He wants to explore Tokyo as much as he wants to hide away in his hotel room. Oggie senses this—he always seems to have an active sixth sense when it comes to Boy—and the two head back to the hotel. ‘Tonight we’ll have dinner at a place I know. Trust me on this. It will be memorable.’
His hotel room is the same as he left it and Penelope isn’t there. At least she’s not speaking to him if she is. He fills the tub with hot water and eases himself in the soothing broth.
₪₪₪
Boy is at a funeral. A Van Gogh moon ripples golden Klimt fingernail clippings of light onto the surrounding hills. Lumps like lymph nodes and skeletal branches pepper the stark funeral grounds. Moonstone hues.
Glass grows from the stem of a wilting O’Keefe lily in an emerald vase near the coffin. Each diamond shape piece enlarges until it breaks from the stem. The petals of glass fragment once they hit the catafalque. Everything shatters in the fashion of a slow motion volcanic eruption and settles like white noise.
Penelope is sitting on the coffin. Her hair is in pigtails; her black olive eyes are lifeless. Blue paint drips from the crown of her head down the bridge of her nose. She’s grinning at Boy, big and toothy and menacing. She leaps for him.
₪₪₪
‘Are you in there?’ Megumi asks from outside the bathroom door. Boy sits up quickly, splashes water onto the floor.
How did she get in here?
‘Yes…yes!’ He stands, feeling the cold water dribble down his body as he grabs for a towel.
‘You left the door open, did you know that?’
‘I did?’ he asks, his teeth chattering.
Did I?
It’s at that moment that Boy realizes Megumi is a hallucination. He looks briefly at his bloodshot eyes in the bathroom mirror. Needs a shave, needs a way out, needs something new. He’s sure he locked the front door of the room. Goddamn if his hallucinations aren’t powerful.
‘What’s wrong?’ Megumi asks.
‘Nothing, nothing. I’m coming.’
If she’s a hallucination, then she won’t care if I’m naked. The towel falls from Boy’s waist to the floor.
He finds Megumi standing in the bedroom in a pair of hotel sandals. She’s in black tights and a purple blouse. Her hand comes to her face as soon as she sees Boy’s nude body. ‘What are you doing? Where are your clothes?’ she asks, her cheeks turning carnation pink.
‘My clothes are in here,’ Boy says, not sure why she cares if he’s naked or not. Penelope never cared.
Without looking up at him Megumi asks, ‘Don’t you have a towel? Please, cover up.’
‘Oh, I thought you wouldn’t mind.’ Boy almost chuckles as he pulls on his boxers – his hallucinations are so real they’re actually calling him out.
Fuck me, right?
Megumi slides into the living room. ‘I’ll be in here. Please get dressed.’
₪₪₪
Boy finally broke down and told his sister the truth a few months ago. Girl had continued to ask him about his strange behavior as a child. Finally, after finishing one of the pieces in Portraits of the Ghosts that Haunt Me – a still life painting of a prescription bottle filled with blackened teeth – Boy called Girl.
Sorry it’s so late, he said instead of hello.
It’s fine. I’m not asleep yet. Clint and I were watching Walking Dead.
(Perfect way to begin this conversation.)
So, what’s up? she asked.
When we were younger, I… Boy hesitated to get it out.
You what?
I thought I saw ghosts.
Hold on.
Boy listened as Girl shifted to another room.
What do you mean? she asked.
You know, Boy said, the things you saw me talking to.
You thought they were ghosts?
Yeah, I did for a long time, until I realized something else.
Slow down. Before we get into that, Girl said, give me an example of one of these ghosts you saw.
Remember when we searched for those teeth in Philadelphia?
The ones in the pill bottle?
Yeah, those ones, Boy said, thinking of the piece he’d just finished. For his latest work, he had immortalized his demons.
I remember.
The teeth were for a man that would appear after you had gone to bed. He told me to find them, well he didn’t actually tell me because he couldn’t speak, but he showed me his rotting gum line and I connected the dots.
