Like an undertone in a song, any echo of a noise carries voices that can be heard if one pays particularly close attention and has a desire for the truth. They come from the whining ceiling light, flickering on and off, and they come from the vents circulating musty air. It is easy to hear them but hard to listen.
Perspiration dusts Arthur’s forehead. A late-night shopping spree had devolved into a loose pretext excusing his presence at the corner store and actions therein. He is no longer there to make a purchase. He is there because he had already gotten there, and now that he understands what is going on, he needs to pretend he doesn’t.
Arthur is being observed.
There is very real danger in every corner of the known universe not immediately before his eyes. Arthur is in an unpredictable environment, and any amount of uncertainty means certain peril. Having little intention of buying cereal at 3:12 AM, Arthur carefully grabs a box of Lucky Charms and aims his glazed eyes at the nutrition information, unseeing. He is concentrated on the corners of his vision; the parts that matter. Peripheral vision is less accurate but more revealing. It catches motion rather than form, and form can be intuited. More importantly, it is where the things are that do not want to be seen.
Confirming some vague and unintelligible suspicions, the cereal box whispers as it slides back onto the shelf. Arthur didn’t know that he had been harboring suspicions for the box until they were confirmed. He is now becoming suspicious of his suspicions.
Arthur knows why he is suspicious, but he doesn’t believe it. The situation is all too familiar. A simple fact sits in the recesses of his mind, shrouded by ink-black fear. He needs to see past that. He needs to ground himself.
It’s not real.
In sudden, paranoid introspection, Arthur re-traces the last several hours of his life. He is getting out of his car, having arrived at the sleepy corner store a block away from his trailer. He is driving on a dirt road. He is getting into his car, the beat-up metal door sticking as he tries to open it. He is practicing second-nature breathing exercises as he laces his shoes, preparing to exit the relative safety of the motel room. He is scouring every surface of the complementary mini-fridge for a scrap of food, finding nothing.
Arthur is at the store because he is hungry. This comes as a revelation. There is no grand conspiracy afoot involving broken lights and cheap ventilation and Lucky Charms. There is only Arthur. He has taken approximately zero of the 186 milligrams of Risperidone prescribed to him that month and should not be up so late.
Arthur can’t force complete lucidity, but he can manage insanity. Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat. Step away from the delusion. Still the chaos. Be calm. There is nothing wrong.
There is no way for Arthur to tell what is real or fake. When he hallucinates, it tends to be vivid and all-consuming. His brain perceives no difference between the artificial stimuli and the ones accurately measured by sensory neurons. Anything that he sees, feels, hears, smells, or tastes has hallucinatory potential. This is inconvenient for Arthur, as he rather prefers to know what is going on in his immediate vicinity.
Much in the same way that autistic folk often memorize a series of facial cues in order to parse emotional expression, Arthur had developed a routine to facilitate normal interaction with his surroundings:
1. Catalogue the knowns. The corner store, the cereal box, the lights; constants that Arthur has prior experience with and has already categorized as real. These items are to be held under little suspicion.
2. Look for oddities. Voices that don’t come from people tend to be illusions. So do shadows and moving shapes, insects where insects shouldn’t be, and people who are unusually fixated with making Arthur’s life worse.
3. Catalogue the oddities. These items are to be temporarily regarded as figments of the imagination.
4. Don’t trust the results of the process. Arthur had learned from experience to overcompensate and categorize more things as oddities than he actually believes are oddities.
5. Try to ignore the oddities. For the things that he is relatively confident are fake, pretend that they aren’t there. For the things about which he is less sure, try to avoid any situation in which interaction with those things is necessary. If that’s not possible? Guess.
6. Most importantly, ignore feelings. Things will always feel real, and they will more often than not feel immediately life-threatening. This feeling is most likely inaccurate. Instead of trusting it, trust the process.
Arthur regains his composure and makes his way to the snack aisle. The shopkeeper, a work-tired man with more stress lines on his face than hair left on his head, tries to keep his eyes open as Arthur moves from one place to the next.
