Child of Hades {Interactive Story} (PJO/HOO/TOA)

ONE: Not Today

I'm starting this stupid journal off by telling you: none of this was my idea. Dr. Clinn told me to start writing it all down. I don't like keeping diaries, I don't like spilling my secrets out for the world to read — but here you are. Reading it.

I guess I have no choice but to go on, huh?

I'd like to say this all began on Wednesday. I was in Dr. Harriet Clinn's office, a familiar site to me. Every Wednesday morning I'd be here, inside Mountain Lake Hospital (that name is too bad to make up, I swear), psychiatric wing, talking to my psychiatrist about my hallucinations, and the meds I was currently on to try to counter them. By the way, probably important to note that I'm a schizophrenic. Yup, nice to meet you, too. This trip to Dr. Clinn's office was one of the most nerve-wracking since the first time I sat down in the canary yellow chair in front of her oak desk. That was the day she diagnosed me, almost four years ago.

Dr. Clinn fixed her red-rimmed glasses over her eyes, and smiled at me coyly. Her blonde hair was fixed up in a tight bun, she was wearing her favourite blue blouse, and she was sitting tall in her chair.

For some reason, Monday of that same week was one of the worst days I'd ever had. Auditory hallucinations were rare for me, and those coupled with triple the normal amount of visual hallucinations meant Monday was probably my worst break ever. I stayed home from school (not that much of a surprising occurrence. When possible, I got out of school easily. I was picked on for seeing things that weren't there. Hallucinations followed me down every hallway...), Simon had to stay with me because my mom worked from eight in the evening to ten in the afternoon and slept when she got home, and I couldn't be left alone when I had episodes. I got no sleep, and Simon missed his math test.

Tuesday the auditory aspects had calmed down and left me alone, but the visual hallucinations stayed to keep me company. I put this in loose terms because there is no way for me to accurately write down how my episodes worked. It wasn't pleasant. It was frustrating. And I'm so grateful my best friend stuck by my side even when I was in such a horrible state of mind. Not to mention Dr. Clinn had prescribed every antipsychotic under the sun, and none of them took my hallucinations away.

Which brings us to Wednesday. I rubbed my forefinger against my thumb like I did when I got nervous. In my peripheral vision I could see Dr. Clinn looking at me. She sighed, and marked something off on her clip board. I knew that sigh. I'd only heard it once before; when she'd diagnosed me but threw in the fact that I was unlike any patient she'd ever had.

"You have schizophrenia, Y/N. It affects only one percent of the population, and most people diagnosed are older than twenty..." she had said softly, my mother by my side staring on blankly to the news. "But I have never met a schizophrenic with strictly visual hallucinations. That is not to say it has never happened before, but most are plagued with auditory alongside or, most commonly as opposed to visual."

She had gone on to tell me that I could have had it much worse - "not that this isn't bad or anything" - because auditory hallucinations almost always meant abusive voices telling a poor paranoid schizophrenic to do horrible things, or that horrible things were happening, or that horrible things were about to happen.

I braced myself when Dr. Clinn leaned against the desk and pulled her glasses off. Her sigh meant one of two things: bad news, or news I wouldn't like. I was surprised when all she did was ask me a routine question.

"How is Clozapine working out for you?" She looked worried about my answer.

A week ago, I'd started a new medicine, Clozapine. A drug designed for adults dealing with severe schizophrenia. I wasn't paranoid or in one of those "I'm God" delusions, and I wasn't high risk of committing suicide; I wasn't severe. But every other drug on the market suitable for me...We had tried them all. And none of them worked. Most medications made me a walking, barely-talking zombie with little to no will power to do anything. But none made my hallucinations go away. Put simply, if Clozapine didn't work, nothing would.