Hallucinogens

Kobayashi Naoya was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at age seven. He experiences vivid hallucinations, hearing voices and seeing people who tell him to hurt - and even kill - his family and friends. His delusions of grandeur lead to panicked episodes in which he believes that anyone and everyone is out to get him. He swears that they are real.

And maybe, just maybe, they are.

I. Insatiable

"Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win." (Stephen King)

No matter how many brightly colored pills he devoured, the demons and spirits never disappeared. The medication served only to make him lethargic and vulnerable to their ministrations, which were at times strengthened by his unstable nature and inability to say "no". The solidity of walls never prevented the most determined and bored of demons from drifting through without flinching, as if the barrier had never existed. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

Nowhere to hurt himself, the adults said.

He sneered, spitting his hatred at their ignorance in a hundred different ways, reluctant to admit that perhaps the demons had more influence over his words than he preferred. The one time he had intended to harm himself was due to the spirits and their constant barrage of assaults. Every time afterwards was the fault of any number of the specters that visited him daily. Some individuals were regulars, as each demons was a separate entity from the last.

If he learnt anything, it was that they despised the human assumption that they were all demons or all spirits. If he had a need to address one at all, he had to address it by its proper title. That was one such rule that the creatures held over him. There were dozens more that he rarely obeyed, and as such often paid the consequences for his disobedience. They were unforgiving and at times too forgiving, expecting equal collateral that he usually couldn't give them.

The only times he had a reprieve were on his bad days spent in the hospital cot, curled up and in such a state of lethargy that his veins contained more medication than blood. Although they invaded his dreams, he could avoid them during waking hours simply by being unresponsive. They could have their way with him, but he would never stir. He could hardly hold his eyelids open and had to concentrate on breathing.

When the creatures left his dreams alone, he dreamt of the outside world - the real, sane world where walls could be breached and he could fend off his assailants. He never wanted to end his life more than when he was inside the hospital. He wasted days and expended all his energy on contriving ways to kill himself, whether to dash his brains out against a wall or strangle himself in the bedsheets. He had long since stopped thinking of ways to make the demons stop coming.

And his suicide attempts never worked, either. The demons or his human caretakers would prevent him from finishing the job. He had slowly given up trying that, too. Recently he had been a good boy, an obedient child as far as mentally deranged patients went. The urges to throw tantrums or scream until his voice grew hoarse never diminished, of course, but he learnt to suppress them. He learnt that, if he behaved and convinced the adults that the meds worked, he might have a chance to leave.

As the days wore on, he knew his stay was nearing the end. The insurance company would only pay for so long, and he had already been in two other hospitals for three months at a stretch in the past. This time was the longest one at six months, after his suicide attempt. And his parents sure as hell couldn't pay for much more.

He twitched just thinking about the outside world still shifting and changing around him. It was a small inconvenience that his parents had moved away from the city he had been born in to a rural area. They claimed to enjoy the peace and quiet, but he knew it was simply less of a hazard to his health - less busy roads, less amount of potential weapons to obtain. On his good days they had showed him photographs of the house and the surrounding town. It was pretty, he supposed, but he refrained from telling them that more apparitions would be lurking around.

Today was another day of therapy. His schedule was amazingly simple to remember: every day was therapy and he took his pills with food at every meal unless he was particularly unstable. Depending on his condition, they would give him something for the nervous jitters and twitching that he had developed over the years. He had yet to decide whether he liked the numb, colorless world medication offered him or a relatively clear mind and limbs exhausted from pacing and shifting.

Those reflexes were vital to his survival, though. Otherwise, the demons could snatch and him and injure him with much better accuracy. It was unavoidable in this room no matter what, but it never helped his anxious mind to suppress those urges. He had long since gotten into the habit of darting away from any wayward hands.

His therapy today was called psy-cho-ana-lysis. That meant many one-sided conversations as the psychologist asked him and his "apparitions" questions and he tried to respond and translate. Every form of therapy tried to make him come to terms with the fact that the spirits and demons weren't real. It was unnatural to see such things, even though the pain was a very real manifestation of his brain. It was no different if a human or a demon slapped him.

But he had to be stronger than that. He shouldn't have listened to them or given into their wills. He had to be strong and fight them, even if it was the scariest thing in the world and he was the only person capable of doing it.

