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This appears in a pre-2010 issue
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SLIPPAGE
Christopher Frost
We are above the condominium that our reluctant hero has dwelled for the last seven years. It is within these walls that he has struggled to control his mind. It is here that he has lost several battles to his own inner demons and utterly and sadly lost hope, not only in the world but, worse yet, for himself. From outside we can see that every light that can be lit, is, and that our poor friend, our dear sweet friend whom others value more than he will ever know, is filled with torment and despair. We see him stand up from his desk which resides in the corner of his office. The shelf above filled with comic books, novels, and short stories. Assorted action figures Ð Star Wars to Buffy the Vampire Slayer figures, the center holds the slayer herself beside her Angel and to the left and right a handful of villains - line the shelves on walls and floor to ceiling bookcases. Also posters, a newspaper cut-out about his grandmother and an assortment of pictures of his beautiful wife. The office is on the rear of the condo that faces the cul de sac. The eggshell drapes are closed but thin enough to see through. He is lost from our vision for a moment as he leaves the office. We travel through the cool winter air and slowly fall towards the second floor where we hope to get a view of him again.
There is a brief pause as he is withdrawn from sight but we have an idea of where he is headed and we are sure that any moment now....ahh, there he is stumbling off the first step of the staircase and circling into the living room. We hoped that he wasn't already so lost but from what we can see he is much further gone then we had hoped. As he comes towards us, unaware of our presence, his body is slouched against the wall, his shoulder pressing heavily into it, his temple meeting the dark grey paint of the wall, a color that he had chosen when he, his wife Ðgirlfriend at the time- and two friends had redecorated the living room. He had been complimented on the choice in colors and the design of the room which is sponge painted on the bottom half of the wall in three different hues of grey with a border just above that and above the border a solid hue of dark grey. The design is something we would see out of a fancy catalog or maybe the décor of one of the rich and famous. From here he drags himself into the dining room, the motif is Chinese inspired, his wife's idea, the wall ends in the living room and he stumbles over himself until he reaches the dining room table and steadies himself here. He is far more lost then we had originally suspected. His pupils are large and undulating, his skin pale, almost as white as a ghost, his hands shake uncontrollably as he tries to hold his weight against the table, and he is gagging on saliva that he feels is suffocating him. Our job here is only to observe, even if we wished to Ðwhich believe me we do- we could not interfere. But if we could...if we could, we promise you that we would take him into our arms and hold him tight running our hands through his hair as we reassured him that this would all end, it is after all only a temporary set back. At least that is what we hope. Again he is on the move, with more conviction at this point. His eyes glimmer with hope as salvation is only feet away and he no longer needs walls or furniture to support him. Almost running he moves from the dining room to the kitchen, to the stove and the cabinet just to the right of it in only a few seconds. He violently throws the cabinet door open and scuffles through the content of medications, herbal remedies, vitamins, and other miscellaneous items until his fingers clasp the object he decided he was in need of while up in the office on the third floor. It is a sheet of drugs Ð prescription of course he has given up on illegal contraband since his last experiment resulted in the stop of his heart (figuratively speaking) the drug we speak of is Klonopin, used for individuals with anxiety and severe panic disorder.
His name is Christian Michael Winter and what we are observing from outside the second floor of his condominium is a fall from reality that he has not endured since December 17th in the year of two thousand and four. Almost a year to that date he is once again relapsing. Christian tears the protective sheet away and inside are eight dissolvable pills neatly tucked into individual sealed packs. We know he only needs two, his doctor knows that two will calm the attack and right his mind though make him a bit tired and withdrawn, it is already 10:04PM and there is no need for him to be worried about the side effects, because work, and driving his vehicle, and all the things the warning discusses one should not do while on the medication, are ten hours away into the next day.
We cross our figurative fingers and hope that he will abide by the directions and his doctors written prescription to only take those two white circular dissolvable pills and place only those on his tongue. As he opens one, two (our hope is not realized), three, and four pills are set free of their package and dumped into his hand. He pops one and two into his mouth they instantly begin to dissolve, Christian moves to the fridge and pulls out a plastic bottle of Cranberry juice, he places this on the counter above the dishwasher to the right of the sink. Above the counter is another cabinet, one that should be locked and the key safe guarded by his wife, but we cannot blame her, no, no, that would be wrong. After all it has been almost a year; almost a whole year since he was discharged from that hospital that helps the helpless and he began to move on with his life in control of these attacks. It isn't her fault, how could it be? She is only human and humans make the mistake of believing the ill when they tell stories of their recovery and hide the pain and sickness. For six months after his discharge the liquor cabinet above the dishwasher was empty. But slowly as Christian convinced his wife, his friends, and his parents that all was well in that mind of his, the alcohol returned in small quantities. Even tonight there isn't as much as there once was. At one point this cabinet of liquor was so full that the cabinet door would not fully close, it instead remained ajar three inches to accommodate all the different bottles of inebriated soldiers.
During this dry spell that Christian acknowledged as a means to make himself well the cabinet was empty and the shelves in the fridge that at many times were lined with bottles of Bud Light, Rolling Rock, and Mich Ultra, were gone - replaced with O'Doul's non alcoholic brew. For a time he was content with drinking the taste of alcohol but settling without the buzz. For a time that was. There are three chemicals that most highly contribute to these attacks of anxiety and utter panic; not all scientists, doctors, and experts may agree but for Christian these three concoctions can mean the difference of sanity and utter dismay, they are: caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol.
Today Christian has mixed all three.
You might be asking yourself why does he do this to himself? For you to understand that you have to give him the benefit of the doubt and realize that it is not a conscious choice. Christian does not know that he is doing this to himself. It has been so long since an episode Ð that is what we call these set backs and attacks Ð has occurred. Almost a year you must remember. To Christian he has regained control of his life, he is stable, and he knows the signs of a down fall. Even so, knowing the signs of relapse doesn't mean recognizing them when it begins. He tends to rationalize the symptoms and signs away. He had a bad day at work. The wife and he aren't getting along this week. He's tired. These are all rational diagnoses of someone who can combat their own symptoms and for the most part he is correct and accurate and the attacks can be overcome through mediation and a calm perspective. But every so often he is wrong and when he is wrong is when it is most dangerous for him. And the danger ladies and gentleman...well you will see. We employ you as we watch and tell you of Christian's spiral, to keep an open mind and try to understand that this is not entirely his fault. He is after all...a good man. And if you meet the people that love him the most, you will hear stories of a man that would sacrifice himself for those he love and that no one more than he, is more honorable, more courageous, and the single best listener. Christian gives all of himself to those closest to him and he is a man that you would wish to be your best friend, brother, or lover.