I never told you…
Told me what? Boy asked.
When we moved out, Mom found the bottle of teeth in the crevice between the TV and the wall.
Seriously?
She told me it was strange and not to tell someone just in case they belonged to a dead person.
No way.
Seriously. We threw them away. We threw the teeth away.
The thing about that particular experience is that at the time I believed – hell, I still believe – that we were saved by the toothless man. This ghost or hallucination or whatever.
Saved? What do you mean? Girl asked.
Remember when the thief broke in?
That was so scary.
This ghost, or whatever it was, stopped him from attacking us by biting his ear.
You have it all wrong. That wasn’t a ghost, Girl said carefully, that was you.
What? I didn’t bite anybody.
No you didn’t, but you did smack the hell out of him with that broom handle. If I remember correctly, it was an old broom. Like before they made the shitty plastic ones they do now. Solid wood. You smashed it across his face.
Impossible…
I watched you do it. You saved us.
I did?
And there have been others…ghosts? Girl asked.
I don’t think of them as ghosts anymore. They’re hallucinations, real hallucinations, almost tangible.
Do you think you are…?
I’m what?
Having schizophrenic episodes? Girl asked.
I don’t know. I mean, I don’t really hear voices, he said. Penelope came to mind. (She’s not just a voice. I can paint her!)
How real are these hallucinations? Can they touch you?
Boy choked up. He couldn’t believe he was finally confessing these things.
Yes, he said. Yes, they can.
(Lucy on top of him sucking his energy, Glass Wings splintering towards him, red paint dripping down Penelope’s face – the images real or unreal, chimerical or palpable.)
Boy started sobbing.
It’s okay, Girl said, it’s okay. Listen, you need to get help, you need to see someone, you need to get these things off your chest. If you don’t, they will haunt you forever.
I know, Boy finally said after a long pause, long enough for a deep breath to fill him with a false sense of ease. But he knew he wouldn’t, he knew then he wouldn’t seek treatment. No matter how bad it became, these were his hallucinations, and only he could rid himself of them.
₪₪₪
Megumi sits on the couch with her legs sideways under her body, another product of Boy’s remarkable ability to hallucinate. Look how real she is.
He yearns to test his hallucination. It’s a strange urge, an impulsive feeling fueled by sheer curiosity. His eyes dart left and right for an object to attack her with. No. Don’t do that. He swallows the violent inclination. If he’s going to attack any of his hallucinations, it shouldn’t be her. Talk first, test her legitimacy later.
‘Are you all right?’ Her smile is too genuine to be hallucinated and Boy suddenly feels guilty for wanting to assault her. She’s real… it’s obvious.
Boy looks to the front door. It’s closed and the deadbolt has been twisted into place. He swears he did it; he sees himself shutting the door and twisting the lock.
‘I’m all right,’ Boy says as he sits down next to her. Keep your distance, she may attack you. He moves to an adjacent sofa.
‘What did you do today
?’
‘Are you real?’ he asks point blank.
‘Yes, are you?’ Megumi laughs nervously, ‘Well, are you?’
‘I can’t really say yes or no, but I’m leaning towards maybe.’ Boy forces his lips into a thin smile.
‘So you’re between real and not real? Interesting.’
She’s real, dammit.
‘Is Penelope here?’ Boy whispers. ‘Can you see her?’
Megumi shrugs. ‘She was here just a moment ago, but I can’t see her now.’
‘So…’ Boy bites his lip for a second as he thinks through what he’s about to say. Remember the door! You locked it! She’s not real!
‘I was afraid I bothered you last night because I could see Penelope.’
‘When did you leave this morning?’ Boy asks. ‘We can come back to Penelope in a minute.’
‘I left at six.’
‘While I was sleeping?’
‘Yeah, I said goodbye. Don’t you remember?’ She asks.
‘Why did you leave?’
I had to work. I worked early, from seven to one.’
