Chris V

Are you still there, friend?

Are you still my friend?

I don’t know what else to do? I’m too trapped in my head to even move anymore. That’s how it was when I was in the mental hospital. Y’know, just endless loops of thoughts over and over and over again. It’s enough to drive anyone mad. I do think it drove me mad.

It’s why I’m in the middle of the forest laying down. There isn’t anything else to do but to lay down. I don’t know what I’m doing here either. I’m supposed to go to Cody’s show in a few hours but instead, I’m thinking about thinking. Mr. Fish hasn’t tried talking to me so I guess that’s good.

I can’t stop thinking about Marina Lightyear, Sessions. It’s a wonderful world where so many oddities can exist. I never imagined that people like her could. She must be one of a kind. It makes sense for her wanting to hide from the world. All she wanted was a normal life and I hope she has one now. Setting her free was a good thing even though it caused everything else to go wrong. My therapist tells me not to blame myself for the consequences of good actions, but I already knew that. My therapist hasn’t told me a single thing that I haven’t managed to figure out by myself.

I’m the one who broke out of that psychotic state in the first place.

The rain stops hitting my face.

“What are you doing laying down? It’s raining,” a female voice wakes me.

She holds an umbrella directly under me. She’s looking down at me but I don’t recognize her. Is she real? “Who are you?”

“Well, I’m the one who isn’t letting you get any wetter.”

“Are you real?”

She snorts, “What kind of question is that?”

“A good one.”

This girl has blonde hair and blue eyes. Do you see her too? She can’t be real. She’s wearing a white dress in the middle of the woods. It doesn't have a single stain on it. This girl isn’t real. “You’re crazy, huh?” she says. “Why are you here?”

I shrug, “Seems like a good place like any other.”

The girl lightly kicks my head. “Get up.”

I take a deep breath and comply. “Why are you here?”

The girl. She isn’t blonde or has blue eyes. She isn’t wearing a white dress either. The girl has dark black hair and almost black eyes. Is my mind serious? The girl’s blue jeans are a bit dirty from the dirt and she has a stain on her red top. “I just moved here. Jesus, you’re all dirty.”

“I’m fine.”

The girl extends her hand to me. “My name is Grace, you?”

I don’t take it. “You’re not real.”

The girl scoffs. “Jesus dude. Take a photo, maybe that’ll prove to you that I’m real. What’s your name?”

A photo. That’s a good idea. Physical concrete proof of a point in time and space. I take my phone out of my green parka and snap a photo. The girl poses. “Chris Larsen.”

“Oh, I didn’t know we were doing full names. Graceful Ayl Farrigan.”

I look at the photo. She’s still there. Grace is real. But how can I be sure anything is real anymore? We trust our minds to understand the world around us but we don’t even understand how the mind works. How can one truly study itself without any errors? Maybe the reality we perceive is one where the mind can cope with the vast loneliness of existence.

“It’s nice to meet you. I’m sorry you found me like this, I’m not alright in the head.”

She giggles, “It’s alright, dude, nobody is.” Graceful is right. Nobody is okay in the head. Every one of us has that thing we all hide from. We all have that thing that makes us scared and weak; that leaves us vulnerable. “If everybody knew what made them vulnerable we would all be weak.”

Shit. Can she read my head?

“Dude, I can’t read your mind, say something and don’t stare at me for a whole ass minute.”

“Oh, uh yeah.”

Can she read my head, like you? “You really are weird,” she laughs. “That’s okay, I met plenty of weird people back in Chicago.”

“Is that where you’re from?”

“Nah, born and raised in Denver until my parents decided to move us here for some reason. I moved out but, I’m back visiting. This town gives me the hibbie jibbies. It’s like it’s hiding something.”

“All the kids here think it’s cursed.”

“Ah, that’s probably it,” She says looking above her umbrella. I just realize how close we are to each other. It’s almost uncomfortable but something about her doesn't let it happen. “Do you want to go somewhere, I don’t know, less creepy?”

“Yeah.”

We don’t go anywhere far. There’s an ice cream shop that hugs the edge of the woods. We go there. On the way there she mostly talks about her life in Colorado. I mostly just listen like I always do. When we get there she sits down near the very back of the shop. I take off my parka so I’ll be dry. “Y’know, it doesn’t seem so bad. It’s quiet, peaceful,” Graceful says. “Kind of reminds me of going into the mountains back home.” After I don’t say anything back, she scowls, “You don’t have a lot to say, do you?”

“No.”

“C’mon. Tell me something about you. You’re pretty weird, were you always like this? Are you autistic?”

“No.”

“Then what, dude?”

“I was in a mental hospital for two years because I thought I was transcending the physical walls of reality. I saw my friend getting shot in a dream and it happened a few days after. I thought it was possible to transcend the concept of time. I went mad.”

“Whoa,” Graceful leans in. “Then what happened?”

“Every time I decide to be the observer, bad things happen. The one time I thought I was doing something good, something bad happened because of it. I don’t know how to get over that.”

“Well, that’s easy. You just move on.” Move on. If it only was that simple. “It’s simple, just gotta live with it until there’s a day where it doesn’t hurt as bad. Well, I’m talking about break-ups but the same concept applies. Like dude, the past is the past, you can’t change it anymore.”

She’s right. I thought about it before but I don’t believe in the concept of the past because everything that happened and will happen already did. All we have is now.

All we have is the now.

How could I overthink such a simple concept?

Graceful grins and the world starts to fill back up with water. No. I’m not gonna let this happen again. Reality is my monster, it’s what I make it. If this is my current reality, I’ll just take it away. “Congratulations,” she says, “you just broke free.”

“What?” I blink and she now a fish.

“You’re just a fish like me, like the rest of humanity,” Grace says, but not really. My mind is stronger than this, it has to be.

I shut my eyes and take a deep breath. When I open them, Graceful is no longer that fish. There is no water around us. “Dude, are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’ll be fine.”

She smiles, “Good, cause I’m going to need a friend if I want to live here.”

“A friend?”

“Yeah. It’ll be a while before I land a job so I gotta have someone to talk to who isn’t my parents telling me to go back to college so I can make more money for my kid. You know, real hood shit.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you do when you’re trapped in your own mind and can’t get out of it?”

“It’s simple,” she says as if it really is, “You take a dive.”