However, we are pulling too far back and have missed a critical junction in the events. While we were talking my friends, Christian had reached into the cupboard and opened a bottle of Grey Goose, mixing it heavily with a splash of cranberry juice and a few ice cubes. We also missed him taking the other two Klonopin, and opening the other four. As we catch up he is now popping the other four pills in to his mouth, and as they dissolve he washes them down with the mixed drink.
Christian's therapist, a woman in her late fifties maybe even early sixties was of no help to him nor were many of the therapists in the past. It is difficult for them to understand a man who thrives on passion and literature; many have believed he was a drug addict. He was not at the time but as we have witnessed tonight he is, on some level.
It will take anywhere from fifteen minutes to thirty minutes for the drugs to kick in, at that time two things can happen. The first: Christian will become incredibly tired and hopefully fall asleep on the couch or even his office floor. The worst case, the case that we hope more than anything will not happen is he will go up to his office and begin to write. We pray that the writer's block that has consumed him for the better part of this week is still in effect and he will not be able to coherently put together any thoughts that can be written down or typed on his WORD program. But we already know his intention is to do that later. To retire to his office, alone and secluded from the world, his wife who is at school for the night, and sit down in front of that screen and try to write.
We watch him as he crosses into the dining room, no longer stumbling or reaching for corporeal objects to steady his pace, and moves back towards the staircase that ascends to his office. We won't watch from outside and we move toward the glass patio doors and slip through following Christian from behind. He has only made one drink and sips at it as he walks the bottle of Vodka left behind on the counter along with the cranberry juice. This trip he has decided to leave the alcohol behind.
For now.
Christian enters his office. The adorned walls with posters and pictures also have a Batman clock that hasn't read the correct time in some months. Slouching in his comfy leather chair he gazes up involuntarily at the framed article from The Trader, a newspaper forum that ran an article on his late grandmother about her skill as a teddy bear maker. She was for all intents and purposes one of the most inspiring persons in Christian's life. Like so many others he has loved, she is gone. He continues to blame himself for her death but that story is too long to discuss at this time, again as we have sidetracked we missed another critical moment.
Now planted in his leather chair that he loves more than any other physical possession he wobbles back and fourth on its pivot as he logs onto his Blog. One of the skills he was encouraged to utilize during his first incarceration at a mental institution at the age of fifteen was to write in a journal. He has three going at the present, but the scariest and most dangerous one he has is his Blog. Because within the internet and on this Blog Christian does not write as himself but as one of the dangerous personalities he has created within his mind. There are bits and pieces of him in the writing but mostly he dwells in the fictitious person his mind created and spins the stories towards the macabre. The alter ego, Gabrial, a person who suffers the same illness that Christian does, tends to describe events gruesomely, tells of his sexual affairs, and describes his lust for pain and the hope of an accidental suicide. Gabrial is a dark recess of Christian's mind, a person who intoxicates all of Christian's darker thoughts of himself and his gambles with death. It is being inside of Gabrial's mind that Christian can escape from his personal journals of his struggle and glamorize them in a medium of darkness and passion.
At this moment we watch as Christian logs on to this Blog and bring up a blank template to put his thoughts in. Although we are sure the medication has not kicked in yet, Christian is behaving as though it has. He rolls his shoulders and rubs his cheek across the coarse fabric of his shirt like a person on ecstasy. He cracks his knuckles, takes deep breaths and forcibly scratches his nails across his skin. This last behavior is quite frightening because if Christian continues on this path it won't be long until the dull edges of his nails aren't enough to arouse him and he'll venture a return to the kitchen where the knives now sit tucked away in their wooden block.
Oh Chris, if only this set back had happened the night before or the night after tonight when your wife would be home and able to recognize your anguish. We will hope and pray again that her professor is tired or sick and lets his students out early this evening. We could travel through the sky, across this town and into the city to where she is, venture through the halls of her school and up the flight of stairs that lead to her classroom, if only we weren't afraid of leaving Christian alone.
From the threshold of the office we float up to the ceiling and watch the events as they unfold from here. Like a fly we perch and rub are hands together anxiously.
Christian sits in front of the computer a blank template box in front of him, he has signed on as Gabrial. He sips at his strong drink, the taste of vodka doesn't settle with him right, but after this glass it will go down easier and by the third glass it will flow over his tongue and down his throat and into his belly as easily as water. Between the keyboard and the monitor is a pack of Parliament lights, purchased today. Until today it has been forty-nine days since his last cigarette. To the left of the keyboard is a large cup of Vanilla Spice Decaffeinated coffee, but we know that the girl at Dunkin Donuts that made the coffee was out of decaffeinated and instead of waiting for it to brew filled the cup with regular coffee and added the vanilla spice flavor. It has been more than six months since Christian has had a cup of caffeinated coffee and almost the second he sips at it he knows something isn't right but decides instead of engaging in a conflict with the girl at Dunkin Donuts he lets it slide and drinks the coffee. In front of the coffee is the green Rolling Rock glass that his wife had bought for him earlier in the year, now filled with three ice cubes (slowly melting), Grey Goose vodka, and a splash of cranberry juice. He switches between the two drinks. Reaching out for the pack of cigarettes, Christian withdraws a single coffin nail, as he calls them, and puts it between his lips. He strikes the lighter and brings the flame to the head of the cigarette and as it lights he takes a deep breath of smoke, filling his lungs.
We look away at the cataclysmic combination perched around Christian on the surface of his desk and take a second to check the clock. The time reads: 10:17PM. Thirty-three minutes until his wife is released from class and it will take her twenty to twenty-five minutes to get home from Manchester to the condo.
Only an arm length away from Christian is his journal. His most current hand written journal, the one that he Christian Michael Winter writes in as himself, we don't count the blog written by Gabrial as an accurate account of Christian's thoughts. The journal is leather bond, brown, in the center of the cover the word: Journal, in cursive is written, the border is some Celtic design. His first entry was on April 24, 1997, the last entry July 17, 2005. There are large gaps in the entries, some spanning days, most months, and a few spanning years. It has been over five months since the last entry. We so hoped that he would write in that leather bond journal this evening and not venture to the internet where his doppelganger does more harm than good. But we are observers, not therapists, not doctors, nor friends, family or angels. All we can do is watch from the invisible web on the ceiling looking down at a man who has more to offer then he will ever see.
