Four
Elias
When my brother’s haunted expression and bloodied face is replaced with someone else’s for the third time in a row, I begin to wonder if he’s real. He keeps coming back and is nothing like any hallucination I’ve experienced before. Usually, I count the minutes until they leave, but with him . . . with him . . . I don’t mind him overstaying his welcome a little. Especially when every time he’s been here, I’ve gotten the best sleep I’ve had in a long time. It’s not something I want to want so badly, but it’s hard not to. I get lost in how relieved my body is to have it that I let myself go, forgetting that I’m supposed to be punished for the rest of my life.
His eyes have changed. As he curls up beside me, stealing more of my pillow, purple rings wrap around his blue irises. The charms in his hair glow too, turning different colors, reminding me of a mood ring. When he smiles, the center charm turns purple—black when he frowns and seems low on energy. Pressing an AirPod into my ear, he shoves another one in own his while humming the soft melody of the song playing and the stone shines blue.
He has to be real. He feels real. I tried so hard to convince myself that the terrifying figure showing up, acting as my brother wasn’t, but the man singing the song Adam used to randomly dance to whenever he wanted to cheer me up is making me want to believe he is.
He smells good too. Like sugar and . . . so much life. Flowers, trees, the sky, and fresh rain. Reminding me of a rainbow, he’s a promise of good things to come. But he can’t be real. He’s a figment of my imagination like everything else whenever I’m somewhere caught between awake and sleeping. Only fear isn’t tickling the back of my neck with him here. My heart rate is more regulated than it’s been in a long time when I first wake up. I get up from the bed with ease when he’s gone, not shaken by the horrors I endured. Not shaken by the ugly sensations clawing at the pit of my stomach.
What brought him here? Was it the comedies I’ve been watching lately? The sweet, fluffy romances I’ve filled my breaks with, or the songs I play when I want to remember the good days I had with Adam? When I want to feel like nothing has changed. When I want to pretend he’s only a call away or in the next room.
Did I have the ability to change my dreams and hallucinations somehow? Was I doing something right before falling asleep without realizing? If so, how do I stop doing it? What if I want the bad memories and trauma to remain? After all, I deserve to suffer. I should experience pain and agony for the rest of my life.
Amy always says that’s not what Adam would have wanted, but how the hell does she know? My knees felt weak that day, with a strange buckling sensation before I got into the car to drive. It always passed, so I never thought anything of it. “A vitamin D deficiency,” the doctor said. No, it was my muscles loosening up and relaxing from laughing too hard. From being annoyed or agitated, or from being too turned on and over-exhilarated from an orgasm.
Why couldn’t I have known then what I know now?
“Do you have songs you like to dance to?” the man next to me asks . . . Or is he a man? I guess he can be whatever I want him to be if it’s my mind that invented him. “Do you like to dance? Or maybe singing is more your thing? You strike me more as the sing-in-the-shower type.”
He keeps going, jumping from question to question while rambling on about what he likes and other topics that have nothing to do with each other. If I could laugh, I would, and then I’d hate myself for it. All his babbling settles something inside me, though. It’s a nice break from the darkness in my head, and I fight hard trying not to lean too far into it. His questions distract me from all the ones I drive myself crazy with daily. Ones I have no answers to. Unlike mine, I can answer his.
“I keep forgetting you can’t talk.” He laughs. “Oh, I got it.” He jumps up against the headboard, earbud falling from his ear as his eyes light up.
“You can write them down for me to read next time.” He smiles down at me, the tips of his hair changing to match the ring in his eyes. Purple. His nails turn the same shade, a little longer than before as he searches my nightstand for a pen and paper. “You have a lot of candy in your top drawer.”
Rummaging through the different packages, his hand freezes on one, and his eyes narrow in on it. “Cotton candy sour belts. Do they really taste like cotton candy?” He opens the package, inhaling deeply with his nose shoved in the top of the package. “I guess I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had it. They don’t sell it on base. I’ve been told it’s better at carnivals than stores anyway.”
He gives the candy another sniff before sliding it over his tongue, and his eyes close as a throaty moan escapes him. Shoving more into his mouth, he makes sounds that cause warmth to spread in my groin. The sudden arousal has my head spinning and my body going slack—not like I can use it now anyway. My vision fades a little, and my eyes close for seconds before opening again.
More sugary pink strips are being pushed into his mouth, and when he finally stops devouring my candy, the package is empty. His frown triggers something weird inside me. For some reason I want to wipe it from his face and find a way to make him smile again. Light fills his eyes again when he looks down into the dresser, and then his cheeks redden when he glances back at me, the package slipping from his hands.
“Sorry. I got sidetracked. Happens a lot.” He mutters to himself about how he needs to make sure it doesn’t happen during work hours. He does that often, it’s kind of adorable. He’s adorable.
He also isn’t real. Man, how nuts do my thoughts sound right now? Thank God no one can hear them. I’m such a mess that I’m starting to get a little too cozy and attached to my delusions. If I could shake my head, I would.
“I’m also sorry for eating your candy. It was just so good. I . . . kind of have a sugar problem, and those were delicious. Would you mind if I tried the blueberry ones?”
He slaps himself on the forehead. “Right, you can’t answer. And of course you’d mind. I’m supposed to make this a better experience for you, not eat all your candy. I can try to pick some more up for you on the way home.” He looks back, scrunching up his face. “More cheese puffs too. Sorry, while I was waiting for you to wake up, I got bored. One thing led to another, and I found myself in the kitchen . . . then in the pantry.” He waves his head from side to side. “I also found some yummy mango juice in a can in the fridge, and string cheese. I just love cheese. I could eat it all day long and in every form. Cheese curds, melted cheese, Jalapeno cheese, fried cheese . . .”
