Chapter 18: The Beast Before Me

Frantically flinging open the door, I reached into the darkened closet.  Extracting a camouflage jacket and a pair of black fingerless weight lifting gloves, I quickly put them on.  Buttoning up the jacket, I ducked into the bathroom to inspect my reflection.

“That’s more like it” I muttered proudly, satisfied with my vaguely militant appearance.

But this wasn’t the time to procrastinate – there was work to be done - difficult, bloody work.  Now starting to sweat, I rushed about my apartment, hastily collecting my car keys, wallet and phone.  There was just one last thing I needed.  Racing into the kitchen, I flung open the cutlery drawer and took out the blackened steak knife I had prepared months earlier.  I would soon need it for fighting.

“Who were you going to fight?”

“Sorry, what?”

“I asked who you were going to fight?”

The office of Doctor Charles Chaudhry unfolded before me, sterile, cold and utilitarian like the plastic chair on which I sat recounting my bizarre tale.  Doctor Chaudhry, seated opposite me, leaned forward waiting for my response.

“Reptilians.  Reptilian Humanoids” I replied matter of factly.

“Oh, of course, please continue”

Still frantically moving about my apartment, my thoughts began to grow panicked.  What if I had forgotten something?  I silently reviewed my mental checklist.

“Ah-ha!” I exclaimed as I returned to the kitchen carrying a brilliant idea. 

I gathered up all of the plastic containers I could find, stacking them on the kitchen counter in a neat pile.

“These’ll work perfectly” I thought, admiring the cleverness of my plan.

“What were you going to use the containers for?” Doctor Chaudhry asked, his brow now furrowed in confusion.

“Blood”.

“Your blood?”

“Yup.  You see, fighting reptilians is dangerous business.  There was a pretty good chance I’d be killed.  I was going to fill the containers with blood then store them in the freezer to provide genetic material for clones to be made later on”

“Clones?  Of yourself?”  Chaudhry’s eyes widened in disbelief.

“Just think of it – hundreds of my clones – fighting reptilians for centuries.  If you think about it, it’s the perfect plan, or at least…it seemed that way at the time”

The doctor stared at me, his face surprisingly free from judgement.  In that moment, I was suddenly self-aware.  Spoken aloud, I realised what I had just told the doctor about the previous night.  It must have sounded insane, yet he seemed curiously nonplussed.

“Well it doesn’t look like you cut yourself” he said as he scanned my wrists for signs of damage.

“No”.

“What stopped you?”

I took a breath, and then hesitated.  What action would he take once I explained what II had seen?  Visions of being dragged away to a padded cell played out in my imagination.

“It’s pretty crazy, I mean really crazy”

Chaudhry sighed and sat back in his chair folding his arms.

“You just told me that you spent the night smoking marijuana, then for some reason, got dressed up like a paratrooper to fight aliens in your street”.

Touche.  He had a point, and besides, I had come this far.

I reached into my pocket and took out my knife.  Even darkened with black marker, its razor sharp edge gleamed as it caught the light.  Using the blade, I would cut into my arm and fill the plastic containers with the ensuring blood splatter.  It was going to be painful. I rolled up my sleeve, located a vein and steeled myself for the blood loss.

“This is gonna get messy” I thought as I took a deep breath and pressed the knife against my bare arm.

Then, a low rumbling.  I froze, knife still in hand.  My head spun around just in time to see the bricks of my kitchen wall disappearing before my eyes.  Not crumbling and tumbling to the floor, merely vanishing, one by one revealing a darkened void behind it.  Stunned, I dropped the knife, sending it sliding across the floor.  As more bricks began to vanish, I cautiously peered into the dark space beyond them.  Two yellow eyes stared back at me, snake like and burning with primitive fury.  A face - eyes, mouth, lips, but somehow perverted, its features twisted and grotesque.  In place of skin, the face was covered in a greenish brown coating like the scales of a serpent or a fish.