Makes sense. ‘So back to Penelope, also are you sure she isn’t here right now?’
Megumi looks around again. As she turns her head, her ponytail bounces up and down and the muscles in her neck constrict. Her neck is long, greyhound like. Her head sits like an olive impaled on a chopstick. Black olive… No, she doesn’t have them, at least not right now.
‘She’s not here.’
‘What else can you see?’ Boy asks. ‘Have you ever seen…?’
‘—A man with glass wings?’
₪₪₪
‘How did you know about that!? How!?’
The gooseflesh on the back of Boy’s neck hardens. His legs become jelly, his stomach fills with acid. He’s never told anyone about Glass Wings aside from Maeve, and she thought he was just messing with her. When Oggie asked him about his sculptures, he said they came to him in nightmares. Something isn’t right here.
‘You told me, remember?’ Megumi says, her eyes twitching.
‘Did I?’ Boy is now one hundred percent certain Megumi is a hallucination. He pulls himself to his feet. ‘No-no, I didn’t tell you about Glass Wings.’
‘You did, last night,’ Megumi says. ‘You told me about him twice. Before you went to bed and at some point, you woke up after having a nightmare about him, about this monster with glass wings and pointed legs. That’s what you said.’
Last night’s dream comes to him in a series of flashes.
Funeral. Ivory moon. Empty chair. Toppled casket. Navy lump hills. Monet open stroke landscape. Cracks in the earth. Tall man in a jacket. Penguin black coattails lusterless material. Behind Boy a massive creature barely imaginable. Behind me.
Or is he imagining it? He looks at Megumi suspiciously. Someone else needs to see her. He has to make sure she’s real. (Did the waiter see her last night? He can’t remember). ‘Do you want to go somewhere?’ Boy asks.
‘Are you okay?’
See how deep it goes.
‘I’m fine, I was just remembering my nightmare. Sorry. Please, tell me about your first hallucination. What did you call it again?’ he asks, sitting back down.
‘Genkaku.’
‘Yes, tell me about your first genkaku.’
Megumi sits silently for a moment as a soft rain plinks against the window. ‘It was in Nagoya,’ she finally says.
‘How old were you?’
‘Eleven.’
‘What happened?’
‘I came home from school early one day and I saw this old woman. She was standing in the small garden behind my home.’
‘What did she look like?’
‘She was short and a little fat. One of her eyes was missing.’
‘What do you mean?’ Boy asks.
‘Her eye was always shut. Only one was open and it was very black. She looked very strange, so I ran inside to tell my mother, but my mother was gone. I turned around, and now the woman was standing in my living room.’
‘What did she want?’
‘She wanted to touch my skin.’
Boy thinks of Lucy and the time she assaulted him back at Maeve’s apartment. Lucy had aged considerably, but as soon as she had touched Boy’s skin, her skin started to tighten. Was Megumi’s the same type of ghost or hallucination?
She continues, ‘I screamed, and ran out the back door. Just at that time, my uncle was stopping by and I yelled for him to come help me.’
‘Could he see her?’
‘Of course not. My house was empty.’
‘Damn, what are these things?’ Boy asks. ‘These hallucinations, ghosts, whatever. It’s all in here,’ he says, pointing to his skull. ‘The problem is, I can’t tell these (he points to his eyes) to ignore this (he points back to his skull).’
‘Just because other people can’t see them doesn’t mean they are fake. I think people like us – you and me – we just have to learn to accept them. They are part of us.’
But what happens when they attack you? As if she were reading his mind, Megumi continues her story.
‘Maybe one week later, I came home again and saw the woman standing at my front door, waiting for me. I turned around to run and she was standing behind me now. I tried to run past her, but she grabbed me.’
Could they possibly have the exact same condition? Some form of hallucination – please don’t let it be schizophrenia – where the hallucination interacts with the hosts in violent ways? Was it possible?
