Chapter 1 - May 17th, 2020 8:30 A.M.

It’s funny how you can practically perish and then live the next day as if nothing had ever happened. That was what it was like for me anyway. I walked out of that hospital as if nothing had ever happened to me, as if I just went there to pay a visit to someone.

“Hey, mom?” I asked while she was making toast. Even after all these years, the toaster still scared the shit out of me the moment the bread popped out. We have one of those loud as hell toasters that are about as loud as a cannon. It sounds like the 1812 Overture when it goes off. When I was around ten, they took us to see a bunch of Tchaikovsky’s music performed live, and that was one of the pieces they played. I fell asleep, so you can imagine my shock hearing the cannons go off! I did quite like that Sugar Plum Fairy tune, though.

“What is it, Clive?” she replied.

“Do we still have Lucky Charms?” I asked, looking at my arms; my friends all told me that I had burns on my arms that were shaped like ferns but looking over meticulously, I couldn’t find any. It’s a shame, really; all the exciting things happen when you’re not there to witness them. It’s almost as if life is purposefully trying to piss you off in that way. If the universe was a person, I would strangle it to death and then revive it just so I could strangle it all over again.

“Maybe, you should ask your fa-” she said before stopping mid-sentence. She still had a habit of mentioning my dad, who died from stomach cancer last year. We didn’t know he had it until it was far too late; that’s what made it so scary.

When he told us he had terminal cancer, I remember my first thought was, “No, no, this can’t be true!” My mother kept trying to convince him that he was misdiagnosed, but we all knew the truth deep down.

As the months passed by, he would spend more and more time lying in bed crying. I visited him a few times in an attempt to cheer him up, but we both knew that there was no changing fate. We once watched Groundhog Day together, and I remember him whispering, “There is no tomorrow for me…” Hearing that damn near broke my heart.

In his final days, he looked like a twig and hardly had the appetite to eat anything. I asked him why he didn’t use the Washington Death with Dignity Act in the last month of his life, and he told me that he didn’t want to cut short the time he could have had with us, hearing that nearly made me cry right there. I admit that if I was in his position, I would have just taken it; one of my strongest weaknesses is that I always take the easiest way out. Perhaps that is why I ended up taking the route that I did… I create my own problems and then blame everyone else for them.

“I’m sorry, I still see him in my dreams sometimes,” I said, looking down at the tiled floor and counting all of their tiny chips and cracks in it to distract myself from all the pain. The dreams I get of him are really bittersweet to me; a part of me loves that I can see him again, but another hates that they’re nothing more than illusions.

My favorite dream of him has to be the one where he’s looking at gen-z memes on my phone. He would always ask me, “Clive, why is this funny?” The truth is, I don’t even know why I find those memes hilarious. My sense of humor is so immature it’s not even a zygote yet.

My favorite part of the dreams was that he never looked sick in them. His face would quite literally glow as if he was some sort of angel. This is how I’ll always remember him.

Anyways, back to my Lucky Charms fiasco.

“It’s okay; they should be somewhere in the pantry,” she said, putting the toast on our plates as I left to go find the cereal. I felt at that moment a strange sensation as though I was missing something; it’s like that feeling of anxiety where you know that something is a bit off but don’t know exactly what it is. For example, this one time, the time on my oven kept changing for absolutely no reason, and I didn’t even notice it until the next day. It wasn’t broken or anything, and daylight savings time was months away.

To make matters even creepier, I was the only one who noticed it! I don’t have any mental disorders, so it’s not like I hallucinated it. Since I was a little kid, I’ve seen more than a few of the so-called “glitches in the matrix.” Once I looked into the hallway, I no joke, saw the doorknob to my dad’s room drifting around. What I mean by that is that it would move from its original position and then snap back to where it originally was. Needless to say, it freaked me out. I thought of telling my father about it, but I didn’t want him to believe that I was mad. Of course, we’re all mad one way or another; some people are just better at hiding their insanity. I’m not one of those people; I was born mad from the womb. I was destined for failure; it said so on my birth certificate. (not really)

I grabbed the cereal before pausing nearby in one spot and thinking over what could have been wrong. I felt the strongest uncanniness of my life at that moment before giving up thinking and going back to eat my toast and cereal. I sometimes get lost so deep into the rabbit hole of my thoughts that I completely forget what I was doing previously and freeze in place in a catatonic fashion. My father used to say that I was the thinker in the family and that it was both a good and bad thing. If I was, though, I wouldn’t have done half the things I did… When I die, I’ll be sent straight to hell. They won’t even let me take the elevator; they’ll just throw me down a virtually endless pit.

