Remembering Billie

Two Years Earlier... [Casper's P.O.V.]

"Why don't you ever go outside, Cas?" It's a comment I always get. A comment I'm used to responding with "I'm a lazy person". But that's not technically true either. To avoid these "Get off your lazy ass then!" Conversations, I have a small yellow notebook that is filled with my excuses, how well they work, why they worked so well and so freaking fourth.

It was in late June when I was sixteen (Two years ago) that my parents decided I'm either incredibly lazy, or I'm a crazy fucking psychopath. They took for the second because unlike most chronic laziness cases, I'm naturally fit, I cry when I'm taken outside and I guess, don't eat much either. So, one morning, I awoke to a pair of bright blue wrinkled eyes staring down at me. The eyes of Dr. Greenmonth stared down at me "Mhmming" and nodding to my parents. He sat down on the edge of the bed forcing me to curl my long legs up in front of me. "Why do you not like to go outside, son?" He had asked me. "Loads of young men your age like to be outside so why don't you? Especially someone as fit as you." His sparkling eyes bored into my brain and I ignored his questions with a flitted glare pointed at my parents. "Coffee- it's too early to be interrogated." I had grumbled angrily to no one in particular. My mother pursed her lips and blew out of nose, sighing she smiled courteously at Dr. Greenmonth and said as kind as she could manage, "Of course Casper. If you'll follow me Doctor, I'll show you to the lounge where we shall wait for Casper to find his lost manners." She turned briskly on her heel, and Dr. Greenmonth followed oblivious, behind her to the lounge. My father waited a couple seconds. He stared at me with these dark hazel eyes, the ones that always make me question my blue ones. "Give 'em a chance, eh Cas?" He patted my shoulder before leaving my room. I sighed deeply and shrugged on a shirt over my pale frame. I pulled on a pair of black jeans and grimaced at my reflection before patting down my bed hair and abandoning the comfort of my room for the kitchen and my coffee.

"So, again I ask you, why do you never go outside?" Dr. Greenmonth had locked his fingers together in a clasp and stared at me with great interest. I remember I sipped my coffee slowly, allowing the time to drag out. Now, I never actually needed the coffee, or felt that it was too early to talk to him when I was grumbling in bed to my parents. It was a pathetic excuse but I needed time to think of my response. For all I knew, I felt like I was going to die whenever I left the house and I wasn't at all sure that Greenmonth could ever understand such absurdities as my theory of dying. I breathed out as the burning coffee made its way down my esophagus in a hurried leap. "May my parents leave the room first?" I had asked him, watching the brown liquid in my cup lurch with each shake my hands were making. Without uttering a single word, my father grabbed my mother's wrist and pulled her outside, the door slamming behind them.

I took a deep breath, the coffee swirling dreadfully in the porcelain mug. "What if I told you Doc, that every time I stand outside my throat closes in, everything becomes a blur and it takes all of my strength to keep myself from collapsing. That sweat drips from every pore, that my breathing is hurried and crazy like an asthma attack." I could feel a lump forming in my throat, I've felt this way since I was nine and this was the first time I'd ever said anything about it to anyone. He cocked his head and swallowed. "Casper," He said, relaxed as ever. "I need you to answer a couple questions for me..." He then pulled out a small tablet with a page of questions on it. "Answer them all honestly. Can you do that for me?" I looked up from the coffee mug; its contents now cold and gave him a weak smile. "Of course."

"Agoraphobia." My parents blinked at him in wonder and perplexity. He cleared his throat and leaned against the back of our beaten down sofas. "Agoraphobia is an anxiety disorder. One which consists of panic attacks, crying, enraged temper, distorted sleeping patterns, loss or gain of weight and abrupt change of diet. Usually one with Agoraphobia has these symptoms when being sent to a place, or being in a situation where one would feel unsafe, trapped, helpless or hold embarrassment. One would also refuse to go anywhere near these places." He finished with a satisfied smile. "But sir," my mother frowned at him in bewilderment, asked him quizzically. "Ass! He doesn't even leave the house so has been no places as to which he should endure such panic and fear! Why would we believe he has such a thing?!" Greenmoth's mouth twitched in anger at her announcement. "Christ woman! Because Casper Bellman is one of the most severe cases that I have ever seen in my forty five years of being a doctor!" He swore under his breath and looked to my father for help. "Mr Bellman," He said coldly. "If you ever wish to have your son back, if you ever wish for him to have a life.." He glared at my mother as tears poured down her cheeks. "I would sincerely suggest you give this note to your pharmacist and find yourself a good supply of medication for this young lad." Greenmonth stood up and thrust the note towards my father who took the chance to shake his withered hand. "Thank you." And I think my father's words spoke such great volume, as did the gratitude in his eyes and smile that Greenmonth lost the tenseness in his shoulders and wished me a well life before leaving the house with the swiftness I never thought the old man could have. My father ushered my mother out of the room. She whined and muttered curses under her breath but it wasn't until they were both out of earshot that I let the stupid tears which had been welling up in my eyes snake down my cheeks with the desperation of a child.

My father came back an hour or something later. He spoke to me with a soft tone and kind eyes that I sort of calmed down for a second. "I'm going to get your medication." He gulped and I saw hurt blistering like hot flames in his eyes. "I'd have asked you to come, but I already knew the answer anyways." He was desperate, I could tell. He wanted me to walk outside and prove Dr. Greenmouth wrong. He wanted me not to have this Anxiety Disorder. This Mental Illness. I nodded my head at him, not daring to open my mouth. He swelled with disappointment, he thought I might've wanted to prove Dr. Greenmouth wrong. And I guess I did, I wanted to prove him wrong. That I was not ill and didn't need medication. But I knew I was broken, I knew that I had an Anxiety Disorder, that I had a Mental Illness, and that I was a severe case. And I barely had the confidence, or hope to bother trying to not believe so. It was far easier to admit defeat, admit weak, than fight and be torn down anyhow. He sighed and left the house. Left me and my mother. Her sobbing I could still hear, and I didn't want to. I didn't want to know how much I've hurt my mother. I didn't want to listen to her grief.

So it was there, that I turned the Tv on. Loud enough to block out the noise of eighty odd elephants. It was there that I plugged in my earphones, found a BMTH song and sat there on the sofa as everything inside of me screamed that I was a failure. It was then that I realized I had been in this house since I was nine. That's seven years. And in all those years, I had found comfort in this house, my parents. But now, all I wanted was to escape. But I couldn't. Not when I almost faint each time I step outside the door. So I sat there and listened to Kim the News Reporter, and BMTH screaming words of hate, wishing that I was dead.