Closing his eyes, he buries his face in the front of my hoodie. “I’m doing it again. Just going on and on. Where were we before?” His gaze bounces around the room and perks up as if having some lightbulb moment.
“Oh, yes! Pen and notepad.” Going back to digging in my drawer, he stops when he reaches a pack of condoms I bought when I started back up on hookup apps after Brody ended things. Nothing ever went further than a “What’s up?” or “Have any more pictures?”
Throat bobbing, he sets them back down, and his eyes go wide at the bottle of lube. Something I have used lately and needs to be replaced soon. “I’m not so sure I’m going to find what I’m looking for here.”
Closing the drawer, he blows out a breath and wanders out of the room. When he comes back, he has a pen and notepad in his hand. This hallucination is lasting way longer than my others. So damn detailed too.
The bed weighs down a little as he lowers himself back beside me, and he scribbles something down on the second page. “Don’t worry, I won’t write over your grocery list.” He goes back to pressing the pen to the paper, humming a tune I’ve never heard before.
As he’s setting the notepad on my nightstand, I’m able to move my hand, and his smiling face starts to fade. “Can’t wait to read your answers when I come back. Have a good day at work, Elias.”
My heart skips a beat when he says my name. Then he’s gone and I’m sitting up in bed, unable to breathe properly when I see the notebook where he’d put it, with the question, “What’s your favorite song and do you like to dance to it?” written down on the page.
I close my eyes, and when I open them the words are still there. Closing the notebook and opening it again doesn’t make them disappear. Neither does splashing water on my face or chugging an energy drink. I’m awake and this is real. But he can’t be real. Can he? Did I do this in my sleep? I’ve I really gone off the rails that much?
After getting dressed and eating a grilled cheese sandwich, I tread downstairs playing his last words in my head over and over.
“Have a good day at work, Elias.”
When closing time comes and I still can’t get him off my mind, I walk outside to get some air while searching up sleep-paralysis demons in the monster world. My breaths stutter as I scroll further down the page. They’re real. They actually exist.
I never actually know what does and doesn’t. Some things really are figments of a human’s imagination, but there really are creatures who show up while you’re waking up and in a paralyzed state. He visits my dreams too, and there’s nothing in anything I read that says they can do that. Also, he’s nothing like the last one who would always show up. Is she a different species entirely? Based on what many articles and stories say about them, they’re never pleasant and they feed off bad emotions.
Why did it feel like he was trying to do the opposite every time he came to visit me?
“Everything alright, boss?” Ian lights a cigarette beside me.
I wave the puff of smoke away, putting more distance between us. “Yeah. I’m just thinking.”
“What about?” He stares ahead, shoving the bud between his lips again.
“Just usual day-to-day stuff.”
“You sure?” He slips me a side glance.
I fake a laugh. “I am. I’m going to head on up. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“That you will. Night, El.”
My ears ring, shoulders tightening. “Don’t call me that,” I snap, not meaning to.
He licks his lips, putting out his cigarette with the tip of his shoe. “I’m sorry. I just . . . I heard it was something you go by sometimes.”
“Well, it’s not.” I look down at where the light is going out beside his sneaker and point while opening the door. “Make sure not to leave that there. I’m tired of picking up those things every morning.”
His eyebrows lift. “I . . .”
I shut the glass door behind me, not able to hear whatever he tries to say next. But I can see him bend down to grab the butt from the sidewalk, and he waves it at me.
I huff a breath, grinding my teeth as I head up the stairs, not waving back. I was fine. Everything was going okay, and then he called me that nickname. The name only one person would call me. Okay, two. But Adam did it first, and Brodie followed along after hearing him say it so much, agreeing that it had a ring to it. He was so agreeable with everything Adam did toward the end, while he and I argued about the smallest instances. Was I losing him even before the accident? Did my brother know? They were basically best friends, stuck to each other’s sides whenever I couldn’t tag along with them somewhere.
Shaking off the thought, I shed my clothes and get in the shower. The warm water rolls over my shoulders and I lean into it, closing my eyes. The confusion and sadness piles on, weighing me down inside. Heaviness moves from my heart to my knees, and I grab onto the wall as my mind blurs. Those few seconds caught where I swear I’m falling, a voice appears at the back of my head.
“You haven’t answered my questions yet.”
A face shows through the water—pale with tinted cheeks, and his eyes are fully purple now. He’s gone as quickly as he comes, and I’m able to move again, snapping out of my short cloudy state. As soon as I’m able to think clearly and remember where I am, my face heats from embarrassment. He was in the shower with me. I don’t know how it works, if he’s only here through my mind or if he’s physically present, but either way I’m sure he could see me.
He sure did see the candy in my drawer. As soon as that thought surfaces, I shut off the water and wrap a towel around my waist. Not caring that I’m probably dripping water everywhere, I rush toward my drawer and open it, gasping at the way all my candy is in rainbow order, color coded with not one but two packages missing. Cotton candy and blueberry. My lips twitch, a laugh threatening to escape my lips but I swallow it down. Unlike all the fake ones I’ve let free, this one is very real, and I’d enjoy the feeling from it too much. I don’t deserve to. I don’t deserve to feel anything but anger, so I shut the door and close my eyes, imagining my brother’s bloody face from my nightmares. Reminding myself why I need him to go away, so they can return.
He gives me peace, with the hope of so much more, and if my brother can’t have all of that then neither should I.