Be in the Real

by Denise Mathew

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Quote

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Be in the Real

  Denise Mathew

  Be in the Real

  Published by Denise Mathew

  © Denise Mathew 2014. All rights reserved.

  This book is licensed for your personal use. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical without prior permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictiously. Other names, characters, places, incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-0-928197-00-3

  “Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.”~ Dr. Seuss

  “It is in the touch and the feel of all that is, and all that will be, that brings the world and the heart to a mutual understanding that if one did not exist neither would the other.”~ Jebidiah

  PROLOGUE

  There are many things that I can tell you about me to show you who I am, who I once was, and who I'll never be, but it still wouldn't bring you into the world that is mine, the space that I occupy. For if a life is lived in the way that I have inhabited this world, is it a waste of time per se? Do we need to be there in the sea of humanity to understand what it feels like to be alive, or can we sit in our space, connect with our fingertips and a monitor, be that illusion that we have created. A phantom of a being that exists only in the feed of bytes and megabytes, a group of typed symbols that tell the world that I am this, or I am that. Alone, but never really alone because at any time of the day someone in the world is awake and sitting in a space much like, or very different, than ours. For those seconds we connect and relate, strangers across the globe, joined in commonality.

  Our human need to connect, be understood, to be gotten, it is what strikes a cord of truth for us all, and that my avid reader is what I design and foster with my words, and in doing that I help the lonely, comfort the grieving, and sometimes on a rare occasion change a life for the better.

  Love is not a word it is a state of being. Though I write this touching phrase and emotion, I have never really felt what it is in real, never known the feel of a man's touch on my naked body or a life growing in my womb. And though I have never experienced much real in my life, I have imagined and studied, dipped my toe into the pool of truth, in an attempt to understand just what it feels like to be there in real, not virtual. I have become that woman in the arms of the man on my monitor, felt the press of his muscled chest against my cheek, the brush of his lips on mine. I have almost smelled the scent that says he is with me, not just an image that I can never touch. And in those moments when I feel, really feel, even for a second or two, it is enough. For it is within those moments that I find peace that few but those of us who are shut away from the craziness of the world can boast. It is for those times alone that my very being yearns, because for those infinitesimal blinks of my existence it is perfect, it is real, it is mine.

  My name is Trillian and this is my story.

  CHAPTER 1

  We have all glanced at the trees and flowers and wondered why they are as such. How did the universe decide the color and number of petals that would grow from that bloom? Why does one flourish in a stark climate, while another wilts at the most infinitesimal drop in temperature? And more than the wild, why are we humans as we are? We wonder why everything is as such, for just as the flowers and all the wild are painted with Mother Nature’s wide brush, so too are the people that inhabit this earth.

  Many years ago when I was a child I stared down upon a tiny buttercup that was butter yellow, and in that tiny cup it was said to foretell whether I loved butter or not. In fact I do love butter, the flavor of it against my tongue, how it melts beautifully on a warm slice of bread. And when I placed that tiny buttercup beneath my chin and a wonderful shadow of pale yellow reflected on my juvenile skin, indeed it seemed to profess that I was in fact a lover of butter. I was struck dumb with awe at how a flower growing rampant in the wild had the magical property to know something so personal about me. In that moment I believed in the world that surrounded me, in its magnificence and vastness, but even more than that I believed, really believed that there was so much more to all that was around us than we knew. Those parts of life and the environment that we so readily ignore, for if a flower could predict if I loved butter or not, what could a tree know, and what about an animal, a rabbit maybe, and maybe something even smaller like a mouse, or maybe something larger could divine the truth. Could we test all the creatures, moving farther up on the evolutionary chain until voila, we hit the supposed top of the hierarchy, man himself?

  Now that I have passed my twenty-fifth birthday I know that a buttercup will always reflect a yellow hue upon the underside of the chin, it is purely physics, yet even though I know this fact to be true I still hold the world in awe, because as easily as I can explain away the buttercup, I cannot explain so many other phenomenon in the world that surrounds us.

  I once read about elephants and other animals, racing for higher ground long before humans deigned to know that there was a powerful Tsunami coming, one destined to wipe out so many humans and life. Yet the so-called highest developmentally evolved beings were oblivious to this truth, to this warning, but the animals somehow felt it in their bones and had a knowing, one that we humans were locked away from.

  I have always wondered why we know what we know, and how some of us know so much more than others. There is a power in prediction, yet the world believes that this is the work of charlatans, purveyors of falsities, of things that no one can explain scientifically, and thusly so, declares that these prophecies are much less than that which we can see and prove, and know beyond a shadow of a doubt to be fact.

