My Kind Of Crazy (3 page)

“May,” I whisper when I roll over and see that it’s the
German Shepherd lying next to me. Her tail thumps uncontrollably on the bed as
I try to sit up. My left hand has a few scrapes on it, but nothing that won’t
heal in a few days. I reach over to the small lamp on my nightstand and flick
it on. The interior of the cabin is illuminated in the soft light, and there is
no sign of Anastasia. But Tom sits idly in one of the kitchen table chairs with
his chin on his fist.

“It took you long enough. Man you’re a pussy!” The groan
that erupts from me has May whimpering. I know that Tom is not real. I’ve known
he isn’t real for the past three years, but the bastard still won’t go away. When
I look up to say something harsh to him, I see that there is a bottle sitting
on my kitchen counter.

Ignoring Tom’s continuous insults, I manage to stand up with
a little help from May. My footfalls are unsteady and loud as I stumble to the
countertop and pick up the pill bottle. It’s the prescription from my bathroom,
and there’s a note underneath it. The bottle is full. I pick up the note, and I
have to read it three times for it to sink in.

We need to talk. Tonight at seven if you’re feeling
better. Take your meds first. ~ Anastasia

She’s signed her name in a flourish, and she’s forgotten to
cross the ‘t’. Before I can help myself, I bring the piece of paper up to my
face and smell it.
If only I were normal,
but I’m not. Tom reminds me of
that by trying to snatch the note from me over my shoulder. I keep it out of
his reach and pocket it. Then I pick up the pill bottle and twist the cap off.
Tom inhales sharply through his teeth as if the motion physically hurts him. As
I’m filling a glass with water, Tom tries to sway my resolve.

“If you take that pill, I won’t tell you what happened the
night of D’Salvatore’s murder!” He tries to knock the pill from my hand, but I
manage to get it into my mouth and swallow the water. It’s going to take
another half an hour for the medication to work, but eventually Tom will be
nothing but a whisper. He never really goes away, but he can be gagged for the
time being with medication.

“D’Salvatore is dead. Nothing you tell me is going to change
that.” This time I throw my head back and laugh at Tom’s enraged expression.

“Not even if I told you that maybe you’re the one who did
it?” My skin grows cold all over as I immediately clamp my mouth shut and stop
laughing. It is a possibility that I forgot to take my medication and something
awful happened with D’Salvatore. But if that were the case, wouldn’t Tom be
badgering me about it now? Wait, isn’t that what he’s doing?

“Am I?” I ask him, and he shrugs one shoulder with
insolence. I screw my face up into a silent snarl, but that never fazes Tom.

“I can help you figure that out. You
need
me Jonah!
It’s always been you and me. We’re the only friends either one of us has.” I
pinch the bridge of my nose as Tom sits down on the kitchen table. One foot is
dangling as the other rests on one of the chairs.

“You’re not my
friend
!” My deep, growling voice
sounds foreign to me. I glance at the pill bottle and wonder if I should be
taking more than one. Maybe if I just took one more…

“Whether I’m your friend or not, I can help you!” He’s
starting to shimmer and fade from my vision, and I’m beginning to feel foggy
again. But this is a different haze. It’s the haze of the medication starting
to take over, and Tom is starting to disappear. His emotions will still be
there for me to tap into, but I won’t be able to see him. And he’ll only grace
me with his ugly voice when I’m highly stressed.

When she’s finally gone, I put my back to the counter in the
kitchenette area and slide down to the floor. The medication makes Tom
disappear, but the side effects are not always pleasant. Right now I’m feeling
groggy, and very agreeable. If someone told me to jump off a bridge, I might
not hesitate. That happens if I’ve been off the medication for a long time,
which means that I probably didn’t take this for a few weeks, and that’s why I
ended up in someone’s front yard nude. I had a breakdown.

A clock on the wall ticks the minutes by as I try to get the
dizziness to subside. When it’s finally manageable about half an hour later,
it’s half past seven at night. I pinch the bridge of my nose to get the
dizziness to stay at bay as I try to stand. My back scrapes against the wood of
the cabinets, but I manage to get to a standing position.

