Before I say another word... write another word, to be more accurate... I have to warn you that I am crazy. I don't mean to say that I'm completely, madly cackling, drooling, out of touch with reality, eating flies, crazy. Perhaps that occurs later down the road, or perhaps not. No, I mean to say that I know I'm not completely in touch with reality. I am very aware that I cannot be seeing some of the things I have seen. But... it's not just the things I've seen that lead me to believe I am crazy, but also the people I have met. I've gotten quite tired of trying to distinguish who is real, and who is not, and you would too if you ask person A if person B is real, only to wonder if person A is lying about person B because person A isn't real either. It gets old really quick.
It didn't start out that way, or the way certain people just lack that hold on what you would all consider reality. Not at all, for me, it started with a drug. I'm not much for pill-popping, other than the occasional Percodan, or Oxycodone, nothing much heavier than that. I'm your basic weed sort of guy, maybe a hit of acid, but I was leery about that, as it can cause trips, even long after you've stopped hitting it. I did try some Ex, you know, once or twice, and almost ended up going home with some girl I was head-over-heels about, saved by my friend, Nate, though I was furious with him at the time. This particular pill, though, was an exception, not even supposed to be available to the public, as it was in its testing phase, and doing so well. Apparently, according to Nate, who had snuck me out about ten of the little capsules to begin with, it was supposed to enhance the number of neurons that fired in the brain, jumpstarting synapses, that sort of thing. And it seemed to do just that, at first, anyway. After taking it, I felt more lucid, clear-headed, able to remember things better, make connections I never would've made otherwise.
It wasn't until later, about fifteen or sixteen doses later, that I had my first hallucination. I was on the subway, headed home from work, and there was a man just across from me. He was well dressed, suit, overcoat, tie, all that, but he had the head of a frog. It wasn't just a little odd-shaped... bear with me here... he literally had the head of a frog. It was greenish-gray, and his eyes... anyway, when he noticed how I kept looking over at him, he got defensive and started croaking at me, and I went and sat somewhere else where I didn't have to look at him. Thinking that maybe I'd just been working too hard, I went home and went to bed, taking another of those capsules. Even my dreams were lucid, so clear, and I remembered them upon waking, which I had never done before.
When I told Nate about the hallucination, he laughed so hard he fell out of his seat.
"You wouldn't have been laughing if you'd seen it yourself," I bristled at his laughter, "It was creepy as hell!"
"I'll bet you scared the shit out of Mr. Toad, too!" he continued to laugh.
It got worse, of course, because, while I supposed I could handle the sight of a man with a frog's head, birds yelling at me to get the fuck out of the way was even more bizarre, I shit you not! There's apparently no animal I've met that is surlier than a pigeon on a mission. I almost yelled at him to fuck off, and then caught myself. It seemed as if I'd been cast in the worst Disney movie ever made!
Luckily, I didn't have a girlfriend, or a wife, or anything like that. Otherwise, I might have some explaining to do about my sudden issues. Not that I couldn't get a girlfriend, mind you. I'm not a bad-looking guy. I'm about five-foot-nine, closer to five-ten, almost one hundred seventy pounds. I'm kinda pale, I guess, as I don't tan well. My hair is a light brown, and I keep it spiked up, a little longer in the front than the back, which is okay, because I don't deal with customers, so it's not a big deal. My eyes are so dark as to appear almost black, especially when compared to my pale skin. Nate says I look like one of those vampire guys in some teen drama, but I don't know, because I don't watch teen dramas. He's weird like that, I guess.
I happened to catch the news one night, in which Pharmcare, a major medical company, was the target of a major snafu involving a new drug being tested, in which the drug caused major mental problems in the test subjects. I was suddenly very concerned, and I quit taking the medicine Nate had given me. I confronted him about it the next day, but he'd already been worrying before that.
"What the fuck did you give me, man?" I demanded.
"Ah, fuck, man," he ran his hands through his short, curly hair, really doing no damage to it, "Did you stop taking it? Flush the rest of it down the toilet."
"Tell me!" I pushed him.
"Shit, man, it was supposed to be safe!" he threw his hands in the air, frightened and angry, but not more so than me.
"I've been seeing all kinds of shit!" I paced across his living room, "You don't even realize the shit I've been seeing, Nate!"
"You think I would've given you the damn pills if I had thought they were so dangerous? Fuck, man, they're auditing my department, looking for misplaced pills. I think they know some got taken, but not who took them."
"So what the hell am I supposed to do now? If I go see someone and tell them I've been taking some experimental pills, they'll sure as hell figure that out, and trace it back to you."
Nate sat with his head in his hands, "Shit, man, maybe they'll figure out how to reverse it or something. For the time being, you've just got to roll with it."
"Roll with it..." I exploded, "A pigeon fucking told me to get the fuck out of the way, Nate! People have been saying all kinds of weird shit to me! Some guy at work told me that Mrs. Maple is the cause of the fall of the Third Reich, Nate! Who the fuck is Mrs. Maple?"
Nate shook his head, "Ah, fuck, man... I didn't know, man, I swear I didn't. Maybe it'll wear off when you stop taking it."
"It'd better, dude, cause I'm freaking out," I said, leaving.
If it had, then there would be no point talking (writing) about it, would there? No, it got worse.
"So, how long have you been having these hallucinations?" Dr. Suttelmyre looked up from a yellow pad, his green-and-gold Montblanc pen ready to write.
"It's been about a month," I fidgeted, "And it's been getting pretty bad."
"Tell me about it," he adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses.
I sighed, "Yesterday, I got into an elevator with this guy. Out of nowhere, the man begins singing some show tune or something, dancing to it, and then walks right through the door."
"He sang and danced, and then walked out of the elevator?"
"No, he sang and danced, and then walked through a closed elevator door, while the elevator was still moving," I elaborated.
"That must've been quite distressing," Dr. Suttelmyre arched a bushy eyebrow.
"Ha! After I got off the elevator, I saw a cockroach the size of my fist. It was making racecar noises as it streaked down the hall. Somehow, I found that one a bit more distressing."
I watched him jot something down on his pad, and then he looked up and asked, "So far, nothing you've hallucinated has shown any malevolent intent, tried to convince you to do bad things?"
"Nothing like that, not yet, anyway," I shook my head, "What the hell am I supposed to do, doc? I can't keep functioning at my job if this keeps happening."
He adjusted his sombrero, pulling the little strap tighter on his chin, "That's for damn sure, you crazy bastard!"
I realized that he wasn't real, and I was sitting in my apartment, talking to someone who wasn't there. Fuck.
It got worse for Nate, too. They suspected someone in his department of stealing the defective drug, and, though they hadn't pinned it on him, they suspected him. So far, however, they had no real evidence that he had done it, so he was still okay, he hoped.