An entrance chime rings as the door is flung open. Arthur suppresses the instinct to conceal himself behind the nearest shelving unit, compromising instead for a simple turn of his head. The intruder—no, Arthur corrects, the customer—is draped in loose flannel and too many jackets. His jeans are loose and tattered. Stubble scribbles across his jaw, rising into a patchy halo. Something feels wrong about him. Murderous frenzy pours out of his bloodshot eyes. He is here to maim. He is here to maim Arthur. Arthur can feel the delirium creeping back in.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Remember the knowns. Nobody wants to hurt anybody else in the real world.
But somehow Arthur knows that he is wrong. This man is malicious.
“Good evenin’,” says the customer.
As if on command, he saunters lopsidedly to the register and produces a fist-sized six shooter from oversized corduroy pockets. He slaps the gun down on the glass counter, keeping his finger on the trigger, and offers a less-than-charming smile. The shopkeeper, still processing the situation, slowly widens his eyes, throws his hands into the air, and stumbles backward into the liquor cabinet.
“What, is there something in my teeth?” says the man with the gun. “Well, now I’m all embarrassed. That ain’t no way to treat a customer.”
“I—I don’t care about the money—”
“Shhh, don’t worry your pretty head. I’ll—” It is at that moment that the shopkeeper decides to very obviously glance directly at Arthur. The robber pauses mid-sentence and whips his head around, following the shopkeeper’s eyes into Arthur’s.
Arthur has a very important decision to make, and very little time to make it. His stomach wants to refund his dinner and his legs are red hot in anticipation of the cinematic chase sequence that his gut instinct knows is about to play out. His brain, however, has the final say. Rationally, this man can be nothing other than a hallucination. The statistical likelihood alone of this exact occurrence should be enough to convince Arthur of such; the man’s apparent desire to cause harm to Arthur and others is the cherry on top.
Arthur’s therapist warned him against naming his hallucinations for fear of validating their existence. Instead, she told him, he should refer to them in the first person as a constant reminder that they are nothing more than a fragment of himself. With that in mind, Arthur ignores every alarm bell in his terrified body and turns casually away from me, inspecting the variety of potato chips beside him.
My concerned expression quickly resolves to a Cheshire grin. Keeping the gun trained on the shopkeeper, I address Arthur.
“What, don’t like what you see?” I wait for a response. Arthur offers none. “You a mute, son?”
Arthur remains stolid as he graduates to the chocolate selection.
“Oh, you somethin’ else.” I look back at the shopkeeper. “Get a load. Like he doesn’t even notice I’m here. Priceless.”
I approach Arthur and bend over beside him, making a point of staring directly into his eyes, watching them pour over the Milky Ways and Snickers. I wave my hand in front of his blank face.
“You in there?” I’m enjoying this a little too much. Arthur is not. Sweating profusely, he grabs a couple of Twix bars and starts toward the check-out counter. My rough hand takes hold of his jaw, squeezing his soft cheeks together. Arthur tries to power through the barrier but can’t, the tactile hallucination too strong for his brain to overcome. I plant the barrel of my gun firmly against his temple. Tears touch the corners of his eyes.
“I’m speaking to you, boy.” The humor is gone from my expression, but I’m not angry. I’m curious.
Arthur knows all too well that he won’t be able to rationally handle this situation much longer. He needs to get out of the store before he causes a scene. He aggressively slaps my arms out of his face and pushes past me, strolling to the counter and greeting the shopkeeper with a polite smile. I remain behind him, incredulous. I have never seen such blazen disregard for the threat of death. I follow the cocky bastard and grip his arm tightly, trying to get his attention.
“If you don’t say somethin’ soon, boy, I’m—”
“Just this.” Arthur says to the petrified shopkeeper, placing the Twix bars on the counter with trembling hands.