Anastasia deserves an explanation. And now that I’ve had the
medication I can remember some of the events that led up to her father’s death.
Unfortunately, I can’t remember who did it, or whether or not I’m not a
suspect. Shoving down that thought, I go to the bathroom to clean up the glass.
My brow furrows when I stare at the new mirror hanging on the wall, and the
broken glass in the trash can.

I’ll have to tell her thanks, and does this mean I can
stay?

The sun is still high in the sky as I exit the cabin. I put
my hands up and squint in the bright light, a side effect of the medication. I
stumble along the narrow path that leads down to the house. By the time I get
there, the sun is almost set, and my feet are sore. I look down and curse. I
forgot shoes.

Running a hand through my hair, I try to remember if I even
cleaned myself up. I probably look like a madman, and at the thought I begin to
laugh. I’m laughing hysterically as I lean against a tree when May comes
bounding up to the edge of the woods. She snuffles at my jeans and licks my
toes, causing me to giggle even more. I forgot to put a shirt back on, so when
I slide down the tree it scratches my back. I welcome the pain because it makes
me stop smiling.

“You can give the psychotic guy meds, but he’s still
psychotic.” I grab May by the ears gently and ruffle them as I ramble. It will
take a few weeks for all the symptoms to dull. My case is severe; therefore,
I’ll never be quite right. But in a few weeks I’ll be able to handle life a lot
more than I can right now.

“You’re late.” A shadow falls over me as Anastasia’s body
blocks the setting sun’s rays. A coolness washes over me, and I can’t help the
smile that dances across my face. I shield my eyes with my hand and squint up
at her.

“You’re beautiful,” I tell her like a sap. I can’t see her
face, but I swear I just saw the hint of a smile.

“You didn’t take your medication, did you?” A small hand
reaches out to me, and I take it gratefully. I try to school my face into
reasonable, but just the effort has me grimacing.

“I did, it just takes a few weeks to get the crazy to
dampen.” I watch as May bounds down the grassy field towards the farmhouse that
I used to occupy from morning to sunset every day. Anastasia’s cool hand stays
in mine as she takes me down the grassy slope towards that home, and suddenly a
morose sadness overcomes me. I won’t be seeing D’Salvatore in this house anymore.

“Tell me how you came to be living in a cabin on my father’s
property.” It’s not a question, but a quiet demand. We’re almost to the house,
and suddenly I don’t want to go inside. It makes me feel as if this is all too
real. An overwhelming feeling of stress floods through me and I start to feel
Tom surfacing.

“Do you mind if we stay on the porch?” I ask quickly with a
bit of a bite to my tone. The dog is waiting patiently for the two humans to
finally make it to the porch. She has a dour look in her eyes, and Anastasia
opens up the creaking door to let the poor thing into the cool house. I feel the
cool air wash over me as I sit down on the steps. I worded it like a request,
but I’m not going into that house. If I do, Tom will surface.

“I’ll get us some iced tea. Uh, don’t go anywhere alright?”
I’m not facing her, so I roll my eyes, and then I just nod. The scrapes on my
back sting and I’m pretty sure there might be a thorn in my toe. I lean over
and stare at the steps as another wave of dizziness clouds my vision. I’m not
sure that caffeine and sugar will help me right now, but I’m not going to turn
down something to wet my lips.

Anastasia returns with two tall glasses of iced tea with a
slice of lemon floating in both. She hands me mine and sits down next to me on
the porch. I would expect her to be a little afraid of me, but she’s acting as
cordial as any host to a normal person. The tea is exceptionally cold and tooth
achingly sweet, so I put it down on the board next to me and swallow a few
times. Anastasia takes notice and laughs at me as she puts her hand up to cover
her smile.

“I like it sweet.” She admits to me while she downs a
quarter of her own glass. I grimace at the way she downs the sticky, syrupy
drink and wonder if she’ll be bouncing to the moon and back soon. And I thought
I
was insane.

“Tell me what the pharmacist told you.” I’m sure that good
old Henry Walt had
something
to say about Anastasia D’Salvatore picking
up my medication. It was very well known that her father didn’t want her to
know that I was here. She didn’t visit often, so it wasn’t hard to keep a
secret.

