Be in the Real

by Denise Mathew

  CHAPTER 9

  “I am acutely aware that I have spoken about this before, yet I feel compelled by a force outside of me to revisit the topic, as there is more to the theme than even I Trillian had originally imagined. The truth is that we are all ONE and even as I tap these words upon a blank screen, I realize the grandeur of the statement, and that the words cannot contain the truth and the meaning that is to be conveyed with this statement.

  And if we are indeed all one why is it that the world that we have created around us strives to break that oneness into clone-like pieces of this and that, pieces and parts that when alone hold little if any substance. For if my statement is in fact true, that we are all souls in the vat of the collective, then why is it that we feel so very disconnected and apart, even if we are side to side, body to body, pressed together yet drifting consciousnesses, in separate times and places where we are not together. Our need to be away from the present, to dwell in the past, to get lost in the future, is our way of ignoring the oneness, it is the place where we can disentangle our lives and psyche, where if we separate, far enough away, minds disjointed, we may feel the urge to annihilate that which is not us, that which is foreign. To be like a snake that consumes its tail, killing its SELF in an attempt to survive a foe that is in fact only an illusion, a fallacy created in our separatist mind and body…

  Kaila could feel Trillian drift away as if her greatest desire was to frustrate Kaila. There was nothing that irked her more than an unfinished thought; completion was the destination but not always the reality. Though gauging by the comments that were mounting, not everyone was as irritated by the oft fickleness of Trillian. Some commenters were thrilled by the unfinished thoughts, imagining that these broken streams were thought provoking and divinely perfect in their incompletion, and allowed readers to ponder the missing words. She wondered if they would have been as accepting if she had served them all a half-baked cake, gooey and flat, just like Trillian’s unfinished pieces.

  To Kaila it was pure and unadulterated irritation. It was on the days that Trillian quite literally left her swinging in the wind that Kaila actually entertained the notion of quitting it all. Shutting down the blog that seemed to be corralling more subscribers every day. She could make it all go dark, like the grey storm clouds that sometimes loomed in the outside sky.

  Knowing that her writing was done for the day, and that Trillian would not return until she felt that she had more to say, Kaila decided to let it go. Rather than getting angry at something she had no control over, she would move on with her routines. Her need to satisfy the most basic requirements of her physical body would have to take precedence. Trillian was abhor to these mundane bits of life and if given a chance would have ignored them altogether. Who cared about starvation when she had words to nourish her; in this Kaila and Trillian disagreed.

  The day was black and dreary and there were no hints from the sun to gauge the time, but somehow Kaila’s internal clock filled in the missing data that said that it was lunchtime very soon. Before she made her way to the cafeteria she wanted to deposit her laptop into her room for safekeeping. At one point her laptop had been like another appendage, going with her everywhere she went, even to the bathroom. An incident with hot soup and an almost fried keyboard had shown her the error of her ways. Now she left her laptop in her dresser drawer for the duration of the spaces of time that she deemed unsafe for electronic technology.

  As she moved to the room that she shared with Pauline, she passed hoards of people making their way to the cafeteria for lunch. It felt much like swimming against the tide, where she had to shift and avoid more than a few patients. They didn’t seem to mind who they mowed down in their desire to get first dibs on the best of the cafeteria offerings. Things like french fries, chicken strips and beef hamburgers, staples for both lunch and dinner, were always the first to go. Kaila never cared for this fast food fare much, preferring to test the new menu additions, the trial dishes that according to demand and consumption sometimes found a place on the permanent menu.

  Breakfast for her was always controlled with very little variation, but lunch and dinner were the meals, and really the only part of her existence, where she released her hold on control.

