7 Days of Madness

The pills don't work

I watch my brother exit the driveway and out of my sight with my precious red Ford F 150. I mutter 'Asshat' under my breath then make my way back into the house, letting a small gust of loneliness envelop me as I stand in the middle of the living room.

Suddenly, there was a feeling of emptiness in my heart. Boohoo, my brother is gone, what do I do? Have a breakdown? Not exactly. But this was familiar. My heart suddenly felt like it had plunged itself into a tank of boiling hot water and it was currently being cooked alive. It's no coincidence it decides to feel like this just conveniently after Aydyn stole my truck and drove off.

My heartbeat started to pick up, punching against my chest, and I rubbed my hand over it. I hoped that by doing so that maybe it would calm down, like an agitated dog. Of course, nah, that's not how things work. I then started taking deep breaths to actually calm down and I did this for an unspecified amount of time until I felt like I wasn't dying anymore.

Pills it is, then. I briskly made my way upstairs to my bedroom where I pulled open a drawer and grabbed a bottle of suspicious looking pills. They're tranquillisers, but not the ones you'd be able to get from your local pharmacy. Because the pharmacy my brother got these from isn't on Earth.

About three years ago, around the time of graduation, I started having spouts of a 'foggy mind'. Instances where my mind went blank and everything became pessimistic and dark. I would be talking happily with a friend and all of a sudden my smile drops and my social battery drains quicker than a virgin man in bed. The first few times this happened I didn't think so much of it. Then it happened again and again until finally, my brother noticed it and alarms started going off.

My brother and I went to see a Hell Psychiatrist—a psychiatrist positioned in Hell. Yes, there are mental health facilities for Demons down below. It's good to be crazy, but not good to be too crazy that it interferes with work and you end up as a nuisance—and I was told I had something up with my psychological makeup, but it was never fully narrowed down.

I was genuinely surprised.

I never had any issues with how I was, really. I wasn't depressed or had anxiety in comparison to my brother who had the latter, more specifically social anxiety. Hell, I spoke for him every time he kept quiet. I was fine, nothing was up with me and I probably had some demonic biological quirk activating in my brain that could improve my attempts at deceiving people or improve my diabolical abilities. To have been told that I was a ticking time bomb and a potential danger waiting to burst and bite at any hand that reaches out to me...

I called it bogus.

Then two weeks passed after my diagnosis and the whole time I walked around with some 'mood-levelling medicine'. I never used it, it was prescribed out of concern that I might just act out randomly, whatever that meant. The psychiatrist told me to take it twice a day, but I flushed two each day down the toilet so the bottle seemed to actually be depleting and Aydyn could stop worrying.

Aydyn's worried because my nature is evil and I won't be settling to just acting like some popular guy using people as stepping stones and only deceiving everyone around me for my own gain, or become some control freak. No, I'm better than that, in a bad way. Aydyn even told me he was worried I might even hurt him. If anything, those words hurt me. How could he think I would purposely and deliberately hurt him? Sometimes I did but that was just classic sibling stuff. Your goal as a sibling is to be the most insufferable cockroach to your brother or sister, but I will admit I may have gone over the line occasionally. Though, when Aydyn voiced his discomfort I stopped immediately. I brought that point up to him and he continued spilling his concerns that I couldn't seem to allay.

I still called it bogus. I would never, and I mean never, lay a finger on my brother and cause that kind of harm to him with no clear reason. But Aydyn had his doubts and we had an argument over it. What was weird about the argument was that halfway through, his words were stolen from him and the look of anger on his face was dismissed. He shook his head and took a deep breath, then told me, "I'm sorry. I don't want to spend anymore energy bickering with you." With a straight face.

And that was fair, frankly, I was glad he decided to be the mature one and stop the entire thing. I was getting tired of arguing with him.

But the way he interrupted himself was eerie. He had looked to the side, as if something got his attention and it was far more important than our quarrel. Then he calmed down and defused the entire squabble although he didn't particularly appear to be finished with our argument.

One day, Aydyn went to attend a post graduation party that had alcoholic drinks involved. For my partially alcoholic brother, it was a win. So he went, and I was more than fine with having our entire room to myself.

Then a day passed, he hadn't returned and was not answering calls, and my mom started getting worried about him. I was worried too, but oddly on a lower level. I mean I wondered where he could have been, but I wasn't scared for his well-being and I had a reason not to be. Instead, I became more irritable, then became disoriented and numb. I wanted to comfort my mom who was frantically calling up the police to try and file a missing report for Aydyn, but I hesitated.

I didn't feel like I had the energy to comfort her. I thought it was useless to do so.

I knew what I had to do; reassure mom he'll come back and hug her, but my thoughts turned pessimistic. Whatever could happen to Aydyn, it would not matter because he would just bounce right back alive and well, but my mom didn't know that and I didn't want to tell her that unless I wanted her to yell at me for being insensitive. Conscious of what was happening to my thoughts and what I might say, I just ignored my mom and shut myself in my room.

Lo and behold, Aydyn came back home at 7PM the next day and acted like he didn't just make mom worry herself sick.

Three hours after his relieving return he asked me if I was alright during the time he was gone.

I said no, because I was worried. "Worried", with quotation marks.

"As if." Aydyn said confidently. I rolled my eyes and deflected, trying to reinforce that I was definitely worried to some degree. I wasn't about to argue with my brother who only wore blue boxers at that time and risk losing to him.

He then pulled something from under his pillow and shook the bottle of my prescribed meds, handing it over to me. Did this naked whore literally pick up a new prescription for me in Hell? Is that why he took so goddamn long?

"You should start taking these instead of letting the toilet do it for you."

Fucking hell.

So everytime Aydyn leaves me be, I'm expected to take these pills so I don't become... Well, I don't really know. I guess so I don't 'unwind' or release the kraken. But I only took them every time Aydyn reminded me, which wasn't a lot. I also took them when I personally felt bad in my own subjective judgement, then when I felt fine, I just got off of them.

Back in the present day, and in my bedroom, I flop onto my bed and sprawl out as I wait for the pills to take effect. It felt like an eternity had passed. But it was really only like half an hour.

Spoiler alert, they didn't do much to help. And I was already feeling so disconcerted without Aydyn. This is very inconvenient.