Christian realizes as we do how long it has been since he was last in the hospital for the mentally ill. He can't remember the date and that is really the only reason that the brown leather journal is on his desk. Most months it is tucked away in the bottom of his filing cabinet where uncompleted stories, both potential novels and short stories lie untouched. He opened that black filing cabinet tonight, pulled the bottom drawer out and rummaged through his work for the intention of finding the brown leather journal. At the time he hadn't opened it but it now sits open on his desk. Let us venture a bit closer, over Christian's shoulder and read what he wrote on that date a year and five days ago.
It says:
12/17/04 9:14PM
I woke up this morning feeling like shit as I do everyday. Last evening I had gone to see Arlene {Christian's therapist} with Candice {Christian's wife} and Candice had explained to her about the hallucinations and episodes. Arlene wasn't aware of this so she decided the Zoloft wasn't right for me. Over the course of this week I was supposed to begin to lower my dose until I was weaned off the drugs.
After next week we would begin a new drug. Here's to starting over. FUCK THAT!!! I'm sick of no one knowing what's wrong with me.
This morning at work my mind was spinning out of control and finally I couldn't take it anymore so I left work. Said nothing to anyone. Went home, dropped to my knees and began crying. I thought about killing myself. Just ending it all. So I went downstairs grabbed all the ice cubes we had and filled the bathroom sink. I read somewhere that if you submerge your writs in the ice water for ten minutes it doesn't hurt when you slit your wrist.
But I couldn't do it. I'm a coward. Terrified of a purgatory that has never been proven. So I didn't kill myself.
Candice happened to come home during this present episode and we decided it was time to go to the hospital. We Ð Candice I mean Ð called Arlene to figure out what to do but she never returned our calls. Instead of waiting we decided to go the hospital.
I've been here in the hospital since 1:30PM. I'm not scared as I have been in the past but I don't feel that this is going to make me any better.
Once again I'm losing my mind.
I wish I could see Candice the way I did when we first met. She's the most beautiful woman in the world, she loves me, she supports me and saves me from the darkness and I dishonor her by these feelings. It makes no sense. None of this does. It just doesn't...
12/17/04
Christian M. Winter
Here we are once again and Christian is close to the breaking point that almost took his life. He is beginning to type and we return to the web on the ceiling that gives us the best vantage point to watch our friend without getting in his way. We don't want to read what he is writing. We don't want to see what mess Gabrial is going to make of Christian's thoughts. Maybe he will stop, we can only hope, and he will pick up the brown leather journal and tell us the story of himself. Maybe he will write how he is feeling and not let his fictitious alter ego fictionalize a story of dark despair and suicidal tendencies. We watch as his fingers flurry over the keyboard and he pauses only to take a sip of the mixed drink that is rapidly emptying in the green Rolling Rock glass. The cigarette he lit only moments ago is burning down in the ashtray untouched. The cup of coffee we know is not decaf grows colder and untouched in the Styrofoam cup, we are sure that Christian will only touch it now to throw it in the rubbish behind him.
Again he pauses, takes a sip of the liquor and cracks his knuckles. Is Gabrial done with him?
Christian goes down to the START icon on his computer, it brings up a screen of command icons, and he highlights his media player with the mouse and double-clicks bringing up the media player screen. We watch as he scrolls through his library looking for a song. What will he choose? Something up beat? We wait with bated breath, if we did breathe. Instead he opens up a folder titled: SUICIDAL TUNES. Within the folder is a collection of movie scores from some of Christian's favorite movies. There's The Crow, Legends of the Fall, The Hulk, Gladiator, and The Devil's Own. All in their own way tragic movies, more so the first two mentioned which also happen to be our hero's favorite movies.
Back a year ago when Christian was in the hospital one of his daily routines was to attend group meetings. This was a collaboration between the social workers and therapists to help get the patients lives in order so that they could be discharged with tools to help them on the outside of the hospital walls. The earliest meeting, the first of the day, was designed for the patient to recognize what brought each of them to the hospital to begin with and identify traits to help them understand for each of them the oncoming symptoms of their specific mental illness. Christian had been diagnosed as bipolar with anxiety disorder. He explained to the group how depression was a constant in his life and the anxiety only added to the depression, when he spoke of the attempted suicide he named the transformation between depression and suicide as slippage; the break in reality when everything around him became unfamiliar and frightening. This slippage was when his mind could no longer contend with reality and the thoughts in his mind and the personalities he had created within his mind would get the better of him. He spoke of how he would have conversation with his multiple sides and how he was told by the figures, which were real to him, that his life was too difficult to go on with. Christian didn't look at ending his life as suicide but as freedom from a prison that his mind was serving consecutive life sentences.
Watching Christian now from the ceiling and his fingers that thump, thump, thump, thump, on the keyboard as his mind races and his fingers try to keep up typing the words that run through his head, we are watching slippage in progress. At the same time he is typing, or more accurately Gabrial is typing, Christian has taken a back seat to his doppelganger. We can see on a plane that humans are not privy to that Christian has stepped out of his own body and stepped away from the computer as Gabrial continues to hammer away on the keyboard spilling his vile thoughts to the internet and anyone who will listen or come across the Blog. There is a gooseflesh raising chill to the smirk on his face. We shudder high above him on the ceiling, the electricity of his deluded sense of self worth encompassing the aura of the room, the lights seem to dim and the brightness of the world is less though no such physical event has happened. The lights remain as bright as they were when turned on at five o' six this evening, but the apparition of darkness settles like a cold mist off the ocean. Christian's mental self, withdrawn as it may be, writhes on the floor of the office, detached from his body, this ghost form of him that only we see and like a ghost is transparent, smokes a figurative cigarette that is clenched between his lips, there is a beer in one hand that will not suffice his thirst and he listens to rock music that plays only in his imagination.
Slippage.
Gabrial writes of heartache and hate, revenge, and vendettas against people that he feels have wronged him and deserve to suffer. We are between the two now, watching Christian and observing Gabrial. We can watch what Gabrial types and cry for Christian as he loses himself deeper into his own subconscious to the lyrics of Sarah McLachlan. His mind acting as a media player now shuffles to another song.
What song is it, Christian?
What song has you on the verge of slipping further into yourself and possibly getting too far lost in a world created by you with no round trip flight?
Is it...?
No, we don't want to think it is.
You're only having a bad night.
10:46PM.
Only thirteen minutes until Candice is removed from class. Thirty-three minutes until she walks through the door. The hour glass has been counted in grains of sand and turned over. It's light brown grains drop into the cylinder filling it as the minutes count by.