I staggered back in terror as I beheld the beast before me.  Like a giant lizard, it leered at me, emitting a low hissing sound indicating attack was imminent.  Upset that I had uncovered its hiding place, the creature looked as if it were about to leap out from his tiny manhole and violently tear my limbs from my torso.  Face to face with this angry demon, and in spite of my panic, I knew what I had found, or rather, what had found me.  A six foot tall reptilian humanoid.  Hiding in the wall of my apartment.  Hiding in my home.  Looking me in the eye this very moment. 

I can say quite confidently and unashamedly, that it was the most afraid I had ever been.  With a head full of esoteric lore, I knew what it would do to me.  My thoughts turned to accounts of reptilians inflicting brutal attacks on humans, blood drinking, camouflage and coma inducing rape.  Clutching my chest, I realised that I had stopped breathing.  My heart started racing, so I ran into the living room, screaming and half crazed - unsure of what to do next.  My hands shaking, I reached for my phone but only sent it skidding across the carpet.  With the dreadful hiss of the reptilian now growing louder, I dove for the phone, fumbling in my panic to call the only person who would believe me.  Several agonising seconds later, Mitch’s familiar voice appeared on the other end of the phone.

“Dude, they’re in my fucking wall!!”  I gasped.

“So what happened next?” Doctor Chaudhry still seemed unfazed by my extraordinary tale.

I scratched my head as I tried to recall.

“I guess I talked with Mitch for a bit.  He managed to calm me down, though I’m not sure how”.

I explained to the Doctor how I had left my apartment, still struggling to catch my breath.  Mitch had encouraged me to go to a place of safety, and so, I sat by the roadside for what felt like an hour.  Eventually gathering enough courage to re-enter my home, I carefully examined the wall in my kitchen, running my hands up and down the smooth, unbroken surface. 

“And was there a reptilian in your kitchen wall?”

“Nope.  Not a scale in sight”.

My bizarre tale concluded, Doctor Chaudhry simply stared at me, great empathy in his eyes, and considered his next question.  I must have looked quite a sight – clothes dishevelled and eyes bloodshot.  It wasn’t every day a young man entered his office complaining of aliens in the wall.

“Can you tell me why you smoke marijuana?” he asked, his tone carefully measured.

It was such a simple question, one which I had never bothered to ask myself.

“I dunno.  I spose it just sorta happened.  Terrible things kept happening – life stuff, ordinary stuff.  Bills, my job, getting dumped.  I just needed a break from it all.  Before I knew it, I was smoking every night”

“Well, what you have just described to me today sounds like marijuana psychosis”

“Physchosis?!  That sounds so cool!”

“Trust me, it’s really not”

Chaudhry reached into his desk drawer, pulled out a sheet of paper and placed it in front of me.

“I want you to fill out this questionnaire; it’ll only take you a minute”

Grabbing a pen, I rapidly began answering the questions on the sheet.  Though fairly straightforward, their tone was decidedly grim.  How often do you think about death?  Do you often feel worthless and alone?  Do you use drugs or alcohol to cope with stressful situations?  I answered them all honestly.  Doctor Chaudhry took a quick look at my responses, and after a few seconds, offered his diagnosis.

This may come as a surprise, but you are suffering from depression”.

Depression.  There it was – a word imbued with so much power.  A word that finally described my persistent dis-ease with the world.  It landed in the room with a thud, like a stone thrown into a pond sending shockwaves through my brain.

“That’s a horrible thing to say – why would you say that to me?  Take it back!”  I demanded.

“I’m serious, and so should you be.  Just look at the pattern of your life over the last couple of years.  Look at how you’ve been feeling and behaving”.

Dammit.  Chaudhry was right - it all made sense.  Events of the last few years had conspired to make me this way, the cumulative effect of so many set back and losses.  It was why I smoked so much weed.  It was the reason people like Jesse and Amber simply didn’t understand.  It explained why I could uncover a conspiracy at a church picnic.  Something was wrong with me, and it had been, unacknowledged, for a long time.  I had depression.  I was depressed.  The condition carried such heavy connotation, yet the admission felt liberating, like a weighted vest removed, or a long held secret finally uncovered.

