"I saw them again today Mommy."
I glanced in the rear view mirror at my son, who was mindlessly running his fingers through a book in his booster seat.
"Who'd you see baby?"
Jaime's wandering hand stopped on a random page, as he tilted his head up with an expressionless stare. I have to admit, for a 7 year old little boy, he was really good at making eye contact.
"The melty men."
Jaime's occurrences with "the melty men" was not at all new. In fact, we had been dealing with his visions of them since he was able to talk. After years of struggling with this, with the help of a specialist, the two of us were melty men free for almost 2 months.
"Oh? I thought Dr. Young helped you send them back to fire world."
He shifted in his seat, snapping the book shut.
"Fiery gates. Not fire world."
I focused my eyes on the road, realizing this conversation was about to unravel all of our hard work, and $500 therapy sessions.
"Right. Sorry. Fiery Gates. Jaime...I know they get mad when you talk to me about them but... are the melty men at least being nice this time?"
His voice perked up, and a smile spread across his face.
"Oh yeah! They said sorry for my arms, and my neck. They don't wanna hurt me no more! They let me draw them now too, I don't gotta hide my pictures."
The melty men had gotten increasingly aggressive as Jaime got older. At one point, his hallucinations had instructed him to light his arms on fire by dousing them with gasoline, and pressing matches to his skin. Luckily, I caught him before he could cause too much damage. However, scars still litter sections where the flames, I couldn't put out in time, ignited. I don't know which was worse. This, or the time he got ahold of a kitchen knife, and jabbed it into his neck because his visions told him to. 14 days in the hospital, another 30 days in a psych ward, 3 appalling visits from CPS, and $20,000 is what a knife to the neck costs. Who knew?
"Is that so? They aren't going to be mad at me for looking at your sketches anymore?"
Jaime nodded excitedly.
"Uh huh! Wanna see one now?"
"Not right now baby. I have to keep my eyes on the road."
The truth was, I couldn't stomach another image of the melty men. Jaime drew incredibly detailed pictures of bony human figures, with their flesh peeling off, oozing yellow chunky puss. Their eyes were bright white, sunken, while their mouths held a terrifying frozen scream. Sometimes the drawings included those horribly disfigured things gruesomely murdering Jaime.
I'll never forget the day his teacher called me in for a meeting. During class he had sketched himself sitting at a dinner table, fork and knife in hand, eating his own organs that spilled out of a large gaping hole in his stomach. The melty men were laughing hysterically behind him. While Jamie might have the art skills of Picasso, his style is quiet disturbing, and got him kicked out of public school.
"I know Mommy. We don't wanna crash like Daddy. I...I just...I miss seeing him. After the crash though, not before. He's a lot more beautiful after. I wanna talk to him...I...can't no more because..."
His voice trailed off. I could tell he was getting upset, he always tried to hide his tears to act tough. 3 months before, my husband (Jaime's father) Leo was T-Boned by a drunk driver on the way home from getting surprise presents for Jaime's birthday. The first responders said he was dead upon impact, his spine was snapped clean in half, and most likely didn't even know what happened.
This traumatic freak accident caused Jaime to hallucinate that Leo was with him, except with a crooked back. I wasn't to worried that his illness manifested and added my husband to his collection, at least this one comforted him. Honestly, I think Jaime was taking his Dad's death harder than I was.
"Because of Dr. Young? Did he send Daddy somewhere too?"
He took a deep breath, sounding as if he shuddered.
"No. Dr. Young can't make Daddy go away. He can't go away until he's happy. It's Saul. He won't let me see Daddy."
By this time, I was used to new figures invading Jamie's mind, but having one ward off another was news to me.
"Well I've never heard of Saul before. Aren't you going to introduce me? Who is he?"
While adjusting the mirror, I saw him biting his lip, like what I had just asked was absolutely forbidden.
"Um...Saul is...the keeper of the fiery gates. He's real powerful, and scary. The melty men are scared of him. They do what he says. I wish-"
His sentence abruptly ended as he began to whisper to his new found invisible friend.
"Yes but, she's my mom I gotta tell her...C'mon I was only joking...no please don't...I'll do anything ...don't make me do it again!"
Usually I didn't interfere with Jaime's conversations between him and his hallucinations. I'd learned that only made them worse, but this one caused a lot of concern.
"Everything alright back there?"
His head hung low, hunkering like an injured dog.
"Saul says I'm not allowed to talk to you about him."
As usual, for some reason, these things he saw liked to keep everything hush hush. I shouldn't have expected anything different from this one.
"Does Saul have anything else to say?"
Jaime turned to the seat beside him, and mumbled something I couldn't make out, before nodding his head like he had heard a reply clear as day.
"He says don't worry. Tessa is ok. She can see, not like me. Like you and Daddy. Like everyone else. But, she will be sick for a very long time...oh and she has blonde curly hair like Daddy."
A wave of terror washed over me. I looked down at my growing belly, that was stretching all of my clothes. I was 5 months along. I remember the day I found out I was pregnant, after weeks of denying it, I finally mustered up the courage to take a pregnancy test.
When I saw the positive sign I bursted into tears, wailing in Leo's arms. We had both vowed to never have another child, because we couldn't bear the thought putting another human through what Jaime deals with everyday. Even though there was a small chance that the fluke in our genetics would happen again, it was one we couldn't afford to take. Our biggest fear was another child that could see like Jamie. Leo and I succeeded for 7 years due to our carefulness, but somehow, somewhere there was a slip up, and I was carrying the result.
The death of my husband made the pregnancy even harder to deal with. Most of the time I pretended the baby didn't exist. So much so that I hadn't told anyone, not even Jaimie, I found out it was a girl. Or that she was going to be called Tessa, a name Leo was fond of.
I made a U-Turn in the road just as I reached the Therapist's office. No doctor could fix this. For years I scrambled to pin a diagnoses on my child, just to give my self a sense of relief. I should have known it wasn't schizophrenia, psychosis, or imaginary friends. The medications never worked, the psychiatrist visits never helped, and imaginary friends can't tell secrets. I felt so stupid. I was so caught up in the idea that he could be fixed, I didn't realize that this was far beyond what any medical practice could handle.
It was impossible for him to have an extensive vocabulary that geniuses would blush over at such a young age. It was impossible for him to imagine these grotesque monsters that haunted him. It was impossible for him to draw gory murder scenes with the skills of a trained artist, that took 20 years to perfect their craft. It was impossible for him to see his Dad, long after he died, describing the love of my life to an absolute T. And it was extremely impossible for him to know not only that his sister would have blonde hair before she had even took a breath on earth, but also that Tessa didn't have his condition.
After all, my son was born blind.
