Welcome to Beautiful Hallucinations! I'm not sure if this even really qualifies as fanfiction, since it was originally written as a documentary. Yes, that means everything in it actually happened to me. You are proabably wondering how. I suffer from psychosis, which is a form of schitzophrenia. I hear voices, see things, and sometimes can even reach out and touch my hallucinations. Yes, the experience seems quite real, almost like lucid dreaming. And oftentimes, it can be quite pleasurable. Beautiful, even...
Welcome to my mind. I hope you enjoy your stay.
Chapter 1: October 2008, My Grandparents home, Provo, UT
It all started with the helmet.
That absurd, padded-turtle, pseudo sci-fi helmet, complete with antenna.
The helmet she so laboriously and lovingly crafted over a three year period, and which took me about two months to replicate in Foamies and Sculpey and fabric with a coat-hanger antenna.
I remember first looking up her character profile before I launched into Chrono Trigger. I took one look at the official artwork, cocked my head for a few seconds, then laughed out loud. Laughed because she was- there was no other word for it- dorky. Cute, yes, but dorky. That helmet! And those glasses! Neither of them did anything for her. I shook my head, grinning, and went back to my e-mail. Nerd.
Little did I know that I would start using that word as a term of endearment and admiration instead of mockery and bewilderment.
Soon I was caught up in the Chrono Trigger game. I sat transfixed in front of my grandparents computer for hours on end, mesmerized by the music, savoring the storyline, captivated by the characters. Maybe it wasn't the best thing for an aspiring LMT to do, but my grandparents never seemed to notice. However, there was someone else who did…
I've been psychotic for most of my life, so it didn't surprise me when a new presence in my mind began taking notes in my classes, too. However, massage techniques and chi meridians didn't seem to interest it. It was MY thought processes that interested this being. The mundane, daily facets of my life. I had become a specimen of life in another dimension. A guinea pig. Or, most appropriately, a science project. She was, after all, a scientist.
So, for the fun of it, I began throwing out tidbits of information she might find interesting. A remix of Pachabell's Canon in D played by Bond. ("It's TECHNO music, Lucca. Get it? TECHNO." "Very funny. Give me a moment to record your transmission.") A view of the valley as my bus pulled up a steep hill, including the major landmarks. The way the digestive system worked or neurons transmitted information. Random factiods. She ate it all up, but it was with more interest in the information than in myself. I was, after all, just the science project. It was the data that was important.
One day I had to ask the inevitable question, "How?"
"It was the helmet."
"Oh?"
"It was originally designed to pick up the basic thought patterns of monsters, so I would be able to predict when they were going to attack. I was tinkering with it and…"
"I see. So I'm under observation now."
"Yes."
"Your science project."
"…You don't have to put it that way."
"But that's the way it is. You don't care."
"Yes I do. I'm just…busy."
"Too busy to care."
"Will you just…shut it?!"
But I didn't shut it. This was a sore point for me. I hated this intrusion on my privacy, on my personal space. On my LIFE. I couldn't even break wind without someone taking note of it, for Pete's sake! It was humiliating!
I remember telling my best friend Danielle around October last year, when we were making our first futile attempts at cosplay. I was perched in an old recliner in the basement, watching her as she hemmed her Cait Sith cape. "She treats me like a test subject," I explained. "It just makes me so ANGRY!"
To which Danielle replied, "Geez! Tell her to mind her own business," and went back to hemming the cape.
Neither the cosplay nor the advice went very far, both of which seemed at the time to be unfortunate. But in the long run it turned out for the best. I could have ruined the start of one of the greatest friendships I've ever had.
What I didn't know at the time was that MiyaYoshi and all the other fan fiction authors I had yet to discover were right: Lucca was losing two of her closest friends…to the kingdom and to each other. What the rest of the kingdom saw as a new beginning and the birth of a new era, Lucca saw as the end of good times and the death of her childhood. Farewell Crono…no longer my childhood friend and supporter, but King of Guardia and Marle's husband. Goodbye, Marle…no more staying up late at night talking girl talk and discussing the things I never could discuss with Crono. I hope you enjoy having him all to yourself, Queen Nadia. No wonder Lucca was so prickly. No wonder she needed a diversion. No wonder she could have used a friend…
