When Worlds Collide

by Charles Blair

  Working strong for minimal or zero dividends is discouraging. Therefore, the majority wouldn't exercise quite as hard the following year, if at all. Change is the essential concept for which Patrick diligently strides. Change requires time and energy, but sadly, most people aren't willing to put forth the effort that is demanded. Patrick Lucid enervates every last morsel of energy to cure his patients. At thirty-two years old, it is easy to say Patrick is too young to know, but maybe you are too old to remember. You may never see eye to eye with Patrick, or listen to his clinical jargon, and that's alright, because he'll appreciate the opportunity to paint another canvas.

  The Haunting begins

  Patrick woke from his sleep at 2:30 a.m...

  Patrick silently positioned his feet on the floor not to wake his girlfriend. He was covered in sweat and his throat was arid. His heart was racing, and it was burdensome for him to catch his breath. Patrick's legs were cement as he attempted to walk downstairs into the kitchen. While in the kitchen, his stomach hurt so badly he could barely reach into the cupboard for a glass. Patrick filled an entire sixteen-ounce glass with water, but the process was problematic because his hands were quivering like a sapless alcoholic. Patrick chugged all sixteen ounces of water to quench his infuriated thirst, when he noticed what time it was.

  Momentarily, forgetting about his physical ailments, Patrick's eyes elongated in the direction of the clock, as the glass fell from his hands and shattered onto the floor. Patrick was completely out of sorts. He wasn't feeling well, because he knew something was terribly wrong. It was the fifth consecutive morning Patrick was awake at 2:30 a.m.., with the same exact symptoms.

  After cleaning the broken glass from the floor, Patrick returned to bed and noticed that Joy, his beloved girlfriend, was awake. He said to her, as he maneuvered under the bed sheets, "I am sorry for waking you, but it happened again."

  Joy knew precisely what Patrick was referring to, and both of them understood coincidence had nothing to do with the strange happening. Neither Patrick nor Joy said another word. They closed their eyes, and drifted back to sleep.

  *

  In the morning, Joy mentioned that she was concerned, but Patrick uncharacteristically played it off like it wasn't a big deal. Patrick was omitting his thoughts, which was irregular for him to do, because he prides himself in the fact that he can express himself. Three years prior, Joy fell in love with Patrick's freedom of thought, so when she noticed his differentiating demeanor, her concern expanded like bread in an oven. Patrick's nonchalant cover-up of his thoughts is known as brooding. Once in a seminar, Patrick said, "Brooding is a psychological defense mechanism that manifests when an individual excessively thinks about a situation that is troubling them."

  Patrick has the unprecedented ability to identify a brooder, anywhere. However, on this particular morning he should have looked in the mirror, because he was a prime example of his own words. Patrick was physically present, but his mind was stuck elsewhere, and Joy saw it clearly. Patrick was captive in his own little world, and for whatever reason he wasn't allowing Joy to open the door.

  Patrick ignored Joy for the remainder of the morning in an attempt to avoid the conversation she was petitioning to have with him. Joy waited for Patrick to finish brushing his teeth before asking, "What is wrong with you? You aren’t acting like yourself."

  "I feel like I've been hit by a bus, and I haven't slept for five days." Patrick replied, trying to cover up his true thoughts.

  Joy lived with Patrick for roughly three years and she has learned much of his psychoanalytic theories, for this reason, Patrick's excuses weren't cutting the mustard.

  Sounding like a therapist herself, Joy said, "Stop rationalizing, and tell me what's wrong. I am concerned about you."

  Patrick sat down on the corner of the bed and discontinued his resistance. He tapped the bed with his hand, indicating for Joy to sit next to him, and said, "Alright, I'll tell you what's wrong with me. However, I must tell you a story first."

  *

  Patrick told Joy a true story of a psychological autopsy he participated in many years ago. Patrick was asked to investigate the biological, personal, and secondary information of a young man to determine whether or not his death was a suicide. The aunt of the deceased individual wanted Patrick to figure out whether her nephew committed suicide, or died from a chance happening. The initial information Patrick collected was basic.

