Untitled chapter
✮ Chapter 1 ✮
“Time is the wisest counselor of all.“- Pericles.
“How are you feeling today?” Dr. Derrick Andrews, my psychiatrist, a middle-aged man with severe alopecia, smiled.
“I am having nightmares of a boy killed in a fortress that I never visited in my life. Yet, it looks familiar. I need a higher dose of antidepressants.” I pleaded.
He scrunched his eyebrows and flashed a sympathetic look at me. “Ah, the ‘Anniversary Effect.’ It is expected, a higher dose would not help.”
“A what? Anniversary of what?”
“‘Anniversary Effect’ is a unique set of unsettling feelings, occurring at the onset of the anniversary of a significant experience,” he read my expressions. “It was your parent’s death anniversary last week. Wasn’t it?”
“But my dream..... It’s not related. It’s in a foreign language, in a foreign place, and yet I understand everything they say.”
Walking towards his desk near the window, Dr. Andrews picked up his laptop and said: “If you ask me, you look better than the last time I saw you.”
Neither has my pale face regained its color, nor have my dark circles reduced. How do I look better?
“I don’t feel better; I feel worse. I need a stronger prescription.”
“It is not real. It’s your mind, playing games with you. It’s just a feeling of déjà vu, Bethany.”
I fidgeted with my bracelet and pursed my lips, toying with the idea whether I should tell him it’s not déjà vu, I am haunted. During the day, I can see the ghost of the boy from my nightmare. Just like my dad used to see him.
“Bethany, treating the mind is difficult. You are experiencing extreme sadness due to your parent’s death anniversary. On top of that, certain drugs and their interactions increase the possibility of déjà vu, resulting in a powerful sensation of familiarity. I have checked your records,” he tapped on his laptop and opened my health history. “You had recurrent flu for the past two weeks. Are you still taking the medicines?”
“Yes, I am.”
“You are taking Amantadine and Phenylpropanolamine together to relieve flu symptoms. The action of the drugs and electrode stimulation of the brain created déjà vu.”
PLEASE HELP ME STOP SEEING THE GHOST AND MISSING MY MOM!
“It is not just a reaction to some random drugs. I know it is not. I don’t want to turn into my father. I am going crazy.”
“I can relate with the nightmare, you know.”
“How?”
“In your nightmare, you saw people killing someone. I relate it to your trauma; you saw your parents killing each other.”
Usually, his reasoning works on others, but it will not work on me. I know the ghost will haunt me till death. I hope Dr. Andrews gives me a medicine that can help me live until the ghost strikes me down. My silence allowed Dr. Andrews to explain his theory further.
“Look, Bethany, the sense of familiarity is only the reaction of your medicines, and we don’t know if it was a foreign language or something your brain just made up. I mean, if you don’t know the language, is it a language at all? It’s just gibberish.”
The problem with my psychiatrist is that: HE NEVER GIVES ME THE MEDICINE I NEED! He looked at the clock and left his seat to escort me to the door.
“I suggest you keep taking your regular medicines and log your experience, your dreams, your day flashes, your mood swings, everything, and if it doesn’t improve, I will prescribe you something stronger. Okay?”
“Thank you,” I said with drooping shoulders and walked out.
I wasted the whole lunchtime visiting Dr. Andrews. Despite that, nothing came out of it. Even after leaving his office, I could not think of anything other than getting a more potent medicine. My depression is like water that seeps through the damp and moldy walls of an old house, making the foundation of the house weak, and deteriorates the entire house. Whenever I attempt to block it, somehow, it always finds another path and makes me weak bit by bit. Thoughts of ending it all came to me several times, but I didn’t take my life because my mom sacrificed hers for mine.
Still, there are good days when some TV shows and cat videos make me forget the tragedy of my life, and I wear a smile as if nothing happened. Yet on most days, the ghost haunts, making it excruciating to live.
I rushed to get to my upcoming class. Trotting down the lane, I turned right at Carter RD. and halted with a jerk. Suddenly thunderhead clouds swept across the sky, and my surroundings turned dark. The space around me becomes lifeless, as if someone has sucked away all the hope and happiness from the world. I felt dreadful and cold.
The ghost appeared in front of me. His sharp tanned face was marked with wounds and blood oozed out of them. His eyes glared with revenge, contradicting the smirk on
his face. I struggled to keep my nerves calm as the darkness started closing in.
Hanging in the air, he hissed. “Nothing can save you! I will kill you, just like your father.”
I shut my eyes tight while counting to ten. That’s what I do every time the ghost haunts me. When I opened them a minute later, slowly the sky cleared again as if nothing happened, and the college campus looked bright and busy again. I took a deep breath and gritted my teeth, mumbling under my breath, “He is making my life hell.”
Reaching the physics building, I spotted Brandon. His fiery red hair always separates him from a sea of people. He is my best friend. His family is the only family I have now, and his face makes me smile a little, even after I encountered the ghost. He walked towards me wearing a plain t-shirt and jeans, which he constantly wears, and nothing flashy or fashionable.
“Didn’t you sleep last night? You look shot. Don’t tell me you had one of those freaky shows again?” Brandon enquired about my nightmare.
“Yeah, you bet. This time, I went to a fort and saw the boy slashed by an angry mob.” I replied.
“So, the medicine is not helping, huh?” He said with a deep sigh.
We reached our classroom and took our seats. Suddenly, something hit me hard, unbalancing me from my seat. Clara, my roommate, sat beside me in a hot pink ‘Hello Kitty’ t-shirt paired with an itsy-bitsy plaid skirt. Some people never leave their childhood. Clara was like that, always in clothes fit for middle school.
“Hey, not cool, I practically fell,” I frowned.
Clara’s pixie-like nose scrunched up a little. “Sorry, babes, but I had to run my fastest today. I couldn’t risk another tardy note.”
It was her routine, having lunch outside the campus, then running late and making it just a second before class. Professor Wilkinson, a man with features similar to Albert Einstein, entered with a projector, causing everyone to scramble to their seats.
Brandon whispered, “Oh! It’s movie time. Good, no monotonous lecture. Could the day be any perfect?”
“Is there anything called a perfect day in college life?” Clara asked while rolling her eyes.
“A perfect day,” I sighed. “For me, it is when nothing terrible happens, when I don’t wake up from a nightmare and have a headache or when some jerk is not bullying me, and when I don’t feel wretched,” my voice sank.
