Young Writers Society

Tried to write something in the vein of Philip K. Dick. Please review!

And All This But Mere Perceptions

He’d almost forgotten to take his pills. He needed to remember them. One of these days he really would forget, and then the Otherthings would come back. That would be bad. The Otherthings needed to stay away, to stay buried forever deep, never to rise again.

He popped the top off of the pill bottle and shook a couple of pills onto the table. He listened to them clatter, like so many loose ideas. He found himself paying attention to the details. Boredom often made him become absorbed in the little things around him. He listened intently to the sound the chair made as he pushed it back, even though it was the most annoying sound on the planet. He felt every step as he walked over to the sink. The glass of the cup felt cold to his fingers as he picked it up. The sound of the water sloshing in the glass was analyzed carefully.

The ring of the doorbell drove all those other thoughts from his head. This was new. This was an intrusion, an invasion of his fortress of solitude. He put the glass down and carefully made his way through the apartment. He arrived at the door as the bell rang a second time. He stared at it for a long moment, unsure. Then, on the third ring, he took a chance and opened the door.

It was Ivone, disheveled as usual. Her clothes, what little of them there were, were all askew, and her hair resembled a Gorgonian knot.

“Hey, droop lids,” she said as she shuffled past him, “How’s it going?”

He stared at her for a moment, as if her arrival had scrambled all his thought all of a sudden. Then he shook his head and tried to formulate some kind of response.

“I-I’ve been good,” he stammered out as he closed the door. He rubbed the back of his head to scratch a nonexistent itch. “How’ve you been?”

“Uh, you wouldn’t believe,” Ivone sighed as she flopped down onto his couch. She stretched her legs out and got comfortable. “Was out all night. Wildest party. Oh, it was grand.”

She pulled a syringe out of her handbag. He eyed it as though it was a dangerous animal.

“What’s that?” he asked, his voice trembling a little.

“Chill out, man,” she said as she stuck the needle into her arm. Goosebumps ran over his skin as she injected the contents into herself. “It’s just a bit of gene candy. You don’t mind if I indulge myself here, do you? It’s just a bit of sea krait, though I could be wrong.”

He shook his head. It’s not that he minded her indulging in the gene candy. He might have liked to himself. But he couldn’t. The gene candy overrode the pills, brought out the Otherthings. He couldn’t risk them coming back, he couldn’t bear it one bit.

“See, I knew you’d come around,” she said. She stretched out even further and closed her eyes. It would take a little bit for the candy to take effect. He stole back into the kitchen. He palmed his pills into his hand. He regarded them for a moment, two red spheres like elegantly crafted rubies. Then he took the glass of water from the counter. He popped the pills into his mouth one at a time, then washed them down with a nice swallow of water. Satisfied, he placed the glass back on the table and walked back into the living room, his head semi-swimming for no particular reason.

“Something wrong?” Ivone asked. She was looking striped already. The gene candy was beginning to kick in.

“Nothing more or less than usual,” he said as he took a seat in a folding chair. “So why are you here? I thought you’d be able to enjoy that at home.”

“What, I can’t pop by and visit every once in a while?” she asked. The black and white was becoming more distinct now. Her legs were blending together and flattening. Once the candy took hold, it changed things fast.

“You don’t, though,” he replied, “It’s out of character for you.”

“You’re talking about me like I’m one of those bimbos you write about in your pulp fiction books,” Ivone said. Scales shimmered across her skin and the changes solidified. She wouldn’t be looking normal again for at least a week. Now he’d have to drive her home. Lucky business.

“I make a good living off of that,” he said. It was true. He paid the rent, bought his groceries, and had enough left over for the pills. Just enough to protect himself from the Otherthings.

“You could be making more,” Ivone said. Her tail twitched. A black, forked tongue shot out from between her sensuous lips for a moment.

He shrugged his shoulders. That didn’t particularly matter to him. He made enough as it was, that was enough for him. So long as the Otherthings didn’t come up, he was fine.

“Oh, you know what I mean,” she said, “You used to be more fun, you know. I remember we’d take gene candy and romp around for the longest times. It was grand. Those pills ruined you. I wish you wouldn’t take them.”

Oh, but he would. The Otherthings had to be kept away. He couldn’t let them come back, never ever ever.

“Where’s the boy I knew?” she asked. She reached out and took his hand. He could feel her new scales scraping across his skin. He jerked away, sweat forming on his brow. His breath was short and nervous.

