Always by your side

You know I’m always by your side Iris. The text message said.

My lips formed a small smile. She always did that. Giving huge promises that even the dumbest ones knew she wouldn’t be able to keep.

I was used to it by now though. Even liked the childishness of it a little bit.

I put my phone in my pocket and returned my gaze back to my awfully tidy desk. My bag innocently stood on top of it, moving ever so slightly with my every heartbeat that it was nearly unnoticeable. I reached for it but my hand came to a halt. I gulped, hardly swallowing the lump in my throat. Suddenly, the air in the room was thick as fog, threatening to suffocate me.

It was okay. I was okay. There was nothing to worry about, they were gone now.

I closed my eyes shut, making my eyes hurt from the pressure. I repeated those sentences in my head like a magical chant, again and again.

It’s not real Iris.

Anna’s voice echoed and shattered to a million pieces in my head. Then formed back again, like a phoenix returning from its ashes.

I filled my lungs with as much oxygen as I can just like how she offered me to do.

Three…

Two…

And one…

My eyes opened as I let my breath out. The bag wasn’t moving anymore.

I grabbed it in a flash and ripped the zipper open.

Nothing. Nothing but my practically empty pill bottle, headphones and a worn-out diary that wasn’t even half full yet was really heavy with the trauma it held.

I took out the pills only to see that there was only one left. It wouldn’t be enough for a whole day. I guess now I needed to head to the pharmacy after Anna’s.

I swung the bag to my shoulder and got out of the house without missing a beat. My footsteps sounded like gun shots in the eerie silence of the house. But of course, that was probably another one of my crooked mind’s games too.

Spring breeze met me on the mossy pavements in front of my house. A shiver ran down my spine though I wasn’t even cold. There was a funny, uneasy feeling in my stomach that was warning me about today. On the controversy, the sun shone even brighter than ever before this year on the bright blue cloudless day. Melodic chirpings of various birds could be heard among the green, bushy trees and everyone had an either big or small smile on their face like they jumped out of a film full of unicorns.

So, I ignored the feeling and put on my music. It was stupid anyway. I did not trust myself, out of all people, since forever because of obvious reasons. And that meant I had no reason to trust my “sixth sense” that came out of the blue, either. Lately though, I was improving on ‘being able to trust my eyes’ thing and knew that of course it was all thanks to Anna. How could I be not aware of something like this anyway, she was like my tour-guide for life, at this point.

I was almost sorry for myself that I depended on her this much. Almost.

As I turned to the street her house was in, her figure appeared at the end of the road. It was too far to see clear but with a second glance I was definitely sure it was her. I mean, who else would wear a fur coat in this weather just to get out and buy a small coffee from the café on the corner?

“Anna!” I yelled and raised my hand to wave at her. She looked up from her phone and searched the street for the caller. Finally, our gazes met but she stood still and did nothing, her face blank. I frowned. Maybe she was too lost in thought? Or worse… this was not real either?

When her face suddenly lit up with excitement and waved back to me, I felt like I could breathe again. It was real.

We both walked at each other and she squeezed my bones out of me in a tight hug.

“Hello to you to…” I managed to grit out.

She released me and her golden locks dropped to her shoulders while she examined every inch of me.

“I missed you, you know…” she murmured.

This was another habit of Anna, to see if I was actually okay the instant we met. It was because she didn’t believe me when she asked me how was I. I wouldn’t believe me either, I wasn’t really fond of talking about how many nightmares I saw in a day.

Still, I couldn’t help but rolled my eyes and was about say that I was okay, until a man passing by muttered “Freak” right in my ear. I stared after him and gulped. It was one of the neighbours that knew me because I constantly visited Anna for quite a while now.

I definitely shouldn’t have shouted that loud in the middle of the street. What was I even thinking?

“Here, this one’s yours,” I looked back and saw the cup in her hand she was holding out to me, “it’s your favourite, vanilla latte.”

My eyes lit up with the excitement from the idea of coffee. “Thank you! You didn’t need to…” but as soon as I got a hold on the cup, the coffee in it started to boil and spill out of the lid to my hands. I screamed and dropped it to the ground. My hand was burning. Dark smoke started to rise and my skin was bubbling up.

“No, no! Iris calm down, it’s not real!” she said, and suddenly, the world quietened. I was no longer screaming and my hand was completely fine. Just normal, the coffee that was definitely not hot was spilled on it. The cup was on the ground and I realised my clothes were stained too.

I could feel all the people’s judging stare burning at the back of my neck. My cheeks flushed red and I fiddled with my hands, not knowing what to do awkwardly.

“Hey, it’s okay. We gotta get going, we’re busy people,” she said like nothing happened. This was better though. Making it a big deal was worse, she was right. I sighed and nodded. She started walking and dragged me with her.

The walk to the house was awkward. Anna kept staring at her coffee, not knowing what to do with it. Once she raised her arm to take a sip but stopped with hesitation. I realised that she wasn’t drinking because of me and my long-gone coffee. I knew it wasn’t my fault but it was still really embarrassing.

She suddenly stopped in front of that neighbour’s house, the one that called me a freak. I frowned and stared at her in confusion. But instead, she walked to the porch of the house without looking at me. Stopping on the furred doormat, she raised her hand to knock on the door but just as she did, she lost her balance and the coffee on her other hand fell on the ground. Just like me it was spilled all over the door, the mat and her clothes. She quickly turned to the doorbell camera and muttered an apology before turning back to me.

Her expression changed and a smirk landed on her lips. I was too stunned to speak. The slow, forced movements when the cup fell… it was staged all along.