Gabrial has grown frustrated with his words. He is at in impasse and unable to continue for the moment. Instead of thinking, instead of rereading what he has written to get a better scope of where he wants to go, he pushes back from the computer with empty glass in hand. It's time for another drink, its time for another round of 'happy pills'. Christian has been fused out of his thoughts and is left alone in the office as Gabrial moves towards the kitchen for a second round, possibly returning with the bottle of vodka and cranberry juice. We know where Gabrial is going but we stay in the office with the apparition of Christian. He needs us the most right now as he slips further away from reality to a place he has not revisited since he was fifteen years old. The others want to emerge; the ones who helped him get through the hardest of times in his young life. But he can't remember them; they've changed so much over the years. His mind was once a vault guarded by honorable soldiers, but they have been defeated over the harder years of his adult life by this Gabrial, this fallen angel.
Slippage.
As we watch Christian descend further there is a change. His physical appearance has slipped. He is no longer the twenty-seven year old that we have watched tonight, not the man that goes to work everyday and works hard for his father and suffers through the torment of thinking he doesn't matter to a man that means more to him than he could ever express. He is once again that awkward fifteen year old boy with golden strands of chin length blond hair, skinny, short for his age, a hint of acne across his forehead. He sips the beer in his hand and takes a long drag on the cigarette, which appears out of place because of the image we can now see, it is odd that we see a child with a beer and cigarette but this is Christian or the child that once was. There is something else that has changed...warm tears stream his cheeks and trace over his cheek bone down to his lips and into his mouth. The palms of his hands are pressed to his eyes trying to block the physical emotion leaking from his eyes. And it's not until we float down to his level and near his head, to his ear that we can hear the lyrics and rhythms playing in his mind. It is as we had thought.
Do what you have to do is playing in his mind and we know why the tears fall.
Christian is blaming himself. The guilt of all those that he loved and couldn't save are surfacing like zombies from the grave inside his mind.
We watch as Gabrial returns to the office. As we had predicted the bottle is in his hand but the cranberry juice was left behind. There is a little still left in the glass but we hardly believe that he is going to refill it with juice. There is also something far more frightening, something that we hoped this night wouldn't come to.
The phone is ringing from somewhere in the house. We take this moment to leave the two dueling minds to themselves. Outside the office the ring is louder but it isn't coming from this floor. Floating through the floor to the second level we enter the living room, a Christmas tree is in the corner with only lights wrapped around its body, the decorations and ornaments haven't been placed with care yet. The coffee table in front of one of the couches holds the telephone face down. We go to it and float up through the table so we can read the caller ID. It is Candice calling. We believe to tell Christian that she is on her way home.
It is 11:01PM.
Fearing to leave Gabrial and Christian alone for too long we float back up through the floor and back into the office. Little has changed. Gabrial has returned to the computer, he's taking a sip of the vodka straight from the bottle and gives little physical sign that the taste is as distasteful as it was earlier. He has lit another cigarette and moved the coffee cup into the rubbish to occupy its latter space with a knife. He is subconsciously digging his fingernails into his forearm; dark red lines are left in the wake. It won't be long until he decides the knife will make a far better substitute for his fingernails.
As though pressing the repeat button on a CD player the emotional ravaging song of Sara McLachlan is playing again from the beginning. Christian has stopped crying though, he stares blankly at the ceiling the cigarette in his mouth vertically standing from his lips like a chimney stack. Are he and Gabrial on the same page? Is that the reason for the lifeless stare that seems to be looking far past the ceiling and deeper into the far recess of his mind?
The pills mixed with the high content of alcohol consumption have dulled his mind. He believes he is seeing clearly, that his thoughts are concise.
Gabrial has stopped writing. He holds the cigarette in his left hand as his right navigates the mouse to the media player's library. He scrolls through the many song titles and double-clicks the one he most wants to listen to. It is Do what you have to do by Sara McLachlan. He clicks the PLAY icon and as the music floods through the speakers he stands back from the computer and moves toward the floor lamp. He shuts it off. Returns to his leather chair and sits. Beside him on the desk are three candles. He lights them all casting an eerie phosphorescent light off the office walls. The room immersed in shadow. He leans back in the chair smoking his cigarette and taking long sips from the bottle of vodka. Three more drags of the cigarette and he crushes the head against the ashtray until it is extinguished. He pushes back the chair, replaces the cigarette with the knife and lies on the floor consuming Christian. His eyes open to the ceiling and are blank, which one is looking up past us...we can't tell.
Tears fall again from his eyes, his lips sync to the words playing over the speaker but his voice is silent. His eyes droop closed and the hand holding the knife rises from his side and rest on his chest, the blades tip pressed between the ribs over his heart.
There is no more pain, the drugs and alcohol extinguished that fire. Now there is only a choice to be made.
Slippage.
He opens his eyes again and standing above him is an old friend. One that has not been present in almost fifteen years but now standing over him looking down through a curtain of dirty blond shoulder length hair. The beautiful porcelain face, and glowing green eyes of a perfect immortal man in an open white shirt that is untucked and drapes down just above the thighs. He kneels down toward our hero and extends a hand.
'Where have you been?' Christian cries, 'I've needed you.'
The man says nothing but smiles imploringly and extends his hand. We see how tired Christian is, his muscles struggling to react, the knife still but poised between the ribs over his heart. The man doesn't waver. His steady hand waits, unmoving. We watch as Christian weighs his options, his eyes locked on the person who he believes abandoned him so many years ago.
'I can't,' Christian says.
'You can.' The voice of the man is filled with warmth and safety, like a God promising refuge.
'You left me,' Christian weeps.
'No, Christian, I never left. I've always been with you...part of you.'
'Help me, Connor,' Christian cries, the knife falling from his hand.
'Always.'
As Christian reaches out to take Connor's hand, the apparition he created fifteen years ago to help him get over the first person he loved and lost, the friend that gave him the strength to make it through that first hospitalization when he felt more alone than he had ever in his young life, the man he immortalized in his first written novel, disappeared as their hands clasped.
We retreat from the floor and float back to the web on the ceiling. The darkness of the room, that dreadful aura lifts away, even in the candle light the room emanates with brightness.
It's 11:21PM.
Candice pulls Christian up from the floor and into her arms. She holds him tighter than ever before and runs her hands through his hair and kisses his wet cheek.
'Shhh...' she whispers. 'It's okay.'