Ivone curled up on the couch. Her slitted eyes watched him as he paced back and forth on the other side of the room. She was starting to get to him. But the pills, they should have prevented that. He should be stable. The Otherthings couldn’t touch him if he had taken the pills. He was safe from their influence as long as he kept taking the pills.

“What’s the matter?” Ivone asked. He shook his head.

“It’s nothing. It’s just kind of an off time for me.”

“It’s the pills, isn’t it?”

“They aren’t working. It doesn’t feel like their working. The Otherthings will come back if they don’t work. They need to work.”

Ivone laughed, an odd hissing sound in the back of her throat. “Boy, they aren’t real.”

“Yes they are,” he insisted, running his fingers through his hair, “The white coat said so.”

“Just cause some man said something doesn’t make it true. I bought into that whole Otherthing reasoning once. I took my pills, went to work, and was the best little girl that I could be. But then I forgot ‘em for a while. And it felt so good. I used gene candy for the first time then. Nothing’s quite like the first time you know.”

He shook his head. She didn’t know what she was talking about. She couldn’t see past the Otherthings subtle grip. They made it seem so good. They wormed their way into life and made things seem so good when they were very, very bad to do.

“I won’t listen to them,” he said to her, “I won’t let them influence me.”

“Honey boy, the only person who’s influencing you is that pill pusher who told you about the Otherthings.”

“That’s not true. He wants to help. He wants to help me do the right things.”

“What you’re doing isn’t right. What’s right is what’s natural. And what you call the Otherthings is only yourself. That’s right, it’s all you. It’s simply your mind trying to get you to do the natural thing.”

He shook his head. That wasn’t true. He wasn’t that bad. He was good, the white coats said so. They said he was a good person. The pills were to help him stay a good person, to keep the Otherthings from making him do the bad things.

Ivone smirked and shook her head. “There’s no use denying it kiddo. All those pills do is suppress desire and instinct. You’ll realize it in a little bit.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded

“Last time I was here I switched your little Johnny Goody Two Shoes pills with sugar pills. You’ve been working off of the old stuff for a solid week. Any minute now you’ll be your regular old self.”

He began to shake. He backed up against a table, sending a lamp crashing to the floor. His eyes looked across the room at Ivone, eyes filled with disbelief and anger.

“How-how could you?”

Ivone shrugged with no small amount of indifference. The tip of her tail curled around itself in a strange and unnerving way. It added to the flurry of nervousness and desperation that was rolling through his mind.

“It was easy,” she said, “I missed the old you. And it wasn’t right, the way they kept you all done up with those pills. I just set you free.”

He opened the door behind him, the one that lead into the safety and sanctity of his bedroom. It creaked on its hinges. He pulled himself through the doorway. His skin grew cold and clammy as his eyes pleaded with Ivone. She gave him an indifferent, reptilian stare.

“Oh, don’t give me that look,” she said, “You’ll thank me in a minute. I’ll be right here when you decide to do that.”

He closed the door, leaving himself alone in the warm darkness. Quasi-dementia began to take hold over his mind. He fought with himself. He wanted to be good, wanted to be normal and accepted just like everybody else.

But Ivone’s words crept into his mind. As they passed through his thoughts they became his own words. He picked up a stack of papers in the darkness and threw it across the room. He heard the sheets fluttering around.

“I’m good!” he screamed out, “I’m a good person!”

But only the silence was there, a silence that saw fit to mock him. Was all this resistance natural? Or was it the pills. Were the pills needed? Of course they were, they kept him a good little boy. But was he good? He hadn’t felt good in a long time, ever since he’d taken the pills he’d felt substandard.

He fell back against his bed, hitting his back against the post. How could he think like that?

It was the Otherthings, it had to be. They were creeping back in, exerting their hold on his mind again. He had to resist them. But how could he resist something he hadn’t seen? How could he fight off something that he wasn’t even sure existed? Did the Otherthings even exist?

He curled up on the floor, his head between his knees. He rocked back and forth, his mind trying to make sense of everything.

Then a calming wave rushed over him. He stretched himself out from his nervous pose and sat in the darkness. He felt different now. He felt better now.

How could he feel so good? The Otherthings had crept in, shouldn’t he feel even worse? He should have. But he felt light and happy. The white coat had said the Otherthings would bring him down to a base, awful level. But he felt neither base nor awful.

He smiled in the darkness. Ivone had been right. The pills had messed with him. He shuddered when he thought of how he had obsessed over them. They had been like tiny gods to him. But he was free of paying tribute to them.

He opened the door and stood up in the light of the outside.