  In her peripheral vision she spotted Pauline and Janelle half-dressed and doing things that Kaila didn’t much care about, on Pauline’s bed. She ignored them, moving directly to her dresser drawer. After she had slid her computer into the top drawer and closed it, she turned back to the door; ready to exit through the same way she had come in. But when she realized that the body that she had originally determined to be Janelle’s was not the pudgy patient at all, she paused and gawked. The two half-dressed individuals entwined on the narrow bed were so locked in the passion of the moment that they hadn’t realized that they had an audience.

  Pauline had removed her shirt and pants and was clad in just her black satiny bra and matching panties. The guy, and this was the part that surprised Kaila the most since everyone knew that Pauline only liked girls, had a hand shoved down Pauline’s underpants and was busy doing things that made Pauline moan against his mouth. She too was actively participating, her hand lost in the depths of the fellow’s grey boxer brief underwear. Kaila watched the two for a few moments, as they moved and made noises, much like the people did in the pornos she had watched, only in this case the sounds were more muted and less dramatic.

  The angle that Kaila was at didn’t allow her to identify the male part of the duo, though she had to admit his sharply cut hair was somehow familiar. When they shifted again and the man’s back was exposed to her, the infinity symbol tattooed on the length of his spine had her drawing in a quick breath. She knew it was a sign, a symbol. As if Trillian had quit early so she could send Kaila to this moment, so she could discover a new truth.

  Excitement at the thought of learning something new from Trillian, just when she had resigned herself to the concept that her day of writing had been a wash, surged through her. Kaila spun back to where she had deposited her computer, desperate to find out the meaning of the symbol. Though she knew the basics of it, she was certain that there was more to it. Before she had a chance to flip open her computer, the identity of Pauline’s partner was revealed. Kaila realized right then that she had read it wrong and that in fact there was nothing profound about the symbol or the tattoo at all. Even more surprising than the sex of her partner was the identity of the interloper. It was the man-boy Derrick, though judging from the way he was expertly working his mouth and hands he was more man.

  Suddenly she was bellowing at the top of her lungs because for some reason all the feelings that normally wouldn’t have registered on her radar were now crushing her. Not only were these two and their sordid escapades undermining Janelle and Pauline’s relationship, but they were destroying the very fabric of Kaila’s reality, where everything including people were sorted into neat piles that identified who they were. In another time and place, and with two different people doing what Pauline and Derrick were doing, Kaila might not have cared at all, but this time it mattered, somehow it mattered a lot. Sometimes the caring came out of nowhere, sweeping through her like a force and all she could do was go with it.

  Derrick and Pauline sprang apart, startled by Kaila’s outburst. Pauline appeared mortified. She rapidly disengaged her hand from what Kaila could only imagine was Derrick’s aroused penis. Derrick seemed unfazed by it all, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  “Shit Kaila,” Pauline hissed, snatching her t-shirt and jeans from the floor at her bedside. Kaila watched Pauline’s scar glint from a crack in the sheet of her dark hair. It was visible for a fraction of a second then was hidden away again. She was certain that there was a method to this madness, one that she was more than ready to discover the truth about. She wondered if it was what they called Kismet or something like that.

  Kaila pressed her fingers to her temples, attempting to make sense of the two symbols that had been revealed to her in
the past few seconds. She wondered if there was any connection between a star and an infinity sign. Words scrolled across her mind as if she was typing them on an internal keyboard. In her frenzied mind the notion that it all meant something swam against a current of confusion. She knew the symbols were so very important and that powerful messages were contained within, truths that could very well shift the fabric of her reality; push her forward into another dimension. Trillian slipped into her mind, pushing to regain control despite the fact that she wasn’t working on her computer. Trillian knew the rules, but had bypassed them and was moving through Kaila like an out of control freight train.

  “Kaila, shut up,” Pauline hollered over Kaila’s scream. Just like that Kaila shut her mouth, hard enough that her teeth clacked from the force. She went absolutely silent. Derrick smirked. He now sat on the side of the bed. He didn’t seem as hurried to get dressed as Pauline was.