We pull back from the office and float through the window and over the cul de sac; it has begun to snow blanketing the ground in white. We rise up past the tops of the condominiums and the tree's and further up the towns lights illuminate through the snow like stars, higher up we ascend through the cool mist of the clouds until the sky is dark and sparkling with distant stars, the moon is full and bright and beyond that a light as warm and bright as a sun is waiting, we travel towards it until we are pulled in.SLIPPAGE
Christopher Frost
We are above the condominium that our reluctant hero has dwelled for the last seven years. It is within these walls that he has struggled to control his mind. It is here that he has lost several battles to his own inner demons and utterly and sadly lost hope, not only in the world but, worse yet, for himself. From outside we can see that every light that can be lit, is, and that our poor friend, our dear sweet friend whom others value more than he will ever know, is filled with torment and despair. We see him stand up from his desk which resides in the corner of his office. The shelf above filled with comic books, novels, and short stories. Assorted action figures – Star Wars to Buffy the Vampire Slayer figures, the center holds the slayer herself beside her Angel and to the left and right a handful of villains - line the shelves on walls and floor to ceiling bookcases. Also posters, a newspaper cut-out about his grandmother and an assortment of pictures of his beautiful wife. The office is on the rear of the condo that faces the cul de sac. The eggshell drapes are closed but thin enough to see through. He is lost from our vision for a moment as he leaves the office. We travel through the cool winter air and slowly fall towards the second floor where we hope to get a view of him again.
There is a brief pause as he is withdrawn from sight but we have an idea of where he is headed and we are sure that any moment now....ahh, there he is stumbling off the first step of the staircase and circling into the living room. We hoped that he wasn’t already so lost but from what we can see he is much further gone then we had hoped. As he comes towards us, unaware of our presence, his body is slouched against the wall, his shoulder pressing heavily into it, his temple meeting the dark grey paint of the wall, a color that he had chosen when he, his wife –girlfriend at the time- and two friends had redecorated the living room. He had been complimented on the choice in colors and the design of the room which is sponge painted on the bottom half of the wall in three different hues of grey with a border just above that and above the border a solid hue of dark grey. The design is something we would see out of a fancy catalog or maybe the décor of one of the rich and famous. From here he drags himself into the dining room, the motif is Chinese inspired, his wife’s idea, the wall ends in the living room and he stumbles over himself until he reaches the dining room table and steadies himself here. He is far more lost then we had originally suspected. His pupils are large and undulating, his skin pale, almost as white as a ghost, his hands shake uncontrollably as he tries to hold his weight against the table, and he is gagging on saliva that he feels is suffocating him. Our job here is only to observe, even if we wished to –which believe me we do- we could not interfere. But if we could...if we could, we promise you that we would take him into our arms and hold him tight running our hands through his hair as we reassured him that this would all end, it is after all only a temporary set back. At least that is what we hope. Again he is on the move, with more conviction at this point. His eyes glimmer with hope as salvation is only feet away and he no longer needs walls or furniture to support him. Almost running he moves from the dining room to the kitchen, to the stove and the cabinet just to the right of it in only a few seconds. He violently throws the cabinet door open and scuffles through the content of medications, herbal remedies, vitamins, and other miscellaneous items until his fingers clasp the object he decided he was in need of while up in the office on the third floor. It is a sheet of drugs – prescription of course he has given up on illegal contraband since his last experiment resulted in the stop of his heart (figuratively speaking) the drug we speak of is Klonopin, used for individuals with anxiety and severe panic disorder.
His name is Christian Michael Winter and what we are observing from outside the second floor of his condominium is a fall from reality that he has not endured since December 17th in the year of two thousand and four. Almost a year to that date he is once again relapsing. Christian tears the protective sheet away and inside are eight dissolvable pills neatly tucked into individual sealed packs. We know he only needs two, his doctor knows that two will calm the attack and right his mind though make him a bit tired and withdrawn, it is already 10:04PM and there is no need for him to be worried about the side effects, because work, and driving his vehicle, and all the things the warning discusses one should not do while on the medication, are ten hours away into the next day.
We cross our figurative fingers and hope that he will abide by the directions and his doctors written prescription to only take those two white circular dissolvable pills and place only those on his tongue. As he opens one, two (our hope is not realized), three, and four pills are set free of their package and dumped into his hand. He pops one and two into his mouth they instantly begin to dissolve, Christian moves to the fridge and pulls out a plastic bottle of Cranberry juice, he places this on the counter above the dishwasher to the right of the sink. Above the counter is another cabinet, one that should be locked and the key safe guarded by his wife, but we cannot blame her, no, no, that would be wrong. After all it has been almost a year; almost a whole year since he was discharged from that hospital that helps the helpless and he began to move on with his life in control of these attacks. It isn’t her fault, how could it be? She is only human and humans make the mistake of believing the ill when they tell stories of their recovery and hide the pain and sickness. For six months after his discharge the liquor cabinet above the dishwasher was empty. But slowly as Christian convinced his wife, his friends, and his parents that all was well in that mind of his, the alcohol returned in small quantities. Even tonight there isn’t as much as there once was. At one point this cabinet of liquor was so full that the cabinet door would not fully close, it instead remained ajar three inches to accommodate all the different bottles of inebriated soldiers.
During this dry spell that Christian acknowledged as a means to make himself well the cabinet was empty and the shelves in the fridge that at many times were lined with bottles of Bud Light, Rolling Rock, and Mich Ultra, were gone - replaced with O’Doul’s non alcoholic brew. For a time he was content with drinking the taste of alcohol but settling without the buzz. For a time that was. There are three chemicals that most highly contribute to these attacks of anxiety and utter panic; not all scientists, doctors, and experts may agree but for Christian these three concoctions can mean the difference of sanity and utter dismay, they are: caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol.
Today Christian has mixed all three.
You might be asking yourself why does he do this to himself? For you to understand that you have to give him the benefit of the doubt and realize that it is not a conscious choice. Christian does not know that he is doing this to himself. It has been so long since an episode – that is what we call these set backs and attacks – has occurred. Almost a year you must remember. To Christian he has regained control of his life, he is stable, and he knows the signs of a down fall. Even so, knowing the signs of relapse doesn’t mean recognizing them when it begins. He tends to rationalize the symptoms and signs away. He had a bad day at work. The wife and he aren’t getting along this week. He’s tired. These are all rational diagnoses of someone who can combat their own symptoms and for the most part he is correct and accurate and the attacks can be overcome through mediation and a calm perspective. But every so often he is wrong and when he is wrong is when it is most dangerous for him. And the danger ladies and gentleman...well you will see. We employ you as we watch and tell you of Christian’s spiral, to keep an open mind and try to understand that this is not entirely his fault. He is after all...a good man. And if you meet the people that love him the most, you will hear stories of a man that would sacrifice himself for those he love and that no one more than he, is more honorable, more courageous, and the single best listener. Christian gives all of himself to those closest to him and he is a man that you would wish to be your best friend, brother, or lover.