  And so for many years I have worried and wondered, and studied and followed every lead to the darkest corners of the earth because I need to know before my body is released back into the collective energy. Before I become dust I must know without hesitation why, why, and another why is it that we do not know. Why do we walk aimlessly around in a fog when all the answers might in fact be there for us to grasp, to pull into our psyche, to see without question that it is the most definite truth.

  You may call me crazy, many have, and I will most gladly wear that mantle around my neck. I shall profess to the world that I, Trillian, am stark raving mad. If I am that
label then so are the others who do things that they say are helping the world evolve, yet kill life around us, a life that has never needed us humans to survive. To butcher the orangutans for inhabiting a jungle that is their home, to murder them for perching in a palm tree and eating the fruit that nature has provided. There are humans that believe that this fruit belongs to them alone, as if the act of planting the tree was all that was required to produce a fruit. It is easy to forget that the clouds bring the rain that nourishes the tree, and the sun provides the light required for it to perform its beautiful task of photosynthesis. Yes, this is the nature, the world that survives without our interventions, the fruit that has existed long before the farmers on the plantation came into being. And it is only when man decided that the world needed more, that people everywhere in the world needed that fruit and oil that was not native to their land, that everyone in fact needs so much of this, yet the truth is they never needed it at all.

  I do not profess to say that…

  “Hey there.”

  Kaila felt the tarantula on her shoulder, spreading its hairy legs on her body. She wanted to get it off.

  She spun her chair around until Norm was in her view. His glasses were perched on the tip of his sharp nose, his hair in a million different directions as if birds were taking flight from his skull. Her logical subconscious knew that there was no spider, that in reality it was only Norm’s hand resting on her, but she could not stay the reaction anymore than someone could stop a wave from crashing over them. It was nature, her nature, and in her world touching her was like entering the launch codes into a weapon of mass destruction. It could not be shut down once it had been activated.

  “I hate you, hate you, hate you,” Kaila screamed.

  Norm let go of her and took a step back. In truth he should have moved as far away from her as was physically possible, instead he waited, watching the show unfold.

  Kaila pressed her fingers against her temples, bobbing her head up and down; swaying her body to what seemed like a melody only she could hear. Her shoulder length copper-colored hair flew wildly around her head as the mania that was part of her life took hold. Norm, who was quite accustomed to this kind of over-the-top response, grinned, showing every one of his teeth that were as crooked as a picket fence, that had been lifted and pushed up by the thawing of frozen earth.

  Kaila continued to bellow her hatred adding in obscenities intermittently, something that on good days she was abhor to. Norm stood watching, appraising her, knowing what would come next and reveling in the reality, because this was the best he could achieve in a day. Watching Kaila unravel like a ball of yarn shooting across the room was thrilling. Being responsible for such an outrush of emotion made him feel like a super hero, because she hated being touched and when she lost it, she couldn’t help but do the very thing she hated the most.

  As if by a predetermined cue, Kaila stopped yelling, released her hold on her head and brought her gaze up to Norm. She glared through a sheet of her hair, one blue eye focused like a laser on him, seconds later she pounced. It was times like these that those who witnessed Kaila’s outbursts wondered if she was part panther because there was a grace in seeing her attack her prey. Today Norm was her prey, and though most might have called him mentally unstable, something that was actually written in his file, he loved this part. He felt an erection begin to grow in his pants just before Kaila landed full body on his wiry frame.

  “I am Trillian,” she bellowed.

  The cadence of her voice reverberated in every corner of the wing. Now straddled across his slim waist, Kaila’s fists, as enormous as those of a lumberjack, were balled and ready to attack. The first hit knocked his glasses off his face. They skittered with a metallic sound across the taupe linoleum.

  The second smash connected with the side of his head, with enough impact that his head snapped sideways with a sickening pop. Though the sound was nefarious enough it wasn’t as horrific as it seemed, because Norm had shoulders that dislocated with almost no force applied. Kaila’s jaw-breaking sock had shifted the ball out of the socket and now his left arm fell weirdly against the floor. The third punch never made it to its target because finally, after what had seemed like an hour but was only seconds, Lou and Trip, the orderlies and all around security for the Wildwood Mental Health Facility, snatched both of Kaila’s arms and tugged her off Norm. Despite the nasty purple mark blooming along his jaw, Norm smiled because no matter how or why it happened, having Kaila on top of him like that was strangely erotic. It would be a memory that he would jerk off to for a week at least, maybe even more.

  “You know Kaila doesn’t like it when you bother her when she’s writing,” Lou, a meaty man who was just shy of five feet, said in his Southern drawl. He was one of the few men who was actually shorter than Norm.

  “But she’s always writing,” Norm protested.

