Isolated Int

Note: As this is an adaptation of a comic script I wrote but never drew, sometimes the visuals jump around a bit beyond the characters' physical (or temporal) locations, and is why there may be at times what seems excessive emphasis on certain words.

Solo From Solitary

Dib left the High Skool Library with a couple of books under his arms. The library, as poorly kept as it was, proved a vital sanctuary for him in these early years of adolescence, when more than ever the bitterly optimistic promises he had heard, from his cheerfully oblivious father if no one else, that life would get better once he reached high skool struck him as a counterfeit adage. Even the science fiction nerds and other believers in ghosts kept their distance if not outright ridiculing him, reasoning that he had long ago crossed the line into full-blown crazy.

Grasping his current reads (Unknown Skies, Paranormal Reality, Hacking For the Modern Life, Tips on Conlanging), he looked behind him as he shut the door before resuming a brisk pace on his way to the quad. As much as his peers' taunts and abuse had angered him as a young child, it paled in comparison to what he faced these days. The escalation of their animosity against him – no, it wasn't so much an increase in how much they hated him, just in how much they felt compelled to prove their hatred. While he'd redoubled his efforts to keep up the fight, it became increasingly difficult to maintain an umbrella of hope against every onslaught of –

"What do you have there?"

Dib blinked. As alert as he tried to stay, he got distracted far too easily. "Why do you want to know? To set me up for another joke?"

Gretchen fumbled for words, looking for something to fix her eyes on. "No, I...I'm really interested in you."

"Please." he rolled his eyes, sifting through his pocket. "Last time I bought that I was in third grade."

"No. I really want to know –Is that a cigarette?"

"Mm-hm." He turned the corner around the library to recede into the narrow space between the wall and a chain-link fence, a lighter in hand.

"Since when did you smoke?"

"Picked it up last year." Dib extinguished the flame of the lighter before taking an exasperated puff.

"You're just giving in to them, you know," she said quietly.

"I'm not trying to fool anybody into thinking I'm cool. I'm done with that shit," he said, waving the cigarette at an angle.

"Why then?"

"Because sometimes a little self-destruction can be soothing." He held it up to his mouth again and inhaled.

"Dib?"

"Yeah?"

"That cigarette isn't lit."

He tapped the end, as if to cast off ashes. "Right."

Dib trudged out of the locker room, glasses mangled, eyes blackened, shoulder dislocated, and blood on his lip. A harsh laughter reached his ears, making him flinch as the sound of footsteps echoed, diminishing while the five boys fled. The familiar, heavy wetness of blood slid freely from his nose, and in a quiet apathy, he merely followed it with his pupils, as if to dare it to make a mess.

It would only last so long. Numbness failing again, he slammed his open backpack against the wall, several notebooks and binders spilling out halfway. He grabbed the corner of a sheet of paper, tearing it out without removing the binder from the backpack, swabbing at his upper lip, his gaze averted.

He stood in front of his locker, traces of mostly dried blood still smattered across his mouth, and still more blood dripping from his left nostril. The combination turned in his hands, effortlessly, as he glanced both ways and behind him. 'That's funny. Normally it opens right away.' He gave the door a few more tugs.

The door swung open. A mass of partially congealed glue encased his schoolbooks.

"End it..."

"Who said that?" Dib turned around sharply, looking for the culprit. Turning the corner to see whether the prankster was hiding in a nearby classroom, he saw that he was alone. He threw his binder to the floor and ran off, his stuff falling out of his open backpack as he went.

Among the items he'd lost was Unknown Skies, which a kid kicked on the way to their locker, knocking out the card inside.

"Happy Birthday, Dib!

I hope you like this book.

-Sincerely, Gretchen"

"Psychosis. Insanity. That's what they call this." Dib resettled himself into his straitjacket. Whether because of a lack of room or his mental health record, or some third, more sinister reason, his accommodations consisted of a solitary padded room with no furnishings. "I do not experience the same reality that most people do. I do not have the luxury of privacy, for when others are not controlling my mind, they read it or speak into it.