‘We fell to the ground,’ Megumi says. ‘She pinned me down and started sucking energy from my face.’
Boy’s all too familiar with this – Lucy did the same thing to him a year ago.
‘What did it feel like when she touched you?’
‘It felt like electricity. That’s not the right word… it felt like my skin was being pulled off by electricity. I thought that maybe I would die.’
‘What was happening to her? Was her face getting younger?’
Megumi pauses to think about the question. The air conditioner unit makes a beeping sound and cool air filters into the living room.
‘I can’t remember. I was crying and screaming so much. Then a neighbor walks over to me and asks me why I’m lying in the grass making so much noise. The strange woman was gone.’
‘What did you say to the neighbor?’
‘Nothing. Genkaku aren’t spoken about in Japanese culture. It’s very…’ she searches for the right word. ‘Uncommon to speak about any sort of problem that involves somebody’s mind.’
‘Did you ever see the old woman again?’
‘Yes,’ Megumi’s voice quivers. ‘She came into the kitchen one night while I was chopping vegetables. I…’
‘What did you do to her?’
‘I stabbed her in the stomach with a kitchen knife. Black blood came boiling out of her good eye and her mouth. She fell to her knees, clawing at my arm. Look.’ Megumi turns her arm over and shows Boy an old scar. ‘This is from her.’
The scar was faded pink against her porcelain white skin. Barely discernible. Next to the larger scar was a smaller one that trailed a few inches down her elbow. Megumi is real dammit, she’s real!
‘Was this the last time you saw her?’
‘I’ve seen her once or twice on the subway. When she sees me, blood drips from her one good eye like she’s crying. I… I hate her.’
₪₪₪
There was a rare neurological disease called peduncular hallucinosis Girl told Boy about a few weeks after his confession.
I found a PDF online documenting some of the cases, she said, over the phone. People with peduncular hallucinosis see extremely real forms – from animals to humans – which they also can interact with.
Later that day, she sent him the documents about peduncular hallucinosis and he read through them, searching for similarities with his own condition. In one case, a grandmother with no prior cases of psychological disorders was found in a state of
confusion by her family. She’d been seeing animals as well as small children walking in and out of her living room. She knew they weren’t real, and later told her doctors that she’d sometimes see an invisible dog playing with her real dog. Other times, she’d see a man sitting next to her, but he wouldn’t speak when she asked him questions.
In another case, a man was admitted to a psychiatric unit after suffering from four months of visual hallucinations. The man claimed that short men wearing spacesuits would climb into his window and walk around his room. Sometimes they’d fuck, other times they’d fight and occasionally, they’d kill each other.
Other than his hallucinations, this man was perfectly sane. He scored a twenty-eight on the Mini Mental State Examination (anything over twenty-seven is considered normal). He also passed any medical evaluation they could throw at him including an electrocardiogram, a complete metabolic panel, a thyroid function examination and a toxicology test.
Other reported cases included one woman who saw mechanical bugs walking around the room and burrowing into her skin; a man who was convinced a thin green woman was visiting him every night (he even claimed to see her interact with other people in his neighborhood); and a child who repeatedly saw gruesome visual hallucinations such as people lynching themselves with their entrails including a leprous man eating his own fingers and toes.
Still, none of the cases featured hallucinations actually attacking their hosts.
₪₪₪
Megumi leaves seconds before Oggie knocks on his door. All traces of her, including her subtle citrus scent, escape along with her.
‘Did you see a lady?’ Boy says instead of hello.
‘Where?’ Oggie asks. He’s wearing a dark gray suit and a striped wool tie that is cut in rectangular shape.
‘In the hallway or getting into your elevator…’
‘Nope. I did see a little white girl, though. I remember wondering where her parents were.’
Penelope? No way. No fucking way.
‘Really?’ Boy manages to ask.
‘Yeah, but that’s all I saw. Why?’
‘No reason.’
₪₪₪
Boy versus Self: (A Psychological Thriller) Page 27