Copyright Danny Antonucci and produced by a.k.a. Cartoon. All band names and lyrics Copyright of their respective owners.
Double D was woken up by his phone ringing. He answered it without looking because it could only be one of two people.
"Hello?" he said in a sleepy tone.
"Hey, Double D! I've missed you so much! Sorry I didn't call until now. Why did you stop talking to me after high school?" Marie asked him.
"Marie! Oh, I'm so glad to hear from you, you have no idea! Sorry I got busy with college. What have you been up to? We've got to meet somewhere." Double D sounded fully awake in a matter of seconds.
"We can meet by that café near the university. You know where that is?" Marie asked him.
"Yeah. I go to that university for classes now, actually. Well, I'll see you in a few minutes." Double D replied and walked out into the living room.
"Hey, that girl I told you about just called! We are meeting her at the Peach Creek Café!" Double D announced excitedly. They both got into Double D's car and drove to the meeting place; Double D was talking about Marie the whole ride there.
"She should be here any minute" He said when they pulled into the parking lot but didn't see anyone. Sure enough, a few minutes later, a car showed up and parked; it didn't park next to them, which Double D found a little weird.
"Marie! It's so good to see you again! You have no idea how much I missed you!" Double D chirped as he hugged her tightly. Ashley turned around to see what this girl Double D talked about so much looked like and was slightly disturbed to see Double D standing in an empty parking space, hugging himself.
"Double D…I don't see anyone." She said as she walked over to him.
"But she's right-" Double D was about to point to her when he noticed Marie was gone; there was no sign of the car either, but he didn't hear it turn on and/or leave.
"Here….." Double D finished dejectedly.
"Marie hasn't been in Peach Creek since freshman year…" Ashley told him.
"What do you mean?" Double D asked; did she know Marie? She never mentioned this before. Things where starting to get really weird.
"I…I'm sorry…I haven't been completely honest with you… I'm her sister… May…" Ashley dropped the bomb she has been holding for so long.
"I… I just didn't want our past history to interfere with making new history. I wanted someone to talk to and you looked like you wanted the same. I will understand if you don't want to talk to me anymore, although I will be very sad if you do choose to leave." She added.
"No! I would never leave you! I've enjoyed being with you way too much to just throw it away now. But it would have been nice if you just told me. I've got a previous history with Marie and we didn't fully get along in middle school; we still don't see eye to eye, but I still became close friends with her." Double D wasn't fully realizing the size of the problem May just discovered.
"You didn't see eye to eye with her because you never saw her past middle school." May reminded him that his perception of Marie was just a hallucination.
"But she called me a few minutes ago! I'll show you my phone!" Double D protested and pulled out his phone.
"It says the last person to call you was me. In fact, I only see 5 total calls to or from the phone, and they are all me." May told him as she looked at the phone. Double D looked at his phone and sure enough, there was only 3 incoming calls; all of them from May. Double D was devastated. Did he really just imagine the whole meeting? Including the phone call? He couldn't have. Only crazy people do that, and they live in mental asylums.
"So, where is Marie, then?" Double D asked.
"Her mom and her moved out of town during at the beginning of freshman year. I really wanted to stay here because I had made some good friends, so I was left with a friend of the family. I later got a job and moved out. All of my friends from high school went to out-of-state colleges so I was left alone." May recalled her high school life.
"I... Let's...go home." Double D stuttered; finding out Ashley was really May under an assumed name was too much for him to process right now, after finding out he had imagined the whole meeting with Marie. When they went home, May drove because Double D didn't trust himself to after this development.
"I'm sorry, Double D. If I had known sooner that Marie was the girl you were talking about, I would have told you." May said as they walked into her apartment. Double D went to lie down on the couch and picked up May's iPod; if this was an illusion too, at least it still kept going. He put his headphones on and hit shuffle; in a few moments he was greeted by Ozzy Osbourne's "All aboooooard! Ha ha ha ha!" [Because this is exactly what I need to hear right now...] Double D thought sarcastically, but didn't change the song.
"You may be on the crazy train, but at least you've got me as a stewardess." Marie teased him.
"Marie! I missed you at the cafe! What happened?" Double D had a burst of desperation and forgot that she was not real. May came into the room and again saw no one but Double D.
"She's gone Double D. I know you loved her a lot, but she's been gone since freshman year." May tried to pull him back to reality.
"Load a bowl then, if I'm going to be seeing people that aren't there, I at least want to have an excuse." Double D grumbled.
"But it's not a hallucinogen..." May told him.
"Just do it! It doesn't matter." Double D commanded. May sighed and went to start up the vaporizer; Double D joined her about 10 minutes later.
"Soon, I won't care about any of this." He said as he passed the hose to May.
The hum of the ceiling fan sounded like the background beat to a techno track as Double D sat on the floor swaying back and forth slightly. May provided the drop by closing the blinds; it was time to go to bed soon.
"I think you should sleep here tonight. In my bed. So I can keep an eye on you." May suggested.
"Among other things" she added teasingly; she wasn't actually going to try anything, but she thought she would try to at least make him laugh.
"Yeah, just put on your Marie outfit and we are good to go. Oh wait... That's my job." Double D teased her back. They got into bed and were about to fall asleep when Double D had a visitor.
"Room for one more? It could be one tasty sandwich" Marie teased.
"Marie! That's your sister, what the hell?" Double D protested.
