Conversation stopped when he shouted. He had been noticed again and he'd have to leave. The silence would have embarrassed him a few years ago. He would have apologized loudly and walked away, leaving his balls and a generous tip on the table.
But now, he sat in silence and let the conversation gradually return. He cursed when he looked down and saw his coffee spilt on his lap. He focused for a moment, trying to feel the heat, but shook his head at the futility.
He used what was left of his coffee to wash down the pills. Already he was at thrice the intended dosage, but he was not concerned about the side effects. "Discoloration. As if I would otherwise die pretty." Then he took a stand and left nothing but the meal's price on the table. He no longer cared to tip.
He hurried back to his house, hoping not to shout again. The spasms were the only things that hurt these days, and they were bad enough when he was alone. Around others, he'd be concerned for and bothered. "Screw people." He said under his breath.
Then he was home, and bottles of medicine waited for him. He downed two pills and splashed his face with water. Only four times over dosage, he'd be fine.
He looked in the mirror. He did see it, come to think of it. His hair was thinning, and emerging from the scalp were a few green strands. They came out painlessly. So did some other hair. Then his hands were painlessly hitting his face, and then he broke the mirror painlessly against his fist. He only stopped himself just before drawing a shard of mirror across his hand. He dropped the piece with disgust and smeared blood onto a towel.
"There was nothing quite like television to get rid of your brain." He said, taking a seat on a ragged black couch. It was unusual for him to find a sticky note on the screen. He retrieved it and went to the window, opening the drapes and then the filthy glass itself just to let in enough light.
Stop taking pills, read the note. He shook his head. "I don't remember leaving this," he said. "I sure got to be one of those nut jobs, didn't I?" He crumpled the note and threw it out the window, then shut it and redrew the curtain. He went to watch television again, but another note was on the screen. "God, I hate this brain." It was the same note, so he tore it in half and dropped it to the floor. Then he picked the remote up from his couch and took another seat. The yellow sticky was back. "I should've known the shit wouldn't go away. Fuck it, then." He said, and turned on the television.
It flickered to life, casting a pale glow on the drab interior. Nevadan Homes was on. He didn't much care for it, but good TV wasn't worth finding another channel. He lay with eyes half closed as the contractors built houses behind a yellow note.
"So we'll use white marble for the island, and we'll complement it with these skygrey tiles, and Hugh Tricks needs to stop popping his fucking insanity pills." Said the contractor on TV.
"Hugh Tricks," Hugh said. "That's my name."
"Which will all look great over this varnished hardwood, and Hugh Tricks isn't insane at all, is he Marsha?" Said the contractor.
"Not one bit, Jim, he needs to get off his meds right away, and I love all of this cabinet space." Marsha replied.
Hugh flicked off the television and stood up. "I'll teach you to tell me what to do, that I will. I'll take as many pills as I goddamn please." He walked to his cabinet and pulled it open, fishing out one of the many bottles. The television came back on.
"Now, Hugh, you'd better not take those pills." Marsha said sternly. "Someone will be quite unhappy with you."
Hugh opened the cap and poured the entire bottle into his hand. With the pills came a thousand white maggots, burrowing in and out of the drugs, chewing on white powder, and leaving behind trails of blood. He downed them all and opened his cabinet again, searching for his last pint of Jack. He couldn't even taste it, so it didn't burn a bit when he brought away the empty bottle.
"Hugh, you've made the wrong choice." Jim said. But this time, his voice had taken on a sinister tone. "Don't try to ignore me. You'll never beat the disease."
Hugh moved to the living room and shoved the television off of its stand.
"Hugh, honey, you've been running from me since you were a kid. Don't you think it's time you faced your fears?" Marsha asked.
Hugh wanted to say that he wasn't afraid of anything, but since he was a child the doctors had told him that if he ignored the illness it would get better, that the hallucinations would go away if he didn't respond.
"Your doctors are all dead, Hugh. Those old bags of shit are rotting in the ground by now." Said Jim.
"Truly, Hugh, Jim is right. We're not going away. You should embrace the gifts we've given you. There's no more pain." Marsha tried to calm him.
"You used to be weak." Jim's voice had grown very deep and very angry. "Back when the treatments were working, back when you had feelings. Pain, fear, embarrassment. You ungrateful man, you weak mortal, you soft flesh."
Hugh missed his pain, fear, and embarrassment.
"No you don't, Hugh. You don't miss anything anymore. Longing went away last year or so. And why would you want a silly thing like embarrassment standing in your way? Did you want to be embarrassed when you had a spasm in that restaurant? You should be glad, Hugh; you're free to do anything you like without the hindrance of pain or doubt."
