As time goes by, you begin to forget the fast paced life you have lived, but there is a way you can reincorporate yourself with the many lost decades that fail to exist in the library of your mind. So you dream, but you don’t remember the endless nights of hopeless commercials. And as time goes by, those pictures and memories fade away and all you care about is to go back into your lucid state of mind. But I am unlike most people. As I can manifest my own dreams and I can remember what my own mind can perceive in a blank space that only I occupy.
It started last month, after a drug educed dream that I could only remember certain details off like the fact that was a preservation of my future and what I will become if I don’t change my psychotic mind-set. As I lay there in my sheets, the smell of stale cigarette smoke lingering in the room and the darkness creeping in on me like a predator stalking its prey. I started counting 1…2…3…4….5 and I felt my body go limp. It was in this moment I realized my mind was working. I continued counting 6…7…8…9…10 and like that my eyelids felt like weights and my peripheral vision went blurry. As I continued counting, I didn’t even realize my eyelids falling to the bottom and flashes of a variety of colors filled the darkness beneath them. The palette of vibrant colors began merging into a sickening shade of pure white until all I could manifest was the color white. This is my blank space. Like an artist I had a blank canvas I could merge with my own twisted and deranged mind.
At first, there was no sense until I felt it tightening round my neck. The rough hairs of dangerous weapon grasping at my throat dangling as I watched myself look at my mind and smile knowing that now I have succumbed to the death of my mind I could transfer my psych into my clone. As I live and breathe in that white space. I see my lifeless body now hanging from a willow tree on top of a hill surrounded by a field of lavender. The smell was sweet but strong and the lifeless body hanging from the tree added a sense realism to my incoherent world of my sad mind. I saw a large establishment behind the tree and realized it resembled my towns psychiatric hospital. It was awkwardly exciting to look at as it had life to it. There was patients with family’s visiting them. Doctors and nurses doing their job and succeeding in their efforts. I wasn’t noticed at the window so I walked up to the heavy doors. They creaked open and I was welcomed by most. Then I heard it. The consistent beeping of an alarm. It gave my ears excruciating pain. I had to leave my place of wonder and snap back to reality.
My room was full of light and sound. I could hear my own family downstairs getting ready to leave for the day. As I arose from my place of slumber and got my typewriter ready with ink and paper, I noticed a sticky note attached to my mirror. “Appointment with doctor Rowland at 15:00.” My reflection was almost attractive as a smile appeared across my face knowing I didn’t have school. I entered the bathroom. The pristine ceramic glistening in the exotic Scottish sun gave me an intriguing feeling. I have always been obsessed with cleanliness, so I had my shower, washing my hands before, and after then, proceeding to wash my face in the cold tap water — that shocked the pores on my face — brushing my teeth with a coarse toothbrush — that cleansed my mouth of the strong liquor that I had such an attraction to from last night and the many nights before. I began getting ready. My clothes freshly washed and dried. A black t-shirt with a pocket, blue jeans, and black Adidas gazelles I had bought months prior. I finished my outfit by grabbing a brown Fred Perry jacket. My hair was flailing around my forehead and the smell of aftershave and deodorant made me look more than presentable.
I went downstairs to the empty hall and looked around in surprise to see the house was clean and left. I went to the local shop and picked up a pack of cigarettes. Thanking the shop owner, I left in a hurry to catch my train. The rain started and I felt happy knowing that I wouldn’t need to be conversational with anybody around me. The train was dull with only a few people occupying the carriages. I sat near the middle and as the rain pattered of the carriage window, I began to remember my sickening sweet dream that I had manifested last night. The thought of knowing I could go home and continue this dream. I felt good knowing I had an escape from reality. The train stopped and so did the rain. I got off the step that separates my transport from the filthy gravel flooring. I stepped off and began to walk through the neighboring town towards the hospital past the willow trees that had been there for many moons with the smell of damp wood and dirt. The hospital looked extreme today and I began to walk up the stone slabs towards those heavy oak doors. The smell of hospital equipment and the sense of loneliness and isolation was nice and made me feel more appreciated. I took the elevator up to the fourth floor where my therapist abides. I get out the heavy doors, slide open, and show a long hallway lit by large ceiling lights. I walked down the hall past the many doors with many names until I got to dr. Rowland. It was situated beside the floors bathroom, which was perfect as it gave me time to wash my hands before entering. I knocked three times on the door of my therapist.
“Come in.”
The two blue armchairs which reflected the light coming in through the window. The cactus plant giving off a sense of danger and the numerous files sprawling the desk. The books that looked like they could have been wrote by Gandhi and an older man staring at me with a grin, ready to dissect my mind.
“Good day, Mr. Sharpe.”
“Good day, Rowland.”
“So, how have you been for the past few days?”
“Well, I’m alive.”
“Are you, Mr Sharpe?”
“I don’t know anymore. It’s been so long since my illness and I finally feel okay. I am not used to it.”
“You didn’t have an illness. You just, well, just inaccurate. You tried to jump off a bridge until somebody pulled you off and you instantly felt envy and rage as your death had been took away from you.”
“Well, I was and I still am. Now, I don’t have death. So what do I have?”
“You have a mind, Mr. Sharpe, with an extreme IQ of classic literature. Anyway, how’s your writing coming along? You found anything to help inspire you?”
“As a matter of fact, I did during my dreams. I take control of them and I can revisit past memories and do them differently. I can also manifest different things now.”
“Be careful, Mr. Sharpe. Everything can kill you even the thing you enjoy the most. Learn to control that power.”
“Okay.”