“He told me that if you were going to kill me, you would
have already. He also said it might take a while for the medication to start
working again. And judging by how late the prescription was being refilled,
you’ve been off your meds for about a month now. He also warned me that you can
be unpredictable with your behavior and that just because
you
don’t want
me dead, you’re hallucination might. So his reassurances were not very
reassuring, but I made myself suck it up and come home anyway.” She downs the
rest of her tea, and glances at mine. Is she a caffeine addict?

“I wouldn’t say Tom wants you dead, but that’s all I’m going
to say on that matter.” I wait for further questioning, but Anastasia is
staring out at the field and the long driveway.

“My father must have trusted you very much to allow you to
stay on his property. He told me on the phone he had a farmhand that was
working for him, but he never mentioned the fact that you’re certifiable. I
want to know why.” I expected her to ask me if I actually killed him, but maybe
she figures I wouldn’t answer honestly even if I had. I take another sip of the
tea just to give myself time to gather my thoughts. How do I explain this one
to her without giving secrets her father didn’t want her to know away?

“Your father and my mother were close. They were best
friends, and my mother was my overseer for a while. That is until she got
cancer. Long story short, before she died she asked your father if he would
look out for me. Technically I am allowed to live on my own if I take my
medication. The state has some pretty lenient rules for people like me because
there’s just not enough room in the psych wards for everyone. And now that
they’re privately run, people who cannot afford to go there just don’t. My
mother let me go off my medication for six years so that I could come to terms
with what was reality and what was not. It was working, but your father was
nervous about letting me further that self-education. So I went back on the
medication because I needed a place to stay, and I respected your father.”
That’s as close to the truth as she’s going to get from me.

I’m not going to tell her about the fact that my mother
slept with her father on several occasions over the years, and D’Salvatore was
like a father to me. I’m not sure how Anastasia would feel about not knowing
about her father’s personal life when I do.

“So you were here when he died.” She’s running a finger
along the rim of her empty glass thoughtfully as she glances at me. I see the
question in her eyes, and feel guilt rip through me. What if I am the one who
killed her father?

Suddenly anger shoots through me, and I know it’s not my
own. Yet it’s still difficult to control, so I grab the glass of tea off the
porch to have something to grip. Tom’s voice reverberates through my mind:
I
can help you!
Trying to stuff him down is like trying to win at whack a
mole.

“I don’t remember that.” I tell her honestly and immediately
take another gulp of the tea. It’s warm now that it’s been sitting outside for
such a prolonged period of time.

“What do you remember that led up to that night?” I quirk an
eyebrow at the lack of emotion in her voice, but when I look at her face she’s
like an open book. Anastasia is eager for answers, and I’m the closest person
she can get a hold of that might have them.

You could take advantage of that
. Tom whispers in the
back of my mind.

I will not take advantage of D’Salvatore’s daughter in
any
way.
I reiterate to him my earlier sentiments about his thoughts.
Apparently my inner dialogue with Tom has not gone unmissed by Anastasia. She’s
staring at me with a mix of shock and curiosity on her face.

“So even when you’re on your medication he still talks to
you?” I feel like I’m in an interrogation or worse. Maybe she views me as some
kind of science experiment, and this time it’s my own anger that has me
gripping the glass.

“Yes, even when I’m on my medication he doesn’t totally
leave. When I’m stressed out I hear him.” I hope she gets the point that this
conversation is stressing me out. Yet she plows on relentlessly.

“What does he say to you? Is he like, the good side of you
or the bad side?” I can’t look at her when I answer. My words come out through
gritted teeth, and I feel my jaw clenching with each one. They’re like physical
blows.

“The bad side.” Anastasia makes an ‘o’ face and puts down
her empty glass. I see May come around the corner with a few small balls of
deer shit hanging off her fur, and I can’t help it. I smile. Some things never
change.

“Does he have a name?” It’s barely audible, the whispered
question. Yet I hear it as loud as day. No one ever asks me if he has a name as
if he’s a
person
. My throat goes dry as I try to formulate an answer.
Should I tell her that he actually does have a name, or should I just tell her
that my hallucinations aren’t that bad? Although if she wanted to, she could
probably ask people in town just how bad they can get.