Hugh's vision shifted, and he realized that he'd never before taken this much medicine at once before. He didn't feel any nausea, but suddenly he was vomiting on the floor.
"See, Hugh..." Hugh couldn't hear the rest: He'd just fallen loudly against the wall. In his distorted vision he saw the TV, screen cracked, sticky note smoldering black. Jim and Marsha were unnervingly sideways. Maggots spilled from Hugh's mouth, and he had another spasm.
"You can't run from me." Came the voice. Jim's head flickered oddly, and an incessant high note filled Hugh's ears, along with something like popping static, or crackling flames...
"The child is dead." Jim seemed to be all around him. Hugh stiffened when he felt Marsha's hand on his shoulder. It was cold, and he didn't dare to look at it.
"You'll see where your pills get you."
The room was hot and his skin was dry. Hugh's left hand lay on his chest, his right on a rug matted with vomit. His eyes opened to darkness, aside from a staticky television. He rose from the couch as soon has his eyes adjusted to the dark. He smelled piss. Pain shot through his head.
"Pain." Hugh said, surprised. "Surprise." And a small smile jumped across his face. He leapt excitedly from his couch, but tripped over unsteady feet, breaking in half his wooden coffee table.
"Oh." He said. He hadn't felt pain like this in a long time, and he'd forgotten how much it hurt. Still, if his bottle of pills had brought back pain, there was no telling what else would be returned to him. He staggered to his feet and tread through the dark to his cabinet, tripping twice along the way. Once there, he reached inside and felt around for a bottle. He removed one, popped the cap, and held it upside down over his mouth. But nothing came out.
Unperturbed, he dropped the empty bottle and took another. But it was empty as well. He reached in again, and again, but each one he tapped made the hated sound of a bottle when it's hollow. Hugh threw open the kitchen window and was met with a sight he'd never expected.
His kitchen was trashed. Empty bottles littered the floor, vomit drizzled the counter, and there were bloody handprints on the walls. He looked at his own hands, and yes, they were covered in dried blood.
"What happened?" Hugh muttered to himself, just as his headache throbbed. He rushed to the bathroom and drunk from the faucet, then covered his face and hair in water. He spat the taste of vomit from his mouth, then looked up at the mirror. His hair was green and his face was white. "My God." Hugh murmured.
Hugh sat again on his couch. His calm demeanor was gone. It was all he could do not to panic when he looked around his devastated living room. He sat this way for thirty minutes or so, painfully awake, painfully aware of his state of being. If a green lock fell across his face he'd jump at the sight of it, unused to such coloring. If a bird hit the window his hands would clench down on the couch. Eventually, Hugh began to wonder how long he had been unconscious. His memory of the time past was marred by frequent blackouts and perpetual sleep. There were only a few flashes of memory left, and the opening of bottles comprised them most.
Hugh thought back to his last whole memory. He had been lying against the wall, listening to voices from a broken television. It had been a hallucination, of course, but he remembered something else.
He dropped to his knees and crawled to the TV stand, rubbing along the carpet to find two yellow pieces. Sifting through the trash did not produce the halves of the note, and he sat back in relief. Then he saw them poking from a medicine bottle.
He snatched it up and pulled the two pieces out. Together, they read just what he'd feared. Stop taking pills.
"If this is here... am I still delusional?" He asked, but got no response. There was a pill at the bottom of the bottle he held, so he gobbled it and swirled his finger around the bottom for the dust. He looked at the staticky television, expecting Jim and Marsha to jump onto the screen at any second. But they did not.
Hugh stepped out and walked to the next apartment. He pounded on the door, and after a minute, a young woman opened it a crack. Before she could shut it, he jammed his foot in the gap and pried it open. She stepped back in fright.
"Girl," He said, holding the two strips of paper before her. "Do you see this?"
She cowered in fear.
"These papers, girl, do you see them?" He demanded.
"Yes, yes, I see them." She sobbed. Hugh slumped against the frame in shock.
"Was that real?" He asked himself. "Have they ever been hallucinations?"
"Never." Said the girl. Only, it wasn't the girl. Black flames licked up her body and her pupils expanded to fill her eyes. Beside that, her voice was much like Jim's had been. "That's why your pills are useless."
Hugh pulled back his fist and heaved it at her face. She fell to the ground, face spattered and nose dripping with blood. But the black eyes hadn't left.
"The pain you feel? The panic? It's temporary. Your entire cabinet of pills will give you maybe a day of relief. In fact, feel this." The girl pulled him to the ground with her and raked her nails along his arms. The cuts stung for a moment, but Hugh could tell that they should have hurt far more. "You don't need pain, Hugh. After all, you can still feel the good things." The girl slipped a steady hand down his belly. He grabbed it and hit her savagely, disgusted by the disease that attacked him.