  A seventeen-year old male ran out in-front of a tractor-trailer truck at 10:30 p.m.., on November 25th.

  Steven, the deceased seventeen-year-old, was an outcast and an extremely odd young man. Steven lived with his aunt because his father abandoned him when he was six years old. When Steven was thirteen, his mother whom he barely saw died from a drug overdose. The deeper Patrick sank into his investigation; he discovered secrets, not only about Steven, but Steven's family as well.

  Steven's father molested him numerous times before the age of six. Patrick collected this data from a concealed journal in Steven's bedroom. Actually, Steven had five hidden journals. Interestingly enough, combined from all five journals, Steven wrote a total of three hundred thirty journal entries. November 25th, the date of Steven's death, is three hundred thirty days into the calendar year. Of the three hundred thirty journal entries, all of them were written at 10:30 p.m.., the exact time of Steven's death.

  Coincidence?

  Patrick understood, Steven wasn't a healthy young man, and harbored an illness powerful enough to commit suicide, but there were too many unexplained signs that indicated something more powerful was involved.

  On the night Steven passed away, he told his aunt he was going to visit a friend. Steven's friend lived across the highway, and down about a mile. Steven's aunt reported that her dog, a golden retriever, got spooked, and ran out of the house. Steven chased the dog onto the highway; although the dog wasn't hit, Steven was struck by an eighteen wheeler.

  Steven's aunt reported, "My dog was never spooked before. It was like he saw something that wasn't there."

  Patrick was forming an impression that Steven didn't commit suicide, but he wanted to interview the truck driver who hit Steven before he came to his final analysis.

  The truck driver's name was Robert, and he was forty five years-old on the day of Steven's death. Robert told Patrick during an interview, "I made that trip so many times. It was like clockwork, except for the night I hit that poor kid."

  Patrick researched Robert's administrative paperwork to determine how many times Robert actually made the trip past Steven's house. On the night of Steven's death, it was trip number three hundred thirty. All of Robert's trips, he would pass by Steven's house at 9:45 p.m.., except for the night Steven died. Robert struck Steven at 10:30 p.m.., because he was forty five minutes behind schedule. Near the end of the interview, Patrick asked Robert, "Why were you behind schedule?"

  "I was behind schedule because I had a lengthy phone conversation with my son Tyson, because he got frightened by a nightmare," Robert confessed, in good faith.

  During the phone conversation between Robert and his son, Tyson said to his father, in a trembling voice "I am spooked, because I saw a ghost."

  Oddly enough, Tyson was the name of Steven's aunt's golden retriever.

  At the end of Patrick's investigation, he didn't claim Steven committed suicide, or was the victim of a chance happening. Patrick refused to accept the happenings as coincidental. He firmly believed something or someone within the spiritual realm had their hand involved in Steven's death. Believe it or not, everything happens for a reason, even if the reason has a plan of its own.

  *

  Patrick finished the story about Steven, in which Joy followed meticulously, and then sat for a moment in silence. Patrick gazed into the eyes of his prized beauty and asked, “Do you want to know what's wrong with me?”

  “Yes, of course I do sweetheart.” Joy replied, as she waited for Patrick.

  “I'm bracing myself for something more powerful
than us. I don't know what it is, but it's going to occur at 2:30 a.m..." Patrick said, foretelling an unidentified event.

  Joy, even more concerned, left the room silently to brood in her own thoughts.

  Later the next morning, Patrick woke up at 2:30 a.m.., with the same symptoms, making it six days in a row.

  Everything happens for a reason.

  Chapter 4

  YOU CAN CALL ME SHAWN WALTERS

  Joy heard Patrick wake up at 2:30 a.m.., but this time she didn't say anything. Joy figured if Patrick wanted to discuss what was going on, he would. If not, she would let him be. After waking, Joy was brewing coffee when she noticed the basement door was wide open. She thought, but not in-depth, Patrick probably needed something last night, and forgot to close the door.