I snort, amused. “Oh-kay. Let’s try this,” I say, aiming the gun at the shopkeeper instead. “By the count of ten, you either use those vocal cords or this man loses his. Your choice.”
Arthur is concerned. Typically, elements are added to the world, not removed. Currently, the real shopkeeper is hidden by a false image of himself. This is abnormal. Arthur doesn’t like abnormal. Abnormal means that something isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Perhaps he should reconsider reality. Perhaps—
“—ten.” The small gun explodes in Arthur’s face, a concussive burst of superheated air momentarily rattling his skull, the vibrations tenderizing its contents. Arthur reels, wondering in one moment if he’s dead, in the next why his shirt has changed colors, in the next where the nice man behind the counter has gone. Arthur is on the ground, spitting out somebody else’s blood, spitting out his own vomit. Arthur is on all fours, enduring a tirade of angry voices, all of them distinct but incomprehensible, yelling, yelling. Pounding in his ears as his ears pound themselves. His head spins, the thoughts rattling around inside. One manages to find its way into his consciousness: it’s not real. He doesn’t remember how he knows this, but he remembers knowing it with absolute certainty.
Arthur picks himself up, shaking, exhausted, suddenly very cold and naked in his t-shirt and jeans. He looks dejectedly down at the convulsing body behind the counter. Its hand clutches its own neck uselessly, blood spilling out between the fingers, making little rivers in the cracks of the dirty tile floor. Its mouth gasps for air like a beached fish. It looks at Arthur. Arthur looks back.
“You done ignoring me now, boy?” I taunt, the grin back on my face.
Arthur looks dimly at me, then back at the body. Its mouth forms words. They sit on Arthur’s shoulders, weighing him down, dragging him into the ground. He can’t move, but he moves anyway.
“Sorry… keep the change.” Arthur says meekly, dropping a crumpled ten on the counter and swiping his Twix bars.
I look on in awe. “Now, you are somethin’ else. And I don’t suppose you’re gonna acknowledge me even now, are you.” Arthur steps out of the corner store, myself immediately behind him. The brisk night air bites Arthur’s bare skin. Bullets of packed snow pelt his body. Slush soaks through his mesh shoes.
“I’d be offended, but—”
“You’re not real.”
“He speaks!” I bark a single-syllable laugh. “And… what?”
Arthur yanks the door of his Chevy open and gets inside, slamming it closed behind him. I open the passenger side door, aiming my gun at him. “You ain’t gettin’ off that easy.”
The car roars to a start and abruptly backs up, the door nearly shoving me to the ground. Arthur needs to escape this place. I dive in as he puts it in drive, the door swinging shut behind me as it skids out of the tiny parking lot. Tears stream down Arthur’s face. “He drives, too!”
Arthur says nothing, keeping his eyes on the road ahead. Snow pellets bounce to either side of the windshield as he speeds away from hell. Headlights carve a shallow pocket out of the inky night.
“So I ain’t real, huh? Interesting.”
Arthur can hardly hear me. His head is full of whispers and corpses and dirty tile floors. The real world is little more than background noise.
A pile of unopened prescription pill bottles sits at my feet. I pick one up and inspect it. The label reads, “Risperidone Tablets, 6 mg.”
“You know why I’m here, don’t you? I’m your guardian angel. Yeah, that’s it. I’m your… fairy godfather. I’m here to protect you from yourself. You’re a dangerous man.”
The rear wheels skid briefly out of alignment as Arthur executes a simple turn.
“Yessir, a dangerous man indeed. The way you shot that man at the store. A cold-blooded killer.”
“Shut up.”
“You like that, do you? Yeah, in fact, I was only there to keep you from killin’ everyone in the room. And seeing that you were the only other one in the room, you should be thanking me. You could have ended up like that poor old man.”
“Shut up.” Arthur’s jaw quivers. His vision is blurred with tears. His foot leans on the accelerator. Another car whizzes past.