  As soon as Kaila’s six-foot-two frame had been pulled away from Norm, she went limp in Lou and Trip’s arms. When she did, as was the arrangement, they released Kaila. She stiffened her spine, standing erect. Though the fury that had temporarily set her mad had passed, she knew what would come next, sleep. As protocol warranted, a sedative was in her future. She hated the woozy feeling that the needle left with her, but was cheered that she could predict the future, know something before it was going to happen.

  Norm shifted his arm. There was another loud pop when his shoulder slipped back into place. Then he was on his feet, looking quite like the cat that had eaten the canary. He hiked up his navy sweat pants that rode low on his scrawny physique, then went to retrieve his glasses now positioned beneath the chessboard table. Two patients sat focused on their chess game both wearing apt expressions as they pondered their next move. They were oblivious to Norm’s retrieval or the prior ruckus that had just ensued.

  Nurse Jill, a regular on the day shift, rushed toward the three of them, a hypodermic needle was gripped in her pudgy hand. As she approached, Kaila heard the swish of Nurse Jill’s pantyhose covered thighs, rubbing together beneath the crisp white nurses uniform that nobody but Nurse Jill still wore. She even insisted on wearing a stiff pointed nurses hat pinned to her thick curly hair. Her attire was quite old-fashioned which begged the question of just how old she was. To Kaila, Nurse Jill seemed ageless, somewhere between forty and sixty-five, but most people said she was somewhere closer to the latter. Kaila had no idea if that was true or not, either way it never really mattered much to her.

  “You’re going to feel a little pinch,” the nurse said.

  Kaila nodded mutely. She hated the sedative more than anything else in the world, but knew that she deserved it. Norm had caught her right at the exact time when she was making a breakthrough, writing something that people around the world would read and by just reading it would know her. Faceless people would know that she knew things that others didn’t, or at least that Trillian did, and they would see the authority in her words. Now she was going to sleep an unnatural slumber, and even after she woke up again she knew it would be a while before she and Trillian could write again.

  The poke of the needle in the flesh of her upper arm was as familiar as it was unwanted. Kaila had at least half a dozen outbursts in a week. Sometimes there were more, and a few times less, yet the sum of events hovered around the same number. Of course if Norm was in a particular type of mood to bug Kaila it pushed to the higher side of the range.

  As her eyelids fluttered with the oblivion that would soon take her away, she watched Norm, his glasses askew on his bony face. He studied her with his dark eyes. Trip and Lou were there again, holding her as she fell into their grasp, but it didn’t matter anymore, the edge of resistance had been frayed by the drugs. There were no dreaded spiders only Norm. His smirk of satisfaction was the last thing she saw before she slipped away.

  CHAPTER 2

  “I have no idea why she lets Norm do it to her, I mean he does weird shit to all of us but Kaila is the only one who reacts. It’s exactly what the pe
rv wants, you know…”

  Kaila cracked one eye. Her roommate Pauline was sitting cross-legged on the bed opposite to hers. Janelle, a new girl who had been admitted for an attempted suicide, was sitting across from Pauline. Janelle’s attempt, or whatever she had been planning to do to herself when she had smashed a cars headlights and eaten the interior light bulbs, was by far the most original suicide attempt to Kaila’s recollection.

  Janelle was a plump girl with perpetually greasy hair, Kaila wondered if she even showered and if she did, if she bothered to shampoo her hair. As if tuning in to Kaila’s return to the lucid world, the two girls turned their gaze toward her.

  “So, sleeping beauty is awake,” Pauline said.

  She tossed her ebony hair over her shoulder and gave Kaila a crooked grin, where only one side of her mouth went up while the other side remained frozen. It was the side effect that Pauline had been left with after her first failed suicide attempt, which had involved a gun in her mouth. From what Pauline had said she had been a crappy shot and had managed to blow through her cheek, severing a nerve that allowed her to smile. Reconstructive surgery and carefully placed hair mostly covered the botched attempt, but the lopsided smile could never be hidden.

  Her most recent admission had been her tenth suicide attempt. This time she had tried to kill herself by funneling the toxic exhaust fumes through a hose connected to the tail pipe of her car into the cab where she sat. All of this had occurred inside Pauline’s garage. The carbon monoxide monitor had alarmed and her parents had caught her long before she’d had a chance to die.

  Without responding, Kaila pushed up onto her elbows, casting her eyes around the room as if for the first time. She skimmed over the space that had been hers since as far back as she could remember. This, as much as the rest of the place, was home. Sparse furnishings, mismatched wood and metal, all older than she was, but all hers. Even though the proprietors of the facility had tried over and again to update the room, she had fought the improvements.