  Multitasking before Lucid came downstairs; Joy went to the basement to throw in a load of laundry. As she was sorting through the whites, Joy heard water running through the pipes. It was Patrick flushing the upstairs toilet. Joy finished what she was doing in the laundry room, eager for her morning hug, when she noticed something that caught her eye. The basement clock hanging on the wall was at a standstill. The hands of the clock were stuck at two thirty. Joy shouted, while standing on the basement landing, "Patrick, please come down here! I'm in the basement!"

  Rubbing his morning eyes, Patrick entered the basement, but he wasn't able to get a single word out, when Joy asked, "Did you mess with the clock?"

  Only being awake for several minutes and without his bearings, Patrick answered Joy the best he could. "Huh?"

  "The clock, did you mess with it?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  When Joy brought it to Patrick's attention that the basement clock was stuck at two thirty, he abruptly had a flashback of five hours before. Puzzled, but ironically sure of himself, Patrick said, "Last night I had the same symptoms at the same time, but it was different. I searched the entire house for a baby."

  Dismayed and confused, Joy asked, "A baby?"

  "Yes, a baby." Patrick replied, like he was being second guessed.

  When Patrick woke up at two thirty, he satiated his thirst, controlled his twittering hands, and heard the sound of a crying baby. Then, he chased the phantom sound which led him into the basement, but he closed the door on his way out. Most definitely, Patrick didn't touch the clock. He convincingly pleaded his case to Joy, which she believed, but she wanted an explanation. Joy didn't like what was going on, not at all.

  "Doors just don't open by themselves, and clocks don't stop, unless the batteries are dead. What’s going on here?"

  Before providing Joy with any kind of answer, Patrick extracted the battery from the clock and inserted it into an old MP3 player, which was collecting dust in the closet. To the amazement of both, the MP3 player started right up. The battery operating the clock wasn’t dead.

  "Let's look at this reasonably." Patrick said.

  He wasn't sure if there was a scientific explanation; however, he was trying to spare Joy the fear deriving from the truth, if indeed the truth was beyond the outer limits of the psyche. Patrick understands better than anyone, the human mind is developed, created, and driven by energy. Whether you refer to energy as instinct, emotion, spirit, or soul, it's still energy. Energy is an unseen force driving an object. Patrick wasn't merely trying to convince Joy of scientific reasons; he was also trying to convince himself. At the most, the other clarification was spiritual or paranormal circumstances, which excites Patrick, but he wasn't sure if Joy could handle the emotional roller-coaster. Either way, Patrick usually overextends psychological causes before breaching the boundaries of the spiritual realm.

  "I want the truth, no matter what it is." Joy said in a direct manner. Unfortunately for Joy, Lucid didn't know the truth, but he was more than willing to find out. .

  "I don't know what the truth is right now."

  Continuing to discuss the dilemma that has caused his recent brooding, Patrick said, "If we were to roll the dice in the game of chance, our outcome would come up one of two ways. Either we are going ape-shit crazy, or we are in the beginning stages of a supernatural phenomenon."

  Patrick spent the better part of the next hour throwing light onto a dark topic.

  *

  What do we know about the spiritual realm?

  Assuming paranormal activity electrifies some, but terrifies others, in comparison to psychoanalysis, the spiritual realm is misunderstood. Therefore, people on either end of the continuum have been misled for centuries. A spirit or soul is nothing other than energy of an individual who isn't in a biological form. When a spirit breaks through the barrier that separates the psychological and spiritual realms, it reveals evidence of over identified energy, or extra strength. Mental energy, or the mind of a human being, possesses the same power. When an individual's emotions gain too much vigor, it cannot be contained within the walls of the psychological realm; therefore, the emotions of that person bust through to the other side, which is the spiritual realm. The process of infringement into another realm, from either side, is called a transgression.