However, we are pulling too far back and have missed a critical junction in the events. While we were talking my friends, Christian had reached into the cupboard and opened a bottle of Grey Goose, mixing it heavily with a splash of cranberry juice and a few ice cubes. We also missed him taking the other two Klonopin, and opening the other four. As we catch up he is now popping the other four pills in to his mouth, and as they dissolve he washes them down with the mixed drink.
Christian’s therapist, a woman in her late fifties maybe even early sixties was of no help to him nor were many of the therapists in the past. It is difficult for them to understand a man who thrives on passion and literature; many have believed he was a drug addict. He was not at the time but as we have witnessed tonight he is, on some level.
It will take anywhere from fifteen minutes to thirty minutes for the drugs to kick in, at that time two things can happen. The first: Christian will become incredibly tired and hopefully fall asleep on the couch or even his office floor. The worst case, the case that we hope more than anything will not happen is he will go up to his office and begin to write. We pray that the writer’s block that has consumed him for the better part of this week is still in effect and he will not be able to coherently put together any thoughts that can be written down or typed on his WORD program. But we already know his intention is to do that later. To retire to his office, alone and secluded from the world, his wife who is at school for the night, and sit down in front of that screen and try to write.
We watch him as he crosses into the dining room, no longer stumbling or reaching for corporeal objects to steady his pace, and moves back towards the staircase that ascends to his office. We won’t watch from outside and we move toward the glass patio doors and slip through following Christian from behind. He has only made one drink and sips at it as he walks the bottle of Vodka left behind on the counter along with the cranberry juice. This trip he has decided to leave the alcohol behind.
For now.
Christian enters his office. The adorned walls with posters and pictures also have a Batman clock that hasn’t read the correct time in some months. Slouching in his comfy leather chair he gazes up involuntarily at the framed article from The Trader, a newspaper forum that ran an article on his late grandmother about her skill as a teddy bear maker. She was for all intents and purposes one of the most inspiring persons in Christian’s life. Like so many others he has loved, she is gone. He continues to blame himself for her death but that story is too long to discuss at this time, again as we have sidetracked we missed another critical moment.
Now planted in his leather chair that he loves more than any other physical possession he wobbles back and fourth on its pivot as he logs onto his Blog. One of the skills he was encouraged to utilize during his first incarceration at a mental institution at the age of fifteen was to write in a journal. He has three going at the present, but the scariest and most dangerous one he has is his Blog. Because within the internet and on this Blog Christian does not write as himself but as one of the dangerous personalities he has created within his mind. There are bits and pieces of him in the writing but mostly he dwells in the fictitious person his mind created and spins the stories towards the macabre. The alter ego, Gabrial, a person who suffers the same illness that Christian does, tends to describe events gruesomely, tells of his sexual affairs, and describes his lust for pain and the hope of an accidental suicide. Gabrial is a dark recess of Christian’s mind, a person who intoxicates all of Christian’s darker thoughts of himself and his gambles with death. It is being inside of Gabrial’s mind that Christian can escape from his personal journals of his struggle and glamorize them in a medium of darkness and passion.
At this moment we watch as Christian logs on to this Blog and bring up a blank template to put his thoughts in. Although we are sure the medication has not kicked in yet, Christian is behaving as though it has. He rolls his shoulders and rubs his cheek across the coarse fabric of his shirt like a person on ecstasy. He cracks his knuckles, takes deep breaths and forcibly scratches his nails across his skin. This last behavior is quite frightening because if Christian continues on this path it won’t be long until the dull edges of his nails aren’t enough to arouse him and he’ll venture a return to the kitchen where the knives now sit tucked away in their wooden block.
Oh Chris, if only this set back had happened the night before or the night after tonight when your wife would be home and able to recognize your anguish. We will hope and pray again that her professor is tired or sick and lets his students out early this evening. We could travel through the sky, across this town and into the city to where she is, venture through the halls of her school and up the flight of stairs that lead to her classroom, if only we weren’t afraid of leaving Christian alone.
From the threshold of the office we float up to the ceiling and watch the events as they unfold from here. Like a fly we perch and rub are hands together anxiously.
Christian sits in front of the computer a blank template box in front of him, he has signed on as Gabrial. He sips at his strong drink, the taste of vodka doesn’t settle with him right, but after this glass it will go down easier and by the third glass it will flow over his tongue and down his throat and into his belly as easily as water. Between the keyboard and the monitor is a pack of Parliament lights, purchased today. Until today it has been forty-nine days since his last cigarette. To the left of the keyboard is a large cup of Vanilla Spice Decaffeinated coffee, but we know that the girl at Dunkin Donuts that made the coffee was out of decaffeinated and instead of waiting for it to brew filled the cup with regular coffee and added the vanilla spice flavor. It has been more than six months since Christian has had a cup of caffeinated coffee and almost the second he sips at it he knows something isn’t right but decides instead of engaging in a conflict with the girl at Dunkin Donuts he lets it slide and drinks the coffee. In front of the coffee is the green Rolling Rock glass that his wife had bought for him earlier in the year, now filled with three ice cubes (slowly melting), Grey Goose vodka, and a splash of cranberry juice. He switches between the two drinks. Reaching out for the pack of cigarettes, Christian withdraws a single coffin nail, as he calls them, and puts it between his lips. He strikes the lighter and brings the flame to the head of the cigarette and as it lights he takes a deep breath of smoke, filling his lungs.
We look away at the cataclysmic combination perched around Christian on the surface of his desk and take a second to check the clock. The time reads: 10:17PM. Thirty-three minutes until his wife is released from class and it will take her twenty to twenty-five minutes to get home from Manchester to the condo.
Only an arm length away from Christian is his journal. His most current hand written journal, the one that he Christian Michael Winter writes in as himself, we don’t count the blog written by Gabrial as an accurate account of Christian’s thoughts. The journal is leather bond, brown, in the center of the cover the word: Journal, in cursive is written, the border is some Celtic design. His first entry was on April 24, 1997, the last entry July 17, 2005. There are large gaps in the entries, some spanning days, most months, and a few spanning years. It has been over five months since the last entry. We so hoped that he would write in that leather bond journal this evening and not venture to the internet where his doppelganger does more harm than good. But we are observers, not therapists, not doctors, nor friends, family or angels. All we can do is watch from the invisible web on the ceiling looking down at a man who has more to offer then he will ever see.