"Psychosis for me was the natural progression from a life in isolation to my life now, in which no boundaries of internal or external exist. No boundaries between my thoughts and their thoughts, my dreams and my realities, my nightmares and myself. But now that I finally am crazy enough to belong in a crazy house, I am sane enough to realize that nobody really belongs here. This is just where we end up when love is scarce and our strife is a burden that society can no longer shoulder.

"That night they brought me here, they asked me why I didn't tell anyone I was feeling troubled." He twitched his nose, adjusting his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "They asked me if I was afraid – afraid of being labeled."

The psychiatrist stared into his computer, not missing a beat of his typing since he'd asked the question. "Are you kidding me? I've been labeled crazy my whole life," said Dib.

He leaned back in his chair, looking almost bemused. "Then what were you afraid of?"

Closing his eyes in relish of something unspeakably sweet, he said simply, "Everything."

Dib sat in his bed, staring out, his lip quavering.

"...End it..."

"Leave me alone," Dib said.

"...End it...End it, Dib, End it...You know what you want to end, Dib."

"Just one slash of the wrist, just one bullet, just one – "

"You're right. I do know what I want to end. I need to end you!"

"You can't end us without ending yourself."

"This...this is insanity."

"Yes, Dib! Finally, you understand! Your whole life, you mistakenly have believed you were misunderstood, but it's you who misunderstood. You're utterly insane! You should be locked up in a loony-bin for life because you are a hopeless lunatic! Congratulations! Revel in your disconnect! No one can fix you now, you crazy boy!"

Dib touched his hand to his forehead. "I'm crazy."

"Yes!"

"I'm horribly demented!" he shouted, practically choking himself in a frightened gesture.

"Yes!"

He hugged himself like he was cold, speaking softly, "I'm irreparably insane." Dib fell backward against his bed, hand slipping down the windowsill.

"You're a broken child. Reality has fragmented to accommodate your twisted perceptions."

He sat up rapidly. "Wait – if I'm crazy, that means you're not real."

"True. But before you make any judgment, take a careful evaluation: what is real and what is only you? How much of what you consider reality is merely a projection of some aspect of yourself?"

"That explains this ambiguity of dreams and reality..."

"Your dreams are your solitary bridge. Now, cross it!"

"No! He should shatter it! Ensure that nothing external can interfere with his mind!"

"No. Let him take time on the bridge – finesse the bridge before he destroys it."

"Finesse a bridge – am I high?"

"You're not high, Dib. We have been with you your whole life, just waiting for the moment to emerge – for the right idiots to take their cues and slate you to this fate."

"You have no need to be afraid." The psychiatrist, Mr. Pilsak, finally averted his eyes from the computer to direct some attention towards Dib. "You see, psychosis is a biochemical disorder. You have a chemical imbalance in the brain that's causing this."

"And you think it has nothing to do with the lifetime of humiliation, beating, and isolation?"

"Try to avoid stress. That's very bad for psychosis. Anyway, these meds help correct that imbalance."

"What happens if I'm on them for years, and my life is still a sack of shit?"

"Are you religious?"

"You obviously know how to calm the panicking mind."

Dib craned his neck out to look at the clock in the mental institution hall. "I still don't understand how they can be so blind. How can they call this kind of breakdown a physical disease when suffering is so crucial an element? And yet, it is biological, too. How else do the voices sound just like real people's voices? Which makes sense, since thought originates from the brain. But it's mostly psychological...at least, that's how I best understand this chaos. Because if it isn't...I'm chained to my nightmare forever. And if I believe I'm shackled permanently to some separate entity insanity, what reason have I to resist it?

"How do I even know what to resist in the first place...when I've stopped resisting insanity and I'm instead resisting myself? How good is that for maintaining connection with reality? These voices...they aren't just some freak biological abnormality. Somehow...somehow, it's a part of me...not that I particularly LIKE that part of me...but it's me all the same. Just my nightmare...crystallized." His eyes slackened and gave way to dreams.