“Not only that, but you had the audacity to steal from the poor man. Then, to make matters worse, you blamed it all on me. I’m—”
“Shut up!”
“Oh, you want me to shut up?” My eyes eat Arthur. My spirit is gone. I want to destroy his. “But that’d make me real, wouldn’t it? If I ain’t mistaken, you can’t tell nothin’ to shut up.”
Arthur wails. He is beyond the point of rational response. The car wobbles unsteadily as it flies along the dirt road, a pair of headlights appearing over the horizon.
“Oh, boo hoo. You wanna know how real I am? Do you? Acknowledge me, boy!”
“You’re not—”
I reach over Arthur and throw the steering wheel to the left.
A latent observation: the approaching car is here. Arthur’s vehicle meets its side, and Arthur is immediately yanked toward the door. I’m tossed on top of him like a rag doll. A gunshot sounds. A hole is torn in Arthur’s leg. Heads connect. Bodies bruise against harsh angles. Something goes very wrong in Arthur’s neck. The car has already completed a full one-eighty by the time the airbags release. Something batters Arthur in the opposite direction. The airbags are boxing gloves, not cushions. Something in Arthur’s chest cracks. I’m somehow no longer in the vehicle. Shards of glass gouge into Arthur’s skin. The world abruptly stops, and Arthur keeps going. His head finds a hard surface.
Arthur doesn’t know how much time has passed. He is leaning out of an open doorframe, too much of his own blood on the snow beneath him. Everything hurts. Breathing is agony. This is what critical injury feels like. Arthur has never been an optimist.
But miracles do happen. The cherry red handle and cylinder of small revolver protrude from Arthur’s thigh. Its barrel appears to be lodged in the bullethole that it created. Arthur cannot think, nor does he want to. He has a singular mission. His hand moves of its own volition, sending shooting pains throughout his neck and chest, and presses the seatbelt release button. Arthur crumples into the snow. There is too much pain everywhere. None of it in particular grabs his attention. He heaves and nothing comes out. He coughs and rusty snow turns cherry red. Arthur believes that he is going to die. He doesn’t bother checking his pocket to see if his phone is intact. It makes no difference.
Arthur’s arms and his good leg cooperate to drag him around the ajar door. He takes in the environment by moving his body rather than his head; his neck is stuck in place. Spiraling skid marks follow the car’s tires. Its rear end is bent around an evergreen. Branches penetrate the passenger windows. Eight hundred feet down and across the road, a smaller car lays on its side in a ditch.
And three hundred feet to the right, at the end of a trail of blood and glass, is what he’s really looking for. Me.
Arthur knows what he has to do. Firmly grasping the handle of the revolver, Arthur counts to three and wrenches it from his thigh. The iron sight catches on a tendon, and he inhales sharply. The pain in his lungs distracts him long enough to tear through. Good.
Arthur begins dragging himself through the dirty snow. He considers giving up. It would be much easier. The thought of euthanasia makes him feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and he has the means for it. But that can wait. Arthur needs closure.
Luckily for Arthur, I’m awake, and happen to be very immobile. Arthur makes an attempt at speech.
“I don’t care… what’s real.”
“I wouldn’t—”
He aims the pistol in my approximate direction and fires. The bullet finds a home in my arm. To Arthur’s surprise, his own arm recoils in pain as a fresh wound appears in the same place.
There it is. That look of confusion, then horror. Because we both knew, but neither of us were willing to accept it. Rather, I wasn’t willing. I try to sob, but my body convulses in agony instead.
I only ever took what I needed. I did what I had to do but I hated doing it. I suppose it was easier if I could pretend to be the victim, too. Put myself in their shoes. I should have listened to my therapist’s advice. I should never have given him a name.
Matthias Claassen
Matthias Claassen in the college of LSA, and his major is so undecided it’s not even funny. Despite loving to write and draw, he almost never finds the motivation to do either, so he supposes his work was inspired by LSWA’s mandatory submission requirement.