Christian realizes as we do how long it has been since he was last in the hospital for the mentally ill. He can’t remember the date and that is really the only reason that the brown leather journal is on his desk. Most months it is tucked away in the bottom of his filing cabinet where uncompleted stories, both potential novels and short stories lie untouched. He opened that black filing cabinet tonight, pulled the bottom drawer out and rummaged through his work for the intention of finding the brown leather journal. At the time he hadn’t opened it but it now sits open on his desk. Let us venture a bit closer, over Christian’s shoulder and read what he wrote on that date a year and five days ago.
It says:
12/17/04 9:14PM
I woke up this morning feeling like shit as I do everyday. Last evening I had gone to see Arlene {Christian’s therapist} with Candice {Christian’s wife} and Candice had explained to her about the hallucinations and episodes. Arlene wasn’t aware of this so she decided the Zoloft wasn’t right for me. Over the course of this week I was supposed to begin to lower my dose until I was weaned off the drugs.
After next week we would begin a new drug. Here’s to starting over. FUCK THAT!!! I’m sick of no one knowing what’s wrong with me.
This morning at work my mind was spinning out of control and finally I couldn’t take it anymore so I left work. Said nothing to anyone. Went home, dropped to my knees and began crying. I thought about killing myself. Just ending it all. So I went downstairs grabbed all the ice cubes we had and filled the bathroom sink. I read somewhere that if you submerge your writs in the ice water for ten minutes it doesn’t hurt when you slit your wrist.
But I couldn’t do it. I’m a coward. Terrified of a purgatory that has never been proven. So I didn’t kill myself.
Candice happened to come home during this present episode and we decided it was time to go to the hospital. We – Candice I mean – called Arlene to figure out what to do but she never returned our calls. Instead of waiting we decided to go the hospital.
I’ve been here in the hospital since 1:30PM. I’m not scared as I have been in the past but I don’t feel that this is going to make me any better.
Once again I’m losing my mind.
I wish I could see Candice the way I did when we first met. She’s the most beautiful woman in the world, she loves me, she supports me and saves me from the darkness and I dishonor her by these feelings. It makes no sense. None of this does. It just doesn’t...
12/17/04
Christian M. Winter
Here we are once again and Christian is close to the breaking point that almost took his life. He is beginning to type and we return to the web on the ceiling that gives us the best vantage point to watch our friend without getting in his way. We don’t want to read what he is writing. We don’t want to see what mess Gabrial is going to make of Christian’s thoughts. Maybe he will stop, we can only hope, and he will pick up the brown leather journal and tell us the story of himself. Maybe he will write how he is feeling and not let his fictitious alter ego fictionalize a story of dark despair and suicidal tendencies. We watch as his fingers flurry over the keyboard and he pauses only to take a sip of the mixed drink that is rapidly emptying in the green Rolling Rock glass. The cigarette he lit only moments ago is burning down in the ashtray untouched. The cup of coffee we know is not decaf grows colder and untouched in the Styrofoam cup, we are sure that Christian will only touch it now to throw it in the rubbish behind him.
Again he pauses, takes a sip of the liquor and cracks his knuckles. Is Gabrial done with him?
Christian goes down to the START icon on his computer, it brings up a screen of command icons, and he highlights his media player with the mouse and double-clicks bringing up the media player screen. We watch as he scrolls through his library looking for a song. What will he choose? Something up beat? We wait with bated breath, if we did breathe. Instead he opens up a folder titled: SUICIDAL TUNES. Within the folder is a collection of movie scores from some of Christian’s favorite movies. There’s The Crow, Legends of the Fall, The Hulk, Gladiator, and The Devil’s Own. All in their own way tragic movies, more so the first two mentioned which also happen to be our hero’s favorite movies.
Back a year ago when Christian was in the hospital one of his daily routines was to attend group meetings. This was a collaboration between the social workers and therapists to help get the patients lives in order so that they could be discharged with tools to help them on the outside of the hospital walls. The earliest meeting, the first of the day, was designed for the patient to recognize what brought each of them to the hospital to begin with and identify traits to help them understand for each of them the oncoming symptoms of their specific mental illness. Christian had been diagnosed as bipolar with anxiety disorder. He explained to the group how depression was a constant in his life and the anxiety only added to the depression, when he spoke of the attempted suicide he named the transformation between depression and suicide as slippage; the break in reality when everything around him became unfamiliar and frightening. This slippage was when his mind could no longer contend with reality and the thoughts in his mind and the personalities he had created within his mind would get the better of him. He spoke of how he would have conversation with his multiple sides and how he was told by the figures, which were real to him, that his life was too difficult to go on with. Christian didn’t look at ending his life as suicide but as freedom from a prison that his mind was serving consecutive life sentences.
Watching Christian now from the ceiling and his fingers that thump, thump, thump, thump, on the keyboard as his mind races and his fingers try to keep up typing the words that run through his head, we are watching slippage in progress. At the same time he is typing, or more accurately Gabrial is typing, Christian has taken a back seat to his doppelganger. We can see on a plane that humans are not privy to that Christian has stepped out of his own body and stepped away from the computer as Gabrial continues to hammer away on the keyboard spilling his vile thoughts to the internet and anyone who will listen or come across the Blog. There is a gooseflesh raising chill to the smirk on his face. We shudder high above him on the ceiling, the electricity of his deluded sense of self worth encompassing the aura of the room, the lights seem to dim and the brightness of the world is less though no such physical event has happened. The lights remain as bright as they were when turned on at five o’ six this evening, but the apparition of darkness settles like a cold mist off the ocean. Christian’s mental self, withdrawn as it may be, writhes on the floor of the office, detached from his body, this ghost form of him that only we see and like a ghost is transparent, smokes a figurative cigarette that is clenched between his lips, there is a beer in one hand that will not suffice his thirst and he listens to rock music that plays only in his imagination.
Slippage.
Gabrial writes of heartache and hate, revenge, and vendettas against people that he feels have wronged him and deserve to suffer. We are between the two now, watching Christian and observing Gabrial. We can watch what Gabrial types and cry for Christian as he loses himself deeper into his own subconscious to the lyrics of Sarah McLachlan. His mind acting as a media player now shuffles to another song.
What song is it, Christian?
What song has you on the verge of slipping further into yourself and possibly getting too far lost in a world created by you with no round trip flight?
Is it...?
No, we don’t want to think it is.
You’re only having a bad night.
10:46PM.
Only thirteen minutes until Candice is removed from class. Thirty-three minutes until she walks through the door. The hour glass has been counted in grains of sand and turned over. It’s light brown grains drop into the cylinder filling it as the minutes count by.