This time, I was the one who squeezed the bones out of her. Her embrace was warm and felt like a hot cocoa and blankets on a cold winter day.

But something was different from the first hug. Her arms were tense around me… or not. It didn’t matter anyways.

The dimly lit entry didn’t seem quite welcoming at first glance but I was used to it. It had a sense of soothing familiarity now. She headed me to the usual room that she used as a clinic upstairs.

Anna has been looking after me for nearly a year. It was because she was a doctor and if I went to another one, they would probably send me to a mental hospital. That place was the main character of my nightmares. Besides why would I bother going to a hospital when my best friend could do the same? Anna helped me heal and more importantly, she helped me to separate truth from fake.

I guess I was never going to be able to pay her back. But she once said I was involuntarily healing her too.

The room wasn’t much. There was a small desk and cupboards surrounding it for equipment. On the corner stood a comfortable couch.

“You haven’t been taking your pills,” she scolded me but it wasn’t a question.

“I may have forgotten to take one or two…” I tried to defend myself but the difference in the room distracted me. I could swear that this room hadn’t had a balcony before. Yet there it was, behind the half-closed curtains was a really small balcony and in it there was some really weird glass equipment that looked like a part of an experiment. And it felt… wrong, so wrong somehow.

I slowly turned my head to face her. Her expression flickered for a second and turned into something like understanding and pity when she looked at me.

“I think you are hallucinating again Iris, there is nothing there. It’s not real.” She must have seen my confused expression.

I gulped down and nodded to her. I didn’t want to talk about it right now so while she was preparing the syringe I just sat down and waited. A really light breeze flowed in, making the curtains move very slightly. Then I heard it again, that child’s voice. Muttering incomprehensible words and sometimes even screaming. Tears of cold sweat ran down my spine.

It’s not real. Just like Anna told me a thousand times.

But why did I keep hearing it then?

She came to sit beside me and grabbed my left arm to drag some blood to the syringe. She once said that this was how I paid her back. I didn’t understand how though. Or why.

“Ok, let me see. Now that you…”

Small and running footsteps from the corridor cut the air behind the closed door. I froze. But instead of looking at the door, my gaze was fixed on her. She was frozen too and had a scared light in her eyes.

Was it because she heard it too? And if she heard it that meant…

I got up from the couch and ran to the door, opening it with one motion. “Iris, no!” Anna shouted from behind me but for once, I didn’t listen.

There stood a small boy that was five years old at most. He giggled with the same voice I have been hearing for a year. It was him.

I stumbled back and looked at Anna for an explanation, for anything. She looked at me too, with a strange expression that I couldn’t really understand.

Just tell me that this isn’t real too. Just tell me I’m being crazy again.

But all she said was three, scattered words.

“I’m sorry.”

The little boy ran into the room still giggling and muttering to himself. If he was real all along, what else… what else did she lie about? Was everything a lie, was our friendship a lie too?

I nearly collapsed to the ground but barely controlled myself and staggered back to the desk instead. My breaths were shallow, they weren’t enough. The world was spinning, I was going to fall and fall and fall and no one was going to catch me.

“He is my brother,” I heard Anna murmuring while looking at the small boy. She used to tell me that everyone in her family was dead because of an illness.

This was too much; I didn’t want to hear the truth anymore. If this was the truth, I did not want it.

“I was looking for a cure for him, he’s ill.” She wasn’t looking at me. She couldn’t. I was holding onto the desk desperately because if I did not, I would definitely fall. But she wouldn’t understand. She didn’t understand.

What was even the point? Why was she doing this to me?

With a sudden and insane idea forming in my mind, I grabbed the small key that was sitting on the desk with trembling hands and opened the cupboard on the very left corner. The one she tensed every time I went close to it.

“Iris, no!”

It was not tidy at all, glass tubes, syringes and serum bags were all on top of each other.

And one of the serum bags was filled with blood. My blood.

“I can explain!” she said for the first time, making a move towards me.

He’s ill she said. She was giving my blood to him, that was for sure.

A cold and strong breeze flowed in to the room and suddenly, thick, red blood started to pour out of the little boy’s eyes and ears. The world was falling apart. He was choking on his own blood.

I screamed and fell backwards, trying to back away from him as much as I can on the floor. I heard Anna screaming my name too. She was scared of me. If I wasn’t so fallen apart and busy, I could have cried my eyes out at that.

Just as I turned my head to look at her, she tried to move away from me to and tripped on the glass equipment in the really small balcony. The glass material was falling to the ground and shattering to a million pieces when she lost her balance and fell backwards with a scream, right off the railing of the balcony.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything. Was this a hallucination too? Cause it didn’t feel real at all.

The balcony was supposed to be fake; the boy was supposed to be fake. But what was even real now? Did Anna actually fall from the second floor? She was still screaming in pain and was yelling for help, was it real?

Funny how I still needed her, I needed her to tell me the truth always. How funny, that she always did the opposite, adding even more lies to my crooked life.

I slowly got up from the ground and realised that the boy was gone now too. There was no blood anywhere, none at all.

I considered going down and help Anna get up. She was yelling at me too sometimes. But something in me shifted and my feet moved to the opposite direction, the front door.

She wasn’t real anyway. This wasn’t happening. Even if it did, I could not handle it anymore. There were no more tears left of me to shed. My chest was empty, filled with the weird weight of betrayal and heartbreak.

There was a crowd forming around the house as I walked away. Curious neighbours were wondering what were those sounds, probably. One of them was yelling at them to call the ambulance.

I was now nearly two streets away from the house but still, still her voice was echoing in my head nonstop. And I knew that it wasn’t leaving soon either.

You know I’m always by your side Iris.

I guess she was now. Always.