My consultation over, Doctor Chaudhry sent me home with a box of anti-depressants and a firm handshake.  He also made me promise that I would steer clear of the weed. I thanked him emphatically for not putting me in a straightjacket and made an appointment to visit him the following week.

I strode through the sliding doors of the medical clinic and onto the street a transformed man.  I had never imagined such an unfortunate diagnosis could bring such elation.  No longer simply a miserable cunt, I finally had an answer and tangible steps I could take to make myself feel better.  Excited, relived and a little scared, I breathed deeply, took out my phone and called the first person I wanted to share my news with.

“Avery I have depression!” I blurted out as soon as her voice appeared on the line.

A couple of hours later, Avery and I sat across a table at the convent, separated only by herbal tea.  She had evidently dropped whatever she was doing to be with me in my moment of revelation.  Against the leafy green surrounds, Avery offered reassurance and calmly answered the four thousand questions my mind had formulated since leaving the doctor’s office.

“Does it mean that I’m a bad person?” I asked earnestly as I thumbed the handle of my teacup.

“No of course not!”

“Will I have depression forever?”

“Maybe – that depends on you”

The excitement of my diagnosis was dampened by my awareness of the social stigma depression carried.  It was something that was not talked about, conveniently ignored by a society too afraid to grapple with the complications of mental illness.  For a young man, it was all but an admission of weakness.  I wondered what people would think of me, and I confided in Avery that I was scared of telling the other members of the group.

“Fuck other people”

Avery wasn’t having any of my rhetoric and assured me that Mitch and Owen would understand and wouldn’t treat me any differently.  She explained that depression was merely an illness, and the medication I had been prescribed was no different to a plaster cast for a broken leg.

“I think I’m gonna have to stop smoking weed – at least for a while” I admitted fearfully.

“I know you are”

Avery’s knowing eyes revealed wisdom earned through the pain of travelling the same path I was about to embark upon.  Depression and anxiety had regularly intruded upon her, yet she had endured, emerging intelligent and compassionate.  Leaning forward, she placed her hand on mine offering a silent promise of support.  She knew that my journey ahead would be challenging – she knew that my life was about to change.

            

I arrived home and found the black marker I had used to blacken my blade.  I wondered if the last three years had been a dream, some kind of drug addled detour from ‘real life’.  And what of the conspiracies and sinister plots that filled my thoughts?  The secret cabal of investors running the world, the underground bases, reptilian leaders, debt slavery and the true holographic nature of all reality.  Had I experienced justified paranoia, or simply retreated into a realm of pseudo-scientific nonsense?

In the bathroom, I gazed at my reflection in the mirror and wondered if all my time wasted amounted to wasted time.  What had I been doing?  Over the last few years I had watched friends, family and co-workers make sweeping changes to their lives.  Babies had been born, houses purchased and money had earned.  Jesse and Amber even pissed off and went to China!  I remembered the longing, the yearning for something new that had been stirring in me for some time.  Though it would be difficult, deep down, I knew what I had to do.

            Staring at my silent apartment, I wondered how ordinary people spent their time.  Non-stoners.  What did they do all day?  An endless void of free time spread out before me begging to be filled with marijuana smoke.  But I couldn’t, lest the aliens in the wall returned prompting another lengthy freak out.  I needed to stay away from weed, and thirty days simply wouldn’t cut it.  I went to the cupboard where the plastic bong resided and carefully wrapped it in a tea towel.  Employing the hammer from my tool box, and without a moment’s hesitation, I smashed the bong into a thousand tiny pieces.

I would go one hundred days without weed.  The number seemed gargantuan, but filled me with the energy of new purpose and direction.  I uncapped the black marker and wrote a number of the back of my hand.

One.

I had no idea what would happen next, but I was only ninety nine days away from a whole new life.