  Kaila watched their actions as if from a distance, as if she had been jettisoned away and was peering through a telescope. Then without her acquiescence all that Trillian was, and was not, spewed forth in a stream of words.

  “I am…” she began but didn’t utter Trillian’s name because it wasn’t safe to do so. Kaila’s mouth felt dry as if every smidgen of saliva had evaporated, but that did not seem to halt Trillian’s need to rant.

  “For if the world is everything and nothing, what is the truth and the reality? Why do we struggle each day to be plucked from this reality, from this existence, as rapidly as a candle being snuffed. If we truly believe that this is everything, that we indeed travel this planet with expectations that are hollow, with dreams that may never manifest, with abundance that remains locked in a chest and away from us, then what my dear reader is the point of this journey.

  But if I in fact believe all that you have believed, and have travelled the rails of your psyche, pulling the stream of your truths or illusions into my space, will they indeed be real. I say NO, most definitely no, and when the world gives us a dose of that reality that we so vehemently rebuke, is it a moment to retaliate, return to the womb of our birth, to cry the tears of why, oh why, oh why again must I suffer this injustice. Why must my body be stripped to the bones that stabilize it, why must I be gouged until my heart resembles a thing that no longer belongs to me?

  And when the world has turned on you and the viciousness that resides in even the most beautiful souls is in fact unleashed, like a pack of rabid dogs, ready to rip your innards from the soft side of your belly, you must remember this. YOU ARE LOVE, you are beauty, and everything that you have ever wanted in this existence is found within you. Like a lotus flower entrenched in the muck of your soul, waiting for you to allow it to grow, to thrive, to manifest the true you, that no one can vanquish unless you have given them the scissors to snip the stem of your blossom. For this reason alone you must know that there is nothing that is outside of you that can do violence to your future, your beliefs and all that YOU ARE or ever will be, because you are the master of you, you are the creator of your reality, that which you believe, manifests as such. And so if you claim to be beautiful and just, YOU ARE, because in that space and time that you take those words and believe, truly and utterly believe this to be truth, there is no being that can shift your reality, because just as we know that the sky is blue, and the sun is a ball of burning gases, this too is the truth, the reality, for if you BELIEVE, truly believe with every fiber of your soul that it is. Then it is…”

  Kaila stopped speaking abruptly, dizzy from the weight of Trillian’s presence. It was too much for her to absorb. She panted, attempting to catch her breath. Trillian had forced out her words in a near continuous stream, refusing to allow her even a moment for a puff of oxygen. Kaila had known she had spoken using Trillian’s voice and words, but up until then it had never been so forceful. But none of that mattered at that moment because it was all too much for her to accept, her body had physical limitations. Trillian had taken her beyond that point, now she was paralyzed by her humanness. She staggered, turning around. The world seemed to be moving in slow motion. Kaila spotted her bed just a few feet away. She had just managed to collapse onto its surface when the darkness pulled her into its depths.

  “Holy Shit…”

  Derrick’s words were the last she heard before she tumbled into nothingness.

  CHAPTER 10

  Kaila drifted in the swirl of knowing nothing, other than the light feeling of being made of vapor and fluffy white clouds that might dot a clear sky on beautiful days. She heard the voices that beckoned her back to the real world, but she was too comfortable, too at peace and at home to want to go to those voices. Nothing other than being where she was, mattered at all.

  “I don’t know if she’s breathing, I think she’s had some sort of an attack or something.”

  Pauline’s voice broke through the sheets of filmy muslin that wrapped like a shroud of comfort around Kaila. Fingers grasped her wrist lightly, warm and gentle.

  “I can feel her pulse.”

  This time it was Derrick speaking. She imagined Derrick’s fingers were most assuredly searching for her heart beat. Kaila felt a mouth pressed over hers and breaths of hot air enter her mouth then her lungs. And though she was still only half conscious she wondered if this was what it felt like to be kissed by a lover. Norm’s face came into view, she knew it was a memory, not reality, but she savored it all the same. For a short time it dulled the ache and loss that had lodged deep inside her since the day that he had left Wildwind.