“What do you imagine in this lucid state?”
“Well, last night I done what I have strived to do since before we became acquainted.”
“You killed yourself?”
“Yeah and I felt happy.”
“I’m going to prescribe you with some medicine to help feel better.”
“Okay.”
As Rowland went into the drawer to withdraw this magical medicine, he took out an old tape then he quickly moved to door and locked it. He then closes the curtains and puts the tape into the old television. It began. This was an old video based on some messed up subject matter. Some of the patients Rowland was caring for had some seriously messed up heads, until it showed about a patient who could revisit old memories. He spoke about how he could finally die in a world he had made. A happy place away from the usual troubles of his own confused persona. The video showed him in his own blank space where he could manifest a world of his own free of the usual troubles.
I got up in silence, slowly realizing that the man in that video was a painfully accurate representation of my own blank space. I went home. The scent of the sanitized hospital followed me home and through soreness of my life, I sat at my desk with my typewriter at the ready. I began to write about that so familiar blank space. The consistent clacking would make a man lose his sanity. That night, I got ready for bed excited to finally release from the grey skies that loomed over my head and drained me off. All hope but seeing the dark close in as my eyelids began to lose co-ordination as the sweet smell of lavender from the coarse white pillow against my head. The colors began to fly through my head reforming the world I had created the night before. I started where I left off, getting ready to enter that hospital that would induce the people inside with a sense of hope knowing that the heavy door can be opened. Although I stopped and observed, the man playing golf to the side of the hospital onto a lavish field.
“Dr. Rowland?”
“I decided that it might be a nice surprise for me to visit you in your mind.”
“But I didn’t want you to.”
“Do you know what a nightmare is, Mr. Sharpe?”
“Yes.”
Dr Rowland to a large swing at the clean golf ball on the grass taking a clump of the earth with it as the heavy club impacted the ball.
“I’m your nightmare, Mr. Sharpe. You need to know the truth. This little world you have been living in will be the death of you.”
“What? Because you won’t have anybody to take apart and put back together with your own twist?” Dr. Rowland puts his cold hand on my shoulder. The transition from heat to absolute ice shocked me instantly and nearly made me arise.
“The way I see it, Mr. Sharpe, you have a choice. Get the surgery and know the truth or stay here and lose your mind. In your own happiness,” he shows me the golf clubs long rubber handle. I take it with no remorse and begin to make my way towards the smells of lavender that is beginning to fade. The blank space taking over. I stopped and looked at Dr. Rowland. He had such disappointment leaking from his face. The sweet smell of lavender is getting stronger and stronger with every step I take towards him. Those long heavy step portraying my actions, my feelings of anger as he was one who wants to take my feeling away from me. As I get close to him, I see his mouth open. He isn’t shocked or scared. He simply doesn’t know how anymore.
“What you’re about do may stroke a chord in you forever, if it was your first time.”
He grinned thinking he had won over me and I would put that club down until he realized this isn’t his blank space. I swing the club making him fall into the field his glasses like with mere splatter of blood. He tries to get up sputtering up some blood from his throat. I strike his back which lets of deadly crack and as his body falls once again. I hear a sharp crush but the smell of lavender getting stronger and stronger every time I lay the blunt force of the club onto him. Then he stops making attempts to rise up to me. My arms become heavy and begin to feel restraint. Now I can live in my blank space for all eternity without being disturbed by any doctors, nurses, or Dr. Rowland. But I wake up. The gloomy dull day reflects my feeling of leaving my head. Another appointment with Dr. Rowland. The usual repetitive journey to and from the hospital. But there was something off about the hospital. As I opened up those doors, they didn’t seem so heavy, they felt almost fake. As I walked through the infirmary towards the long hallway that seemed to stretch forever, the lights flickered and the elevator was illuminated by a single lead light. I entered. The sound of the elevator making its way to my floor filled my head with the sound of a train going through a long tunnel. The elevator stops subtly. I leave and make my way towards end of another seemingly endless hallway. The spotless bathroom at the end filling the hall with a sense of purpose. Then it was in front of me the door with a brass plague saying: “Dr. Rowland”. I knocked. There was no answer. I entered the room with no sign of Rowland but a note placed on his recliner.
“I am resigning from my place as head psychiatrist at this establishment as my last patient, Mr. Sharpe, has finally been placed in a mental institution in solitary confinement as he doesn’t know what state of my mind. He is in and thinks that is it acceptable to assault me with a golf club from my office and then to shove it off as how I am apparently taking his happiness by suggesting surgery. He also stole items from my office such as a lavender spray along with prescription drugs. My efforts were pointless and maybe it’s best that he has finally lost his insanity for he thinks that he can revisit past memories from the prescription drugs he has taken thinking that they are not related to his lucid dreaming when it is just morbid hallucinations of how he can’t cope with his failed attempt at suicide and still tries to revisit his failed suicide. Mr. Sharpe will never know the truth. Now he had the choice and decided to lose his mind. He also had an unhealthy obsession with keeping clean which obviously played a part in the deterioration of his mental state.
Yours sincerely,
Michael Rowland.”
As I sat there in the hall between the Michael office and the bathroom, I realized the truth. What I am now seeing is what I really wanted. The medication they have put me on was the same medication I had been swiping from Michael. My tears began and they drowned out the world I had created. I couldn’t wipe my tears anymore. My arms were restrained and I couldn’t even kill myself. The walls wouldn’t let me, but it’s time now to make a new fabricated world that I won’t leave as they will keep feeding me my medication until there’s no more reality. But for now, I am stuck in a blank space.