"Go to sleep, Double D. She's not real." May reached behind her to pull him closer to her but her hand landed on a surprise for both of them. The image of Marie vanished instantly as Double D exhaled hard.
"Oh, sorry!" May yelped and pulled back her hand.
"Even though we've done X together and it lead us way past this, that was still highly embarrassing." May mumbled to herself.
"I appreciate your efforts, May. She actually disappeared when you did that." Double D assured her she did nothing wrong.
"Allow me to return the favor, even though you may not be having the same problems I am." he mumbled as his hand crept over her body.
The next morning in class, he saw someone new in class. He didn't pay much attention to them, however, because he hallucinated one person already; what was one more? He sat down at his desk and pushed her out of his mind.
At the end of class, as they waited for people to file through the door to leave, Double D was approached by the girl he noticed at the beginning of class.
"Take my money, just stay away from me!" she said in a terrified, quivering voice.
"I-I'm sorry… I don't think we've met." Double D was caught completely off guard by the sudden emotional intensity of the girl.
"We've more than met!" she raised her voice slightly and threw her wallet at him; before he could pick it up, she vanished into the crowd. Double D picked up the wallet and went home; everyone was staring at him as he left the classroom. [Well, at least she was real.] Double D thought as he sat down at his computer.
He got an email in the evening from a "Kaylee Hartfelt".
"Meet me in the university café in 20 minutes. We need to talk" Double D immediately forwarded this email to May; he was not taking chances on phantom emails this time.
"Wow, lady-killin already? You recovered fast :D" May wrote back. Double D was out the door and at May's house within a few minutes.
"Will you come with me to this meeting? I need someone I can trust and that I know is real to verify whatever they tell me." Double D asked her when he walked into her apartment.
"Yeah, sure. Any idea who it is?" May asked; Double D was still not a very social person, so it was still unusual for him to just get a random invite to meet up somewhere.
They got to the café and sat down; sure enough, the girl showed up a few minutes after they got there.
"I wanted to give you this back in class but you ran off before I could do anything." Double D said as he handed the girl her wallet.
"You may not know my name, but you know me way more deeply than you think. I am Kaylee." Kaylee didn't sound very friendly.
"I'm Edd, but most people call me Double D" Double D introduced himself.
"I used to live in the mobile home park near the cul-de-sac." Kaylee told him to try to jog his memory.
"I first met you when you walked into my house and acted like you were carrying in groceries. I was on the phone at the time and you weren't really doing anything bad, so I decided to just let you do your thing. Then you disappeared for a couple days. Then you came back and filled half of my sketchbook with half-naked angels and you running from them." Kaylee began recalling her memories of Double D.
"Then came Thanksgiving Break…the first of several disturbing days…" Kaylee said in a terrified voice.
"You drove up to my house and dragged yourself up to my door. You managed to jimmy open the lock on the door, then ran back to your car and threw yourself on the hood. Finally you came in and threw yourself on the couch; you took your socks off and tied your hands and feet together. You talked to yourself for a few minutes and then untied yourself. I decided to leave you alone and go change out of my school clothes. That's when you walked in. At least you realized what happened and apologized. Some other stuff happened that didn't directly involve me, but then when I went to bed, you climbed in with me. I was too terrified to push you out so I just let you sleep. The next day you went to take a shower, came out naked when you were done and walked into my room, took a pair of underwear out of the dresser and went back in to dry yourself off. Then you came out wearing nothing but the underwear. The weekend after that, you poured yourself a glass of liquor and Pepsi, and then filled a shot glass liquor. You drank your glass and then asked me why I haven't drank mine; you accused me of putting something in your drink. I didn't want to argue so I drank the shot. You said something about my body straining against my shirt and then took it off. Again, I didn't argue. I didn't want to know what would happen if I resisted. I wasn't sure whether you were sleepwalking or just crazy. You talked a bit more and then you said something about wanting to see 'the real Kanker sisters'; whatever that means. At that point you reached behind me and unhooked my bra. I blushed, I was embarrassed, I was angry, I was scared. This mix of emotions paralyzed me. Then you left me alone for a few minutes and I was able to move again. I started getting ready for bed so I went to lower the blinds and that is when you prodded me in the back and said 'I don't have a gun, but that doesn't make this any less of a stick-up.'. You turned me around, gently, and made out with me for a few seconds. Then you took off my pants and…" Kaylee trailed off.
"The next morning, you came out into the kitchen and was ranting about me putting something in your drink; you weren't dressed. Then you took two x-tabs from the kitchen counter drawer and ate one. Yes, I do ecstasy occasionally. I take it so I can fully forget about everything as I'm pleasuring myself. I don't have a boyfriend so what do you expect me to do? Anyway, so then you crushed up the other one and mixed it into a glass of orange juice and then gave it to me. You asked me several times if I was coming with you. You sounded like you were going to kill me if I didn't join you so I drank it and followed you to my room. We talked for a bit and then the pills took effect. Since I was already naked from the night before, you didn't waste any time…" Kaylee said in a quivering voice.
"Yes. You just heard all of that. You know, under your shy exterior, you're one seriously disturbed motherfucker." May shared her thoughts.
"I think you know where you need to take me now." Double D sighed.
"Thank you for your time, Kaylee. I hope you have a better life now that I will be permanently out of it. I'm sorry for all of the trouble I have caused you." Double D apologized. Double D got up and walked to the car; he had really hoped this was another delusion, but had no such luck this time. May got into the driver's seat and started the car.