The October Amaryllis

Chapter 64 - May 21st, 2020 - 11:59 A.M.

At 11:59 A.M., something truly crazy happened; I found my dad sitting on my bed in my room. I have no idea how exactly he got there, but just seeing him nearly gave me a heart attack. All I knew was that the universe was glitching up and that I was responsible for it one way or another. I was causing mutations in its "DNA."

"Dad, how'd you get in here?" I asked nervously.

"What do you mean? I signed in from the front like everyone else," he said, looking at me like I was an idiot.

"Uh... no, you didn't. Nobody told me you were coming. How are you, though?" I asked, sitting down on Morgan's bed. Morgan was probably flirting with more nurses at that moment. I can't blame him, though; I kinda have a thing for nurses too... I read stories about nurses and doctors falling in love with their patients, so maybe I could get myself one. Only problem is I always end up crushing on people who are twice my age...

Instead of replying, he vanished into thin air for approximately five seconds before returning with no warning. The way he appeared was incredibly sudden, too; he would just materialize in a fraction of a second instead of slowly emerging.

I felt my heart beat out a Slayer song at that point; I couldn't tell if this was all a hallucination or if he was genuinely phasing through reality. Whatever the case, I wanted to crawl into a ball and plug my ears.

I touched him to test if he was real or a hallucination, and when I did, he popped like a balloon and disappeared from this world. He returned ten seconds later, and his face was completely covered in blood. He didn't seem to be aware of it or at least didn't care enough to wipe it off.

"What's with that look, Skipper? You look like you saw a ghost," he asked concernedly.

"It's nothing; it's just have you ever had something so weird happen to you that you simply couldn't explain it?" I asked, trying not to freak out. There was no way he got in my room normally; this was clearly a result of the time paradoxes.

"What in the world happened to you?" he asked, noticing the look of apprehension on my face. As tempting as it was, I was not about to explain to him that I saw him disappearing into thin air. He already thought I was somewhat mentally unstable; I couldn't lead him to believe that I was completely nuts.

"Nothing. How is work going? I assume you've been working on your recycling robot a lot lately?" I asked, trying to change the subject.

"You have no idea! That robot is like my child at this point. You know someday I should show yo-" he said excitedly before disappearing into thin air all over again.

How often is this going to keep happening to me? It only ever gets worse...

As I lay down on my bed, staring at the ceiling in confusion, he emerged a couple of seconds later, yet again, except this time on Morgan's bed. The worst part of it all was that he didn't even realize what was happening; this was completely normal somehow for him. For me, I was about two seconds away from going into delirium. I swear I felt a piece of my sanity slipping every time he reappeared; I worried I would have a full-blown mental breakdown that I could never recover from.

"Hey, how's the hospital treating you?" he asked as if he didn't just appear out of thin air.

"It's been treating me alright... How's mom doing at home? I haven't heard from her in what feels like forever."

"Oh, she's doing swell. Did I ever tell you she started glassblowing? Apparently, it's a really relaxing hobby," he said, stretching lazily.

"Glassblowing? I thought she was all about gardening?" I asked, confused. I never remembered her showing any interest in glassblowing, so this came as a shock to me.

"Gardening? Since when was she interested in ga-" he asked with a perplexed expression before disappearing yet again. By this point, I wasn't surprised about what was happening; I had become so used to the crazy that nothing seemed out of the ordinary anymore. I wished at that moment that I'd die by some freak accident; my dark thoughts had festered into something genuinely horrible by that point. I felt like Norman Osborn from Spider-Man at that moment. You know that one scene where he talks to his evil side in the mirror? That's what the experience was like for me. I was fighting my ID and trying to remain sane and in control. I may have been alive physically, but I had never felt so dead mentally.

This continued at least two more times, and each time it happened, I lost more and more of my sanity. I stopped replying to him since I knew he would disappear in less than a minute, anyway. He had a look of annoyance and confusion on his face from me not replying to him, but at that moment, I didn't care about anything or anyone; I had become entirely numb to the world.

After what felt like years, Morgan entered the room in the strangest way possible. I'm dead serious when I say he phased through the door from the outside and was floating seven feet off the ground. Smoke flowed from his body and covered the entire room in a gloomy haze during the span of a few seconds. It took everything not to scream at the horror I was witnessing. This was like The Twilight Zone but in real life.

He asked me (while still floating in the air) if I talked to anyone in the room. His eyes were wide as saucers when he asked me that; I guess he thought someone must have broken into our room. The only question is, why in the world would someone break into a psychiatric hospital? If I were to break in somewhere, a psychiatric hospital would be the last place on my mind. I'd much rather check out what they've got hidden in Area 51. I heard they've got aliens and flying saucers there, although, personally, I think that's a load of shit.

"No, I haven't spoken to anyone; why?" I lied.

"I just thought I heard someone. Man, so many weird things have been happening to us lately. Do you think this place might be cursed?" he asked anxiously.

Yup, and I'm the curse.

"I think it's our medication maybe; I mean, have you seen how many side effects those things carry?" I half-lied. I felt horrible for lying to him, but it's not like I could have told him the truth. If I did, I'd have just extended my stay at the hospital.

"You're probably right. It's just do you ever get this weird feeling like everything is about to go terribly wrong and then it does?" he asked, sighing.

"I'm afraid that's just called life, Morgan."

"Ah, life... it's both the greatest and worst thing all at the same time," he replied with a deep sigh.

Tell me about it...