Photo by James Yarema on Unsplash
Lately, I’m not sure if I’m here or there. I am lost in my own reflection as it bounces off my mirror and remains spun-out into my dark eyes even though the lights are off. I crawl on the ground, for my knee has passed its expiry date. Should I give a shout-out to all those years of playing Football or getting into physical altercations with racists at bars? Primarily I blame doors, walls and stairs. Tripping and bumping into them as if trying to dive head first into downer Narnia- the chronicles of a wasted man. I try to find another cigarette which I think I left on the defile floor of my junky bedroom before passing out last night after taking one too many of Mr.-know-it-all’s prescriptions. The rain outside has inflicted yet another grievance that continues to cause pain, both emotionally and physically. My cigarettes are completely de-saturated- proudly sponsored by the open window that I had forgotten to close last night.
Now my cancer sticks are as soaked as my Persian carpet, a beautiful but stained Tabriz with hints of wine spills, spaghetti sauce, and durry burns, aka cigarettes and joints. They have marked their territories quite well over the past five years. I know I have a packet on what separates the wooden windowpane from my dirty pillowcases that has not been washed for weeks- well, I think it’s been weeks.
I realise I am late to yet another therapy session that dawdles itself into my psychosis- my very own malady. I am losing touch with what’s real. Shirtless and all, I think that all my clean clothes were removed from my closet and placed in a black garbage bag which I gave back to her. You bought me so many shirts that I lost count but you damn well made sure to remind me, or anyone else who would be sitting next to you. Yes, Yes, whenever you were smashed off your face it became a trademark of yours to talk about how much you spent on the one who ripped your heart out, and how much that piece of shit owed you. How can I owe someone something if it has been returned back to them? Does that not count? And who the fuck keeps tabs on their assumed “other half” if they are in love? One things for sure though, you damn well ain’t getting the dog. Rich or not, if you are placid on these zombie pills, you might as well invest in dishcloths or disposable excrement bags for dogs. Again, don’t even think about it.
Today is Wednesday and I begin to feel her energy, her “reiki voodoo” hogwash. Unfortunately, this means we are bound for yet another appointment. I can smell gasoline; it could be coming from outside the window or from the kitchen. Being this strung out off of these pills I wouldn’t be surprised if I am gas lighting myself. Speaking of gas lighting tendencies, I am definitely feeling her energy for she is “the Cleopatra of all gas lighters.”
‘It smells like lavender in here, not gasoline,’ she says.
I forget about the cigarettes and lift my head slightly to take a good look at her. She looks pretty today, wearing a yellow sundress, her long brown curly hair shining in the dark, red lipstick aligning with her high cheekbones- obviously implants for her entire face has changed since we broke up. She should have knocked first before walking in here.
‘It’s lavender Jason,’ she says again, making sure that my name is included in this fucked up narrative of ours- I must warn you that there is a limit to my sanity. I do not recollect the events of the night before but I imagine I must have rummaged and dribbled through my old journals for her to show up like this.
Before the therapist arrives, she whispers words that could grind my bones to dust. Before she walked away from this “relationship”, she whispered the same words into my suffering Labyrinthitis, admitting she had given our love away almost a decade ago. Now she is digging our graves while I stand there watching. She begins to sing ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ in tempo to the thrusts of her shovel, and when she talks, Freddie’s beautiful voice replaces hers asking if ‘this is the real life?’ No, it can’t be. It is definitely fantasy because you don’t belong here. You just don’t.
My own judgment can be considered false at this point, since I have taken these prescribed idiots before passing out. Why does she want to feed into my lucid manic episode?
‘Firstly, admit what you stole from me,’ I say to her, as I crawl towards the edge of my bed, barely hearing the rain over the first verse of the song. I reach the bed and wish that I didn’t have to sort myself into a seated position- cuz I know where this is going.
She stops singing and begins to laugh hysterically. An insect laugh, that’s the only way to describe it.
‘I beg your pardon? Did you not promise to die for me as well?’ she replies.
She resumes singing, fuck it, she knows this is a song I cannot resist belting out. So, I join her, leaving no stone unturned. We are only ever in sync when we sing Bohemian Rhapsody, a song for the exes and tortured souls who just want to get the hell out of this place.
Too late though- the therapist has come.
Unwilling to serve any vile slander, I suddenly realise that a black shadow is sitting on top of my pile of dirty clothes, which I might add- reeks of weed and regrets. I suppose I should not be shocked, I missed our last two sessions, so I assume that she has called him again for a mandatory vaccination of my thoughts and habits. I have never seen his face, but the sound of his voice paints this picture in my lustered brain that he is some sort of bouncer-type you would find standing outside of Berghain in Berlin.
