matter what time I come home, Mary always remembers to leave the light on for me. But there is nothing but darkness tonight. And the more despondent I feel, the more I realize there may never again be a light left on for me. Not unless I can figure out how to erase those awful memories from the minds of the people who have been affected. There can be no peace, no moving forward, until I figure out how to do that, and in doing that, hopefully figure out how they were put there in the first place. The more I think about it, the more I am certain those poor people are just screwed.

  I make my way up to my bedroom. The fire t
hat Tyler had set nearly six months ago destroyed my bedroom, but we had been able to restore it. Soon after, Mary had bought me a new bed, dresser, and nightstand to replace the ones lost in the flames. Since all of my clothes were either singed or smelled of smoke, I had to replace the old black clothes with new ones. Most girls would be thrilled with purchasing new clothes. Not me. I just bought different versions of my same black ensemble.

  I collapse onto my bed with a heavy sigh. Now what am I supposed to do? I wasn’t able to help Dejana or Logan by going into their minds and sifting through their memories. Although I did find out what’s wrong with them, it doesn’t help me with how to get them well again. No matter how many times I try to find new ideas, try to think outside of the box, I keep coming back to the same dead end—there is nothing I can do. The futility of it causes anger to boil within me. What good is being able to see the delusions if there is nothing I can do about it?

  I begin to pace within the small confines of my room, the anger growing stronger with each step I take. There has to be something I’m missing, a piece of the puzzle I can’t see yet. But each hour I waste, each minute I go around and around in circles, is a minute closer to losing the people I love to their delusions forever. I have to figure out what to do next.

  I am so deep in thought at first I don’t hear the small rock hit my window. The clinking sound, albeit faint, is distinct since the rest of my house is so incredibly quiet without Mary here. I stop breathing, the rock at the window reminiscent of when Logan comes to visit me late at night. But I know it can’t be him since he’s on his way to the hospital right now. Or is he? As I second-guess myself, thanks to the small seed of hope in my heart, I hear another small rock hit my window. If I don’t answer it, the next one might be a bigger rock that crashes thorough. I look around my room for a weapon to take with me to the window. As I’m searching, my eyes fall upon a baseball bat Logan left behind last week after a game. I pick it up and feel empowered with it in my hands. I move over to the window, open it a slit and back away a bit to hide behind the wall next to the window.