  A cough worked its way through her chest, up her trachea until it finally burst from her lips into an explosion of air. Her body went rigid then relaxed. She involuntarily sat up straight. When her eyes popped open she locked on Derrick. He was still naked from the waist up. Kaila grazed his torso with her eyes, studying the lean muscles of his chest, hairless like the rest of him. Once again she was reminded that he was locked in a space between teenage boy and man. Derrick’s height wasn’t the problem; he was tall enough for certain. It was something else that was difficult to pinpoint, something that Norm had that Derrick didn’t.

  When Kaila pulled her gaze from his chest to Derrick’s face she noticed that his expression was frantic and harangued, as if the weight of the world rested on his narrow shoulders.

  “Are you okay?”

  Pauline pushed Derrick aside like a stray dog in her path. He didn’t put up a fight, shifting to allow her ample space. Pauline’s face was a riot of anxiety as her hands reached for Kaila’s face. Instead of making contact, she caught herself at the last moment, hovering her cupped palms an inch from Kaila’s skin.

  Kaila took a moment to collect her thoughts, check her being. She still had no idea what had happened, how Trillian had managed to take her over. But more than how, was why she had been left feeling destroyed and weak after the experience.

  “What happened to me?” Kaila said, wiggling her butt back on her bed until her spine hit the chipped paint on the sidewall.

  Pauline and Derrick were frozen in place like two mannequins. Whatever heat Kaila had witnessed between the two had cooled significantly. There was stiffness in their stance; an unsaid need to be apart as though all that had happened between them had been an absolute mistake. And seeing how rapidly they had shifted their view was more than a touch intriguing to Kaila. This change in Pauline and Derrick’s behavior, from overheated to icy cool, felt even more important than discovering what had brought on, what could only be termed, the complete possession of her by Trillian.

  “I think you had some kind of seizure,” Derrick said.

  Interest had replaced his original anxiety. Kaila wondered what had put those emotions there.

  “How would you know what it was?” Pauline asked, irritation clear in her tone. To Kaila’s trained ear, her roommate was more than ready to wash her hands clean of Derrick. Kaila didn’t share her opinion. Now more than ever she wanted to hear exactly what Derrick did know.

  “A seizure, but I’ve ne
ver had a seizure before…”

  Kaila’s voice trailed off as she searched for another reason for why her body would have acted in that way. She wasn’t opposed to Derrick’s line of thought, but his vague explanation didn’t seem to be based in truth, fact, or science, and was merely musings. Supposition was always unacceptable, so now she rapidly absorbed and dismissed Derrick’s theory. There was only one justifiable excuse for what had happened, for some reason Trillian had taken complete control.

  “It wasn’t a seizure it was…”

  Kaila’s voice trailed off when she remembered that she wasn’t supposed to talk about Trillian. There was no questioning that most residents who cared, and those who didn’t, mostly knew about Trillian. Even so, Kaila wasn’t in the business of discussing Trillian or her actions since the less that was said about the matter the better. After dealing with too many eager doctors wanting to fix her, fix Trillian, she had learned that denial was so much better than acknowledging the truth.

  “Were your meds adjusted lately?” Derrick queried.

  Kaila mulled over his words. She had never cared about what pills she swallowed or if changes were made. It was another allowance she made in her routine since she knew she had absolutely no control over this aspect in her life. Trying to remember each colored tablet, the numbers marked on them, or how she felt in response to said medications, was near impossible to track since changes were always imminent. Still, this time she did remember something.

  “They did change my pills in the White Room.”

  Derrick nodded as though pleased by her admission.

  “I just hope it doesn’t happen again,” Pauline chimed in, “because if it does, I’m not going to waste time listening to anyone telling me to stay put, that whole shit was fucking freaky Kaila. I can’t deal with that again…”