The memories of those good old acid-rave-tripping days are about to be interrupted with a non-healthy dose of psychoanalysis. Keep in mind, there is a thin line that separates a recreational addict and a prescribed addict. The tendencies are the same, he reassures me when he makes these house calls. The therapist only ever appears in my unnatural habitat of rock bottom and pure emptiness- just as my wallet will be soon. Nothing is ever cheap when it comes to surrendering yourself to your insecurities- her insecurities actually.
The smell of cigarettes, malodorous cocktails and Dolce & Gabbanna’s “The One” are like a serum that confronts the abyss of my Nordic fantasies- Valhalla, crows and Odin. Yes, I am a weirdo but do I really need to watch and participate in this episode today? I suppose my time has come, but seriously, what-the-fuck.
There is dead silence for a few seconds. Nope, there it is, I spoke too soon as usual. A fucking lightening jolt that could put Trent Reznor’s screams at ease. The storm is brewing outside and my window is still open. These miasmatic pills and the thunder are also destroying Freddie’s ‘Mama’s and the ‘Ohhs.’ But I still can’t resist. I try my best not to fall into that Ketamine like dark hole, and join her. It’s the only time I am stable and content. Bohemian Rhapsody always wins.
‘You did say you never loved her, remember Jason, self-realisation is the first step to getting out of this hole she has dug for you,’ the therapist says, with his slightly husky but definitely judgmental voice.
I only see his shadow, a big silhouette of my toxicities that are coming to haunt me- Freddie’s ‘sometimes wish I never even born at all’ resonates right in the gut of my guilt.
‘Yes, I did.’ No point lying, he knows everything.
‘So, you remember that night well?’ His tone is testing my patience.
As he continues his “psychoanalysis,” she lays down in the flowerbeds of our truth: roses, lilies, and cursed daffodil laments. The opiate smell glides across the frivolity of our shared past. I recognize my own lapse of judgment that is occurring through the grievance of my own repenting. My heart begins to accelerate and my anxiety becomes an exorcism of the combination of pills that I should not be mixing. Do you remember when you used to come over every day, around eight am in the morning, and we would just lay together in bed and listen to music? Do you reme….
It’s hard to stay awake now, my eyelids are heavy, and my most serious vices appear to a degree of nebulousness.
‘Jason, answer the question,’ he says, interrupting my sentimental lapse of appraisal.
‘I suppose so,’ I say, as the song reaches its orchestral peek, while she stands there waiting for me to break into misery.
‘You can do better than that, Jason,’ she interrupts, now sitting on the ground opposite me, waiting for another relapse.
In this hideous darkness that follows me for days whenever I try to go all-out cold turkey, I do not want to be alone and so you begin to infest my fantasies. Rescue me and I will lay my head upon your breasts again.
Thunder bolts, and I will not be let go from these old sentiments.
‘Ok, then. Two years after you left me, I hooked up with someone. We took some X and went to a park. It started to rain, just small drops, just enough to make me realise that I was no longer in love with you.’
‘What girl?’
She is still relentless, even though it has been eight since she ended things.
‘Some girl, you don’t know her. I wasn’t even in the country. We went back to her place and put on Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and rapped along to the entire album before she gave me head. Is that what you wanted to hear?’
The therapist remains quiet, but she does not.
‘So you fucked this girl?’ she asks.
I am vaguely drifting in and out of consciousness. Something weird is happening. I think the therapist is trying to say something but all I can hear is ‘Bimillah’ and I know they will not let me go- something will not let me go.
‘I’m feeling tired, I’m feeling lost in translation,’ I say to the therapist.
My carnal desires appear to be all caught up in barbed wire. I can see what has led me to this very moment. I am drained... and just so sick of being tired all the time.
‘Sickness and wealth, do they go hand-in-hand or heart to heart?’ he asks me.
No. He is not letting me go.
‘What use is all this food that sits in your fridge, if you cannot even eat anymore? Your attempts at gluttony will not recover what your soul has lost, but it will kill you. All, will go to waste in this house of yours,’ he asks, raising his voice this time.
While this is happening, I remember something while she is injecting chemicals into my neurosis, yet she has only half-touched the champagne that sits in front of her in the grass next to the river. Fantasies of what could have been. What can bring on her salvation and redeem my own? You could say that I threw it all away to taste others. Well, yeah I did. I’m only human. Yet, I kept feeling her energy knowing she would not come near my stained hands, or my cruel tongue.