  Most of the world refers to a transgression as a hallucination. Patrick's psychoanalytic theory omits the term hallucination, resulting in his discontent for the diagnosis of schizophrenia. Individuals suffering from schizophrenia are likely to experience alarming hallucinations. These hallucinations are sometimes visual, auditory, olfactory, and on occasion will impact the other two senses. Historically, the term schizophrenia can be defined as split-mind. However, Patrick accredits the configuration of the mind as having two structures. If indeed Patrick is correct, then everyone would be coined schizophrenic. Patrick refers to schizophrenic patients as paraphrenic, also construed as beyond the mind. When any of our emotions become too robust, they will explode through one of the two structures of the mind. The dynamic of a transgression isn't healthy, because it depicts the struggle and establishment of a traumatic experience that wasn't processed. As we are discussing transgressions, if a spirit is pronounced enough to maneuver past our protective walls, it will result in a haunting or a spiritual possession.

  Joy appeared to be catching Patrick's drift based on her comment, as she questioned with accuracy, "So, you're saying, either you and I are becoming mentally ill, or we are no longer alone in this house?"

  "You are dead-on princess."

  Throughout Patrick's career, he has encountered many people who believed they were haunted by a demonic presence, but their symptoms were nothing other than psychological factors. Most mentally sick people do not recognize they are ill, because mental illness begins when the mind separates from the reality of truth. In most cases, there is a typical sequence. When someone experiences a trauma, their conscious structure attempts to filter the horrific memory into the unconscious mind. During this chain of events, he or she rationalizes the deterministic antecedents, and before they know it, they are living in an illusion or a fantasy. When someone reaches this level of sickness, they will protect their irrational thoughts and exclude every perception another person may have.

  In order for Patrick to educate Joy with this simplistic yet complicated approach, he said to her in confidence, "I want to tell you another story, it's not about an autopsy, but an ex-patient of mine. I titled her case DEMON GIRL."

  *

  Demon girl was sixteen years old when she entered Patrick's care. She was in and out of several psychiatric institutions prior to her treatment with Patrick. No one had a clue what was wrong with her, and quite frankly, most professionals, if not all of them, were scared of her. Demon girl was a selective mute and an anorexic. After the institutions failed her, time after time, demon girl's mother took her to see a Catholic Priest.

  The Priest believed there was a demon residing in her body that was restricting her speech and her food intake, and demon girl's mother believed him. It was completely understandable that her mother believed him, because the most renowned psychiatric hospitals on the eastern seaboard failed to m
ake any head-way, and besides, demon girl's physical appearance looked like hell. Therapist after therapist and confounded degradation, demon girl's mother was convinced an exorcism was necessary. However, the exorcism, and the Priest's ungodly touch failed. Eventually, demon girl landed in Patrick's office.

  Patrick's first session with demon girl was at her home. He spoke to her mother, and gathered important information before having demon girl participate in the session. Patrick's session began when demon girl walked down the stairs from her bedroom. Patrick saw a teenage girl who was grossly under weight with the palest skin he had ever seen. Patrick told demon girl that she didn't have to speak, but encouraged her to focus on his words.

  Demon girl hadn't spoken for nearly three years, so Patrick knew better than to force something that probably wouldn't happen. Ninety minutes in, Patrick asked demon girl to lie on the couch. She was prompted to close her eyes and focus her attention on the middle of her forehead. Several relaxation techniques later, demon girl was in a slightly hypnotic trance. She located the all-important place and time in her mind, when Patrick situated his left hand on her forehead, trapping her inside of her memory. Demon girl was still, besides a few twitches of her right hand. While the room was peaceful enough to fall asleep, her mother almost did.

  Unexpectedly, demon girl sat up in the most peculiar way, startling her mother. Patrick was expecting a sudden movement, but not in the form demon girl demonstrated. From the waist down, she didn't move, but the upper half of her body violently flung upward like a catapult. Although the higher half of demon girl's body had the force of a cannonball, it remained catatonic and stiff, like a board. Her neck was a pivoting fan as it slowly turned towards Patrick. At that point, demon girl's mother had already scattered to the other side of the room and was cowardly in the corner, but Patrick realized progress was made.