Hallucinations by Ellison Bonds

“Why don’t you have a girlfriend?”

The question caught me off guard and I chuckled at how bluntly it had been asked. I looked at my baby brother and my heart broke a little. I couldn’t bear to tell him it was because of him. Because I was so busy working and taking care of him that I didn’t have time for a girlfriend. I had bills to pay and a ten-year-old to raise. I smiled again, tousling his hair.

“Because you’re all I need. Just you and me, dude.”

He protested my show of affection and pushed my hand away. But he was smiling behind the fallen blond curls. I laughed and finished washing the frying pan I’d used. Our mom used the same one to make pancakes one time. She had declared we were eating breakfast for dinner and then began to make the batter. We had played Yahtzee while we ate, and Mom never went easy on us. She said it toughened us up. Sure enough, rather than crying after a loss, Blake would just have more determination to win the next time.

I blinked out of my memories and looked at Blake. He had stopped with a fork full of eggs by his mouth and was watching me. “Come on! Can’t be late on your first day!” I urged. He responded by chugging the rest of his milk and stuffing the last of his eggs into his mouth. He spun off the barstool and picked up his backpack, forgetting my momentary absent-mindedness.

We pulled up outside the school and Blake began gathering his things.

“What movie are we going to see?” he asked eagerly. We went to see a movie every first Monday of the month.

“What do you want to see?” I asked.

“Spiderman!”

“Again? We saw that last time.”

“But it’s soooo good!”

“I’ll think about it.”

The grin on his face was worth the $10 tickets. 

After dropping Blake off, I drove across town for my appointment, which wasn’t for another ten minutes. This was the first office that came up when I did a Google search for therapists in the area. After checking in with the front desk, I found a squishy armchair in the waiting room and settled in.

I idly pulled out my phone and scrolled through my camera roll. I went about a year back and found the last picture I had of my Mom. It was of her and Blake on his first day of 4th grade. She was hugging his neck and kissing his cheek. He was trying to squirm away. I had taken the picture. Mom drove us to school that morning and had cranked up “Bohemian Rhapsody” like she seemed to every morning. We screamed the lyrics out the open windows and the semi’s horn just sounded like a part of the song. The eruption of glass and groaning metal did not.

“Jackson?”

I’m sure I must have visibly jumped out of my seat when the therapist called my name. How long had he been trying to get my attention?

“Sorry, yeah,” I mumbled, rushing to stand up. “That’s me.”

I slid my phone into my pocket and extended my hand. The therapist’s hand was cold, and he had long fingers. It felt like shaking hands with the dead.

There wasn’t a couch in his office, glad that mystery is solved, but there were two chairs. I sat in one and, over the next 45 minutes, proceeded to tell this man things you should never tell a stranger. But I was paying him to listen to me, so I might as well tell him everything. I told him that I was only now seeking help because my nightmares had escalated. What scared me was how real they felt. Most often I would dream that I had woken up only to find Blake missing. I’d tear through the house looking for him, but it was as if he was never there.

“The survivor’s guilt you describe makes me think PTSD is a likely factor,” offered the man. “The reality aspect of your dreams also makes me consider dream reality confusion, if not mild hallucinations. You said your brother is 10?”

“Yes, and he’s honestly the only thing keeping me sane sometimes,” I admitted sheepishly.

“Can I see a picture of him?”

I pulled out my phone and showed him the lock screen. I had just set it to a picture of Blake and me at Spiderman last month, and I told this man as much.

“Hmmmm,” is all he said while looking at the picture. His eyes turned to me, his face strained. “I want you to set another appointment with me. I am also going to refer you to an excellent mental health doctor I know.” The therapist wrote down some things on his clipboard as he spoke.

I walked up to the front desk to schedule my next appointment. Recognizing the sheet of paper on the receptionist’s desk like the one from the therapist’s clipboard, I glanced at what it said.

Call Dr. Jacobs

Client Jackson Kaine: PTSD, dream-reality confusion, hallucinations

Imagining deceased brother, possible schizophrenia

My face burned with confusion and I was in my car before I knew what I was doing.

When I got back to our dingy apartment, I slammed the door, shaking the thin walls and knocking a picture of me and Blake off the wall. I reached for the broken frame, slicing my hand open on the broken glass. I pulled back before handling the pieces more carefully. I stared at my brother’s face. The picture was taken at his 10th birthday party. I blinked a few times, trying to see him clearly through my tears.

He was real. 

He was alive. 

I looked up from the picture to see a plate piled high with cold eggs and a full glass of room-temperature milk.