A lucid state. I know I have paid my dues, does it not show yet? Why can’t they see it? The therapist is waiting me to talk, and he will continue to remain sitting in the corner, a dark shadow who is as resent-less as a Communist- and her, spitting in my eye.
‘I did hurt her. I did hurt her with words of affection and love, and with certain actions prompted by my own greed. Yet, again, I paid for it,’ I say to him.
‘Jason, Jason, Jason, what does one say to hear about their future?’ he questions me, his husky voice echoing in the room. This does not help with my tinnitus.
‘Jason, young man, do not turn your back on me, for knives plunge deep within. Do not turn your back on me. Face to face, give me your hand, let me set you free,’ he raves on, making me think that I am the sane one in all of this mess.
What is she doing? She looks like she is on MDMA, rolling around on the floor and peaking at the apogee of the Rhapsody.
‘I have nothing to offer and nothing to sacrifice anymore. This Jezebel will not rest until I drown,’ I respond to him calmly.
She is the fucking Jezebel, she ran off and got married to escape her families sickness that was tying her down since the day she was born.
‘Jason, are you not made from flesh, bones and bleed the same blood just like everyone else who has come and gone before you?’
This fucking therapist will not shut the fuck up. I am too distracted by the repetitive karaoke-like rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody. She keeps singing it, over and over again. Is Freddie Mercury my only way out of this lucid madness?
Fuck- you can’t do this to me.
I start to feel the sleep paralysis crawling its way all over my body. Some weird chemical balance is challenging the wiring of my common sense.
‘I get the feeling you’re bored with me,’ she says to me, ignoring the therapist.
‘I never was. I am just tired of all this. Tired of your insecurities, and how you wouldn’t even let me make love to you properly. You were saving yourself for him, not for me. I was just something you owned, not adored,’ I calmly respond.
I look around the shoddy room, trying to find my journal to jot all this down before it all disappears, it always does. I have to get out of this fucking place.
‘What are you so afraid to lose,’ she asks me.
“My noxious personality,” I sarcastically reply.
‘You always escaped from your obligations,’ she accuses me.
I have to get out of here, and I think I know just what to say to her.
‘I was fucking twenty-two, what the hell did you expect? A perfect man, a perfect home or just another perfect figure that you wanted to claim but couldn’t? You couldn’t tame me, and that’s what pissed you off. Nooo, wait a second. Was it the fact that I was the first one you confided in, but it backfired? But, darling, why is this all on me? You manipulated me, destroyed my friendships and pushed me to my limit. I was your toy, it wasn’t the other way around. Didn’t I tell you that night to stop? I continued to say stop it, over and over again, on that fucking phone you bought me but threw into the shower once because I was communicating with someone form my past. You are the crazy one, why the hell wouldn’t you shut the hell up that night? You made me say it. So, did. I finally said it, so you would stop fucking with my head. That is the truth, you are puppet master, that is who you are and no injections or cheek implants or botox will ever truly metamorphose you into this ideal image you have installed into your fantasies because you are fake, and that fakeness is the cause of my fucking illness.”
Are they satisfied now?
‘Jason, look at your face, look at a mirror, man; do you still not dare to speak the truth?’ the therapist speaks for the last time, before his husky voice disappears for good.
‘Oh, for Odin’s sake, will you all just shut the fuck up?!’ I yell as if it’s the last time I can ever use my voice- nothing matters to me anymore.
Another bolt of lightning, a horrid sound that finally wakes up from this lucid nightmare. I look in the mirror, looking like I am somewhat ten years older. I somehow make my way downstairs, limping and suffering from every step to go and eat some honey-flavored cereal. It is the only thing I can digest these days, besides the pills and my chain-smoking habit of the Winston Blues. The waves of my imagination mocks my weakness. What is expected? What awaits her? What awaits me? To hell with it all. I need to take my medication. I head over to the bathroom, which surprisingly is clean- ha.
I’ll be damned. I open my medicine cabinet and there they are, my meds, untouched. So, what the hell happened last night?
She did once say that all of this is rotten, you know, that I took something so beautiful and made it ugly. Yet I suspect everything will be forgotten as soon as I admit to myself that you were just another character in another one of my stories- a character who also loves Bohemian Rhapsody. I wonder what my mind will invoke tomorrow as I pop the zombies into my mouth- I guess anywhere the wind blows, ey?
Seven Autumns is an experimental writer with wild tendencies to inject herself with art and words.