"You're not real!" He shouted at the girl. "You're nothing!"
But the girl's eyes weren't black anymore. They were green and wide and there were tears streaming from their ends. Her trembling hand was pinned near his crotch, and she was begging with him, pleading that he was right, that she was nothing, that he could take what he wanted if he'd just leave. Hugh stood quickly. The girl was wearing a black dress and mascara was now smeared down blushing cheeks. This girl had been about to go out. She wouldn't anymore.
"This is what your emotions get you, Hugh. An innocent girl bleeding on the ground." Said a voice in his head.
"I am so sorry." He whispered in a broken voice. "Jesus, I am so sorry." The girl merely turned her head and wept. He left and shut the door, then raced back through his room, searching desperately for a pill, any pill, or maybe even a knife.
He knew what he had to do. Shards of broken glass lined his bathroom sink, and he grabbed one without hesitation. Emotions warred in his brain, begging him to slash open his wrists and pleading that he drop the blade. He looked at himself in the mirror. His eyes were wide and there were tears streaming from the ends.
"Do you like this?" Said someone behind him. It was Jim's voice, and the girl's, but it didn't have the same anger as before. Still, it wasn't soothing as Marsha's. "Do you want to feel this way?"
"Of course not." Hugh replied. He didn't care if it was a hallucination. "That's why I'm ending it." And Hugh cut up the vein.
Hugh turned to face his fear before he died. Already, a pool had collected by his left foot. The man... the thing he faced seemed to shift in and out of reality. Red eyes were narrowed on a skull swathed in dark fire. Hugh was afraid.
"That is one way out." IT said. "But there's another as well."
"What? Succumb to you? Give in to the disease? I won't give up my humanity just to live in this godforsaken..." Hugh was interrupted by a flaming hand around his wrist. The cut sealed itself up, and Hugh felt a surge of energy rush through him.
"What is humanity but disease? You and your kin walk the Earth covered in sickness, and you're afraid of some virus in your frontal lobe?" With the terrible energy IT poured into Hugh's body, Hugh gathered his strength and shoved the black figure back, buckling the tile wall behind IT. IT was unfazed. "Tell me, Hugh." IT said. "What is it that you want?"
Hugh wiped the salt from his cheeks. "I want to stop hurting people. Even... I want to help them."
IT - whatever IT was - IT nodded. "There are greater evils than you in the world, Hugh." And the black figure vanished into the wall behind.
Then there was a scream from the room next door. Hugh dropped the blade and rushed into the hallway, then kicked open the door from which the shout had emerged. He saw a man pinning a girl in a black dress to the ground. The man was yelling at her and pushing her hand toward his crotch. She was pleading with him, agreeing with what he said, begging him not to hurt her. Hugh grabbed a lamp from a table and bashed it over the man's head with incredible, dark strength. The man looked up at him with wild eyes, green hair, pale skin, and rampant emotion. For Hugh, it was an easy decision to finally kill the man below him.
He helped the girl to her feet and asked if she was alright. She threw her arms around him and cried into his chest, thanking him so much for his help. Hugh wondered why she wasn't scared of him. Wasn't his hair as green as the man he'd just killed? Wasn't he just as confusing and scary a sight?
In the mirror on her wall, he saw himself giving her comfort. But his hair wasn't green and his skin wasn't white. He looked strong and handsome, just as he had in his youth. As he received the thanks of the girl and helped her recover, ITS voice sounded in Hugh's head. "You see, Hugh? You never needed to kill yourself. This is you: this devilish handsome thing. You only ever needed to kill the weakness in you. And now it's gone. Now we can spread strength together. We can correct the imperfections of your Earth, Tricks."
And Tricks agreed. After he'd spent intimate moments cleaning the girl's wounds, physical and otherwise, he returned to his apartment to take a final look at his humanity. It was littered with pill bottles and covered in vomit. But he remembered the good things too. The feeling of beauty with the girl he'd helped, the tenderness in his mother's touch, and the buzz from a pint of Jack. He'd accepted the disease now, and he was ready to let his pain and fear fade away.
But to remember his humanity, he took a bottle of green dye and poured it over soft brown hair, and painted his face with white. Green hair wasn't the humanity that he loved, but it had come with the humanity that his pills used to provide. Beside that, when he looked in the mirror, the sight made him laugh a hearty laugh.
He looked a bit like a clown, come to think of it. He'd loved clowns as a kid. And Tricks was a nice name; Hugh had never suited him.
Tricks. Yeah, he liked the sound of that. Trick. Tricky.
Tricky the Clown.