Gabrial has grown frustrated with his words. He is at in impasse and unable to continue for the moment. Instead of thinking, instead of rereading what he has written to get a better scope of where he wants to go, he pushes back from the computer with empty glass in hand. It’s time for another drink, its time for another round of ‘happy pills’. Christian has been fused out of his thoughts and is left alone in the office as Gabrial moves towards the kitchen for a second round, possibly returning with the bottle of vodka and cranberry juice. We know where Gabrial is going but we stay in the office with the apparition of Christian. He needs us the most right now as he slips further away from reality to a place he has not revisited since he was fifteen years old. The others want to emerge; the ones who helped him get through the hardest of times in his young life. But he can’t remember them; they’ve changed so much over the years. His mind was once a vault guarded by honorable soldiers, but they have been defeated over the harder years of his adult life by this Gabrial, this fallen angel.
Slippage.
As we watch Christian descend further there is a change. His physical appearance has slipped. He is no longer the twenty-seven year old that we have watched tonight, not the man that goes to work everyday and works hard for his father and suffers through the torment of thinking he doesn’t matter to a man that means more to him than he could ever express. He is once again that awkward fifteen year old boy with golden strands of chin length blond hair, skinny, short for his age, a hint of acne across his forehead. He sips the beer in his hand and takes a long drag on the cigarette, which appears out of place because of the image we can now see, it is odd that we see a child with a beer and cigarette but this is Christian or the child that once was. There is something else that has changed...warm tears stream his cheeks and trace over his cheek bone down to his lips and into his mouth. The palms of his hands are pressed to his eyes trying to block the physical emotion leaking from his eyes. And it’s not until we float down to his level and near his head, to his ear that we can hear the lyrics and rhythms playing in his mind. It is as we had thought.
Do what you have to do is playing in his mind and we know why the tears fall.
Christian is blaming himself. The guilt of all those that he loved and couldn’t save are surfacing like zombies from the grave inside his mind.
We watch as Gabrial returns to the office. As we had predicted the bottle is in his hand but the cranberry juice was left behind. There is a little still left in the glass but we hardly believe that he is going to refill it with juice. There is also something far more frightening, something that we hoped this night wouldn’t come to.
The phone is ringing from somewhere in the house. We take this moment to leave the two dueling minds to themselves. Outside the office the ring is louder but it isn’t coming from this floor. Floating through the floor to the second level we enter the living room, a Christmas tree is in the corner with only lights wrapped around its body, the decorations and ornaments haven’t been placed with care yet. The coffee table in front of one of the couches holds the telephone face down. We go to it and float up through the table so we can read the caller ID. It is Candice calling. We believe to tell Christian that she is on her way home.
It is 11:01PM.
Fearing to leave Gabrial and Christian alone for too long we float back up through the floor and back into the office. Little has changed. Gabrial has returned to the computer, he’s taking a sip of the vodka straight from the bottle and gives little physical sign that the taste is as distasteful as it was earlier. He has lit another cigarette and moved the coffee cup into the rubbish to occupy its latter space with a knife. He is subconsciously digging his fingernails into his forearm; dark red lines are left in the wake. It won’t be long until he decides the knife will make a far better substitute for his fingernails.
As though pressing the repeat button on a CD player the emotional ravaging song of Sara McLachlan is playing again from the beginning. Christian has stopped crying though, he stares blankly at the ceiling the cigarette in his mouth vertically standing from his lips like a chimney stack. Are he and Gabrial on the same page? Is that the reason for the lifeless stare that seems to be looking far past the ceiling and deeper into the far recess of his mind?
The pills mixed with the high content of alcohol consumption have dulled his mind. He believes he is seeing clearly, that his thoughts are concise.
Gabrial has stopped writing. He holds the cigarette in his left hand as his right navigates the mouse to the media player’s library. He scrolls through the many song titles and double-clicks the one he most wants to listen to. It is Do what you have to do by Sara McLachlan. He clicks the PLAY icon and as the music floods through the speakers he stands back from the computer and moves toward the floor lamp. He shuts it off. Returns to his leather chair and sits. Beside him on the desk are three candles. He lights them all casting an eerie phosphorescent light off the office walls. The room immersed in shadow. He leans back in the chair smoking his cigarette and taking long sips from the bottle of vodka. Three more drags of the cigarette and he crushes the head against the ashtray until it is extinguished. He pushes back the chair, replaces the cigarette with the knife and lies on the floor consuming Christian. His eyes open to the ceiling and are blank, which one is looking up past us...we can’t tell.
Tears fall again from his eyes, his lips sync to the words playing over the speaker but his voice is silent. His eyes droop closed and the hand holding the knife rises from his side and rest on his chest, the blades tip pressed between the ribs over his heart.
There is no more pain, the drugs and alcohol extinguished that fire. Now there is only a choice to be made.
Slippage.
He opens his eyes again and standing above him is an old friend. One that has not been present in almost fifteen years but now standing over him looking down through a curtain of dirty blond shoulder length hair. The beautiful porcelain face, and glowing green eyes of a perfect immortal man in an open white shirt that is untucked and drapes down just above the thighs. He kneels down toward our hero and extends a hand.
“Where have you been?” Christian cries, “I’ve needed you.”
The man says nothing but smiles imploringly and extends his hand. We see how tired Christian is, his muscles struggling to react, the knife still but poised between the ribs over his heart. The man doesn’t waver. His steady hand waits, unmoving. We watch as Christian weighs his options, his eyes locked on the person who he believes abandoned him so many years ago.
“I can’t,” Christian says.
“You can.” The voice of the man is filled with warmth and safety, like a God promising refuge.
“You left me,” Christian weeps.
“No, Christian, I never left. I’ve always been with you...part of you.”
“Help me, Connor,” Christian cries, the knife falling from his hand.
“Always.”
As Christian reaches out to take Connor’s hand, the apparition he created fifteen years ago to help him get over the first person he loved and lost, the friend that gave him the strength to make it through that first hospitalization when he felt more alone than he had ever in his young life, the man he immortalized in his first written novel, disappeared as their hands clasped.
We retreat from the floor and float back to the web on the ceiling. The darkness of the room, that dreadful aura lifts away, even in the candle light the room emanates with brightness.
It’s 11:21PM.
Candice pulls Christian up from the floor and into her arms. She holds him tighter than ever before and runs her hands through his hair and kisses his wet cheek.
“Shhh...” she whispers. “It’s okay.”
We pull back from the office and float through the window and over the cul de sac; it has begun to snow blanketing the ground in white. We rise up past the tops of the condominiums and the tree’s and further up the towns lights illuminate through the snow like stars, higher up we ascend through the cool mist of the clouds until the sky is dark and sparkling with distant stars, the moon is full and bright and beyond that a light as warm and bright as a sun is waiting, we travel towards it until we are pulled in.
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