"What do you feel like after you try to hurt yourself or your parents?" The psychologist spoke in a quiet voice. It was always in a quiet voice so that he had to strain to hear. Otherwise, the demons would steal his attention and these sessions would never end.

He fiddled with the stack of playing cards they had given him to keep his hands busy. They were fairly harmless items. No one would get hurt if he threw another fit. As he pondered the question, he frowned and made a tentative move to itch at the raised, discolored skin where his arm had been sliced open. It was entirely the demon's fault for that one. It had playfully shoved his hands away as his father tried to shove him and the knife off. He snapped out of that "episode" real fast.

"I didn't really...I mean, I did want to at the time, but I didn't really mean to hurt them. I just wanted them to stop. They said they would leave me alone if I did it. And sometimes they just shove me or grab me when I'm trying to aim for them and end up hurting someone else..." He trailed off. He often launched into sporadic rants, only to awkwardly end his thoughts. He supposed it reflected his mental processes or something.

He lowered his head in shame. Today he felt shameful, and that was the worst part - that one day he could feel remorse and the next absolute apathy. Usually, he was weak and gave into the demons' whims on the off chance that they might someday keep their promises. He attacked his family for them, even with knives. Sometimes they managed to convince him for the moment that his family only thought of him as a burden.

They told tons of mean lies, but sometimes they spoke the truth. And those truths were what made him desperately grab any lethal weapon within reach.

"I just want them to go away. And afterwards I'm just so tired, tired of fighting because it sucks and I hate it. No one else has to do this; no one else has to hear voices in their heads screaming and screaming and..." he mumbled as he trailed off again. He always called them voices because the doctors and therapists wanted him to believe that they were nothing but manifestations of the mind.

They weren't, though. They were real and they were alive. And they hated being called "voices".

"Naoya-kun, listen to me for a moment," the psychologist demanded in a low tone, although compared to their normal conversations she was practically yelling. His eyes snapped up to meet hers, avoiding the faces lurking behind her shoulders. "Naoya-kun, would you like to go home?"

His heart beat painfully in his chest. He nodded once, like a child, carefully pressing the laminated cards flat on the table until his fingers ached. His nails were blunt, cut just as they started to regrow. It was necessary, since he had once tried to tear the skin off his arms.

"I want to go home," he whimpered. "I hate it here. They're so loud and I can't run anywhere or hide. Can I...can I really go home this time?"

He interchangeably mumbled and raised his voice, taking the playing card and ripping it in half in anxiety. The psychologist gave him an understanding smile and he resisted the urge to scream that she didn't understand him at all until she could see the creatures crawling all over the walls.

"You won't be able to attend school," she told him softly, "but you should try to make some friends."

He thought of scowling, but reconsidered his actions. In the end, it wouldn't be worth it. He didn't just want to leave this place, he needed to get out. It was stifling; it made him more anxious than when he was at home in the city with all those loud noises and flashing lights.

"But you can't hurt anyone, Naoya-kun. It never makes the demons go away, does it? You have to be strong for any friends you make, and your family, too. Don't let them control your life anymore." He nodded to her firm instructions. He knew that. He hadn't always acknowledged it in his desperate search for any way to rid himself of them, but he had always ended the day knowing what he did wrong.

"I'll try," he muttered, "I'll try really hard."

He promised not to run through oncoming traffic anymore or lose himself in strange parts of town. His parents would lock away the knives and other lethal objects and he would take his medication with every meal twice a day. They would have to return to the city hospital for periodic checkups, but at least he would be free.

Naturally, anyone would want their former lives back. No one would ever wish to bestow this condition upon themselves. But Naoya had never been alone for as long as he could remember. The demons were part of the first memories he had. There was no previous life to which he could return.

The worst part was that there was no way to cure it, since the disorder was purely genetic. Medicine helped alleviate the symptoms, but certain types didn't work for everyone. And people like his parents couldn't afford much more than those medications. All the high-tech stuff was from America, and even then the treatments were faulty and erratic. No one tried to treat kids, either. Something vital to their growth could be interrupted.

So he had no choice but to defeat these demons, no matter what. He had to.

"You humans are so very amusing; you are so very silly sometimes, so very optimistic. Believe what you want, but you can't change reality. You can't run and you can't hide."

He shivered, but claimed it was only from the cold.

• So I ended up rewriting this. The next chapter is also rewritten, so I suppose I'll be continuing this story. Not much changed, but it got worded a little better. Thanks for all the reviews that encouraged me to continue. :)