For the artist who created a world in which reality is both an illusion and vision of what it is, and what it could be…if we just peel back the veil and look…
Prologue:
The boy opens his eyes. He doesn’t remember anything, nothing about who and where he is…not even his own name. When he finds a note with a phone number and a pill attached to it, he doesn’t remember who gave it to him. A woman comes into the room, talking to him and saying she was his sister, which he could not remember. She asks him, “Will you be well enough for the festivities tonight…?” He doesn’t remember any festivities, nor does he remember if he cared much about them. He lies that he does remember and was just tired, but something was off…was it because she had a shovel behind her back? He didn’t think about it, even after she left and said that his father would be home soon. He looks at the pill…takes it, thinking it will help him…but it only gives him another thing to worry about. When he gets up, he sees something outside…something horrible. Girls were digging up holes big enough to fit bodies in. They gathered long twigs and created them to look like crosses, probably the same ones that are used to burn people at the stake. Horrible images, thoughts, and ideas float through his mind until his eyes catch something else. He saw a creature…coming from far off in the distance…and the creature…saw him. He goes out, thinking it’s just a trick from his mind, but his sisters appear, wondering and worrying all about him. They slowly morph and change in front of his very eyes. Monstrous versions of the sisters took shape, and the more he looked at them, the more infuriated and frightened they were. They cry out as he walks past and away from them, until he goes outside and tries to calm his nerves. This was just his imagination…right? Was it the pill? As he looks out, his sister calls out to him, saying, “Oh look, brother…” He looks…and sees beyond the twisting vine-like trees…that same creature he saw before. “I think Father is almost home~”
He throws up everything, including the pill. But…it was too late to turn back from this path of nightmares.
He remembers the phone number, and hopes that before that thing the sisters called Father, wouldn’t make it to the house before he could try to call for help. The sisters help him back into his room, and they say collectively, “Don’t worry, I think Father will be home soon…then it can all be over...”
A voice appears on the phone after it rang a couple of times…it seems familiar. The man immediately recognized the boy’s voice and asked if he was all right, and if he had taken the pill. The boy explains everything to him…telling him that he sees hallucinations of scary creatures, deformities of the people he cared about. He doesn’t want to see it, he doesn’t want to believe that these things are anything more than a bad dream, a bad trip, some sort of hallucination gone horribly wrong. He knows they are his family, but seeing them like this frightens him. The man on the phone explains that the pill wasn’t there to give him hallucinations…at least…that’s what it wasn’t intended to do. It was to open the boy’s eyes, to pull away the veil, and uncover his family’s true form. They were the monsters that haunted his life, and he needed to leave before it was too late.
His father was now there…looking down at the boy with the same green eyes that the boy has. He calls to him, using his gentle voice and stretching out his gentle hand. The vision shifts quickly back to the creature the boy saw before. The now corrupted claw-like hand tries to grab him, but he quickly dodges it and bolts. The cord attached to his hand gets caught by the edge of the door, and he quickly takes it off, before his father tries to grab him again. He runs down the stairs, tripping and falling, but still running from the voice of the creature that w̶a̶s̶ is his father. As he runs, his memories finally come back to him. The man on the phone was his doctor…and the reason he was in the hospital was that he “fell” off the stairs…
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No…that was a lie and he knew it.
In his memory, he was in the hospital with the doctor. The doctor tries to comfort him by telling him the truth, but the boy stays silent. When the doctor gives in, he tries a new tactic. “I get it now…even when something is plain to see for someone like me…it’s not always as easy for the victim…so what if I could show you exactly how it is…?” That question seemed very unclear to the boy at first, and when he asks why, the doctor only gives him a pill and his phone number, mentioning that the boy should take it before the festival tonight.
Before the doctor left him…he said something, and cupped the boy’s face in his hands as he said it, “…You know…if you don’t feel at home…I can take you there…I’d be the first to welcome you.” That one thing he said stayed with the boy, until he slowly faded away into the darkness, and the last thing the doctor told him was that his father called and said his sisters will pick him up. But how could it have been only a few hours there…how could he have forgotten that meeting with his own doctor?
Voices in his head and out loud seem to circle around him, surrounding him, like the sisters that confront him before he could run further from his father. They cry out, pleading for him to never leave. As they get closer, and their voices get louder, the boy sinks into the floor and the voices fade away as he falls, and a new voice appears…his father’s. “Son!” he cries, “There’s no more time…no more waiting…the festival is now!” His father was only a creature covered in darkness…but hanging upside down from weblike strings, the boy could only see the mouth of both his father and the creature. Then flames sprung from the shadows and long dark hands reached out from the fires below. “My precious gift to you…” says his father, “…a promise of eternal paradise…” The flames grew closer to the boy, and so did his father’s words-clashing with the words of his sisters. “So come…let us all burn together…”, they say. And as the light from the flames grew dark again, the voice of the boy cried in a small whimper, “Help…”
The doctor is out by the lawn, just getting out of his car. He looks out at the lawn, like he knew this would happen…before him, the crosses burned and the graves were already dug up…ready to be used. The boy cried out, “HELP!”, and this pulled away the doctor’s attention, to the front door being slammed open. As the boy got out of the flaming house, the doctor cried out, “HEY!” The boy stops, tears in his eyes. Then light shines out from beyond the yard where the doctor was, and it blinded the boy. He turns away, but sees his father appear behind him. “SON!” he yells, “WHAT HAS GOTTEN INTO YOU?! COME HERE!!!” The fire behind him grows, but it leaves the monster covered in shadows, his eyes glowing in the light. “RUN!” called the doctor. The boy jumps off the porch as his father calls out from behind him. As he runs to the light, he sees the doctor, and hears him calling. “OVER HERE! I GOT YOU!” calls the doctor. He was running into the light, and the shadows that were trying to take him away, pulled back in shrieks and horrifying screams. There was so much light…so much noise…so little time…just before he fell into the hole that was meant to be his.
He jumps, the doctor catches his hand and pulls the boy towards him. His father was behind him, as the doctor pulled him away from the reach of the father. As the father misses the boy’s cloak, he falls and lands on the shovel…slitting his throat. Then it was over, the chase was done…
As the silence grew, the boy softly cried, and could only hear the doctor saying, “I’m here...” The doctor holds him close, whispering comforting words to him. “You're safe.” The boy felt a feeling he never felt…he felt relieved…but it slowly fades away, as the voice of the doctor says, “…You’re okay now…welcome home…” Slowly the doctor’s hands morph and his body morphs along with it…and just as the fire burned the house behind them, the feeling of fear and anxiety grew too, inside the boy. And then…everything went black again…