As I went back to the table, I grabbed the milk from the fridge before pouring it into a bowl, followed by the cereal, and sat down to eat. The uncanniness that I previously felt had only magnified a hundred times; I felt this horrible feeling in my stomach as if I had swallowed a thousand razor blades. And before you ask, yes, they were made with British steel.

Yes, really, I do the milk first. Get over it.

“Hey, mom?” I asked, pondering and eating at the same time.

“What is it?” she asked, cutting her toast into careful chunks; she was always meticulous about everything as if the world would suddenly explode if she wasn’t. I think a part of why it annoyed me so damn much was because I was the opposite of careful; you tend to hate what you aren’t.

“Do you ever get that feeling like, well… something is off?” I asked, completely forgetting to eat. I’m not very good at multitasking despite being extremely ADHD. I have it so bad that my superhero name as a kid was Doctor Vyvanse.

“Well, of course, usually I get it when I forget something,” she said, looking up at me with glassy eyes. She sits for around sixteen hours a day on her computer, reading about how to grow onion bulbs or some other plant-related nonsense. She wasn’t always like this; she used to be happy. I still remember when she would constantly prank our family in elaborate ways and film our reactions. I hated it at the time, but now I kinda miss it, to be honest with you. It sure beats watching her slowly withering away into the dust of the earth. It hurts like hell knowing you can’t help someone no matter how much you try to.

Why do people even like gardening? It’s not like the plants do anything funny like cats; they just sit there and occasionally bloom. Like I get picking mushrooms and berries but gardening…? Still, if I were to grow something, I’d grow me a buncha sunflowers. I’ve loved them ever since seeing the Sunflowers series by Vincent van Gogh; he’s my favorite painter. I’d kill for a brother like Theo, but unfortunately, I’m an only child. My mother tried at least four times to have another child, but she’d have miscarriages each time. It’s a miracle that she managed to give birth to me at all. If there is a heaven out there, I hope to see all of my lost brothers and sisters and give them one big hug. I’d tell them how much I love them and that they won’t have to be alone anymore. I’m agnostic, but I have moments where I genuinely believe in God; it’s hard to explain. Listen to the song Oh Lord by NF; it’ll explain everything.

“But what could I be forgetting?” I asked curiously.

“It’s not always a physical object; sometimes we’re trying to mentally remember something but don’t know exactly what it is,” she said smiling.

You’re right… Now I just have to find out what it could be.

“Thank you, I’ll tell you when I find it,” I said, going back to eating.

“Sounds good,” she said, cutting her toast into even more pieces and humming what sounded like The Weight by The Band. My mother and father were both super into classic rock and even some metal. I grew up listening to a lot of The Who and Metallica. I could sing that Baba O’Riley song in full by the time I turned eight. The intro to it is also the only thing I can play on the piano. I can also play the opening to Nothing Else Matters by Metallica on acoustic guitar, but that’s not much of an accomplishment now, is it? Hopefully, one of these days, I’ll learn something challenging, such as Fight Fire with Fire or Dyers Eve. Dyers Eve happens to be on my favorite metal album of all time. (...And Justice for All) As for my favorite album of all time, it would have to be Revolver by The Beatles. I love the group, but I’ve never liked that John Lennon guy all too much; he was a hypocrite in a lot of ways. That’s ironic coming from me, but at least I’m self-aware, I guess…

At that moment, as I was eating, I remembered a quote I once read from a book called Inferno’s Glory that I saw in my dream years ago when I had a delirious fever. My fever was close to 102 degrees when it happened. I forgot more and more about it as time went on, but I always remembered this one quote from it, “I am eternal, I go on forever and ever with no beginning or end, whosoever shall control me shall control life itself.”

The only question is, what could it be?