“Schizophrenia For A Day” – Part III

Review: Part I, & Part II

Schizophrenia For A Day – Part III

Well that explained the attraction. Darla immediately felt repulsed. She’d better not be getting any visions of intimacy between her grandparents—it made her want to vomit just imagining it.
Well that’s gross. Keep it to yourself, alright? I’m trying to work.
Her grandmother failed to respond and Darla got a sense of vague sadness, which passed almost as soon as it had come. Had she gone too far? Maybe her grandmother couldn’t control what she did and did not say. Still, she should be able to keep her thoughts and fancies to herself—especially when Darla was trying her hardest to fix their brain-consciousness-sharing problem!

Speaking of, she still had no idea what to do about it. Upon getting to work, she had gotten so wrapped up in the eccentric morning coffee orders, Darla had almost forgotten her freakish dilemma. Obviously, it was the ashes that had started this whole thing, but the bigger question was how to undo it. Perhaps if she went back to the place where it happened. . .? She considered this for a moment, shaking a mixture of cream and coffee viciously, then cast the idea away. What purpose would some old woods and dirt serve? Her grandmother’s consciousness couldn’t return to the ashes, anyway.

She finished preparing the drink, tallied the customer’s expenses, then realized there weren’t any more people in line. Darla glanced at the screen on the register—a little past ten in the morning. With a ‘hmph’ she realized her shift was almost over; this felt a little unfortunate, since Darla usually thought better when busy. She amused herself by cleaning up a few spills and washing several blenders, then checked on each of the customers quietly sipping their drinks. Soon, another twenty minutes had passed and Darla was free to go.
The city glowed brightly in the sun on her drive home. The roads were piled high with traffic and angry drivers, while cyclists zoomed around and in front of forces greater than they, heedless of the rules. Meanwhile, the headache from last night started to build behind Darla’s eyes again. She dug around in her purse for an ibuprofen, looked away for just a split second, when out of the blue there came a metallic crunch and a person yelling.

Her head snapped frontwards. The first thing she saw was a crushed bicycle and as her eyes finished taking in the scene she prayed there wouldn’t be any blood. Fortunately, the biker himself hadn’t been seriously injured. He’d leaped off the bike when she hit it and tumbled away with a few bruises; he now stood glaring at her and his slightly-compressed-bike.

Darla internally groaned and bit her tongue before she could say something she’d regret. How could this day get any worse? She got out of her car and hurried around to the front, where a dent gaped on the fender, shocked at her terrible driving skills. Her head spasmed as if in retaliation for what she did to the car. The biker was upon her in a flash.

“Hey, you’d better pay for that, you moron! That was a five-hundred-dollar bike—only a few of them were ever made! Ever heard of share the road, honey? I’m gonna make sure the law takes real good care of you.”

Listening to him was like having a persistent sweat bee buzzing around your ear; annoying, and if you didn’t take care of it, it might sting you.

Darla didn’t want to be stung anymore than she had to, so she turned to him and said, “And I’ll make sure the law takes good care of you too, buster, cycling between vehicles like you were. Now are you gonna make a big deal out of this and risk losing your case, or just take your dumb bike and a few hundred?”

She leaned back into her car and retrieved her purse, offered him a small handful of cash. Fortunately she had a little more than necessary with her. The man looked indecisive for a moment, as if chewing Darla out further somehow held more benefit for him than taking the cash and his bike, then seized the money and stuffed it in his pocket.

As Darla slid back into the driver’s seat, he retrieved his bike and the resulting screech of metal made her wince in pain. Her headache waxed greater and suddenly her vision wasn’t her own anymore. A bright flash of light; a shuddering screech; horrific pain and blood; a different voice calling out to someone; images of someone resembling the person she saw earlier–Edward–now soaked in blood and unconscious; sounds of weeping and an ambulance.

Slowly, Darla’s vision faded back into reality. Cars honked at her and people in the other lane rolled down their windows to spew obscenities and make hand gestures. The man on the bike was gone. A chill went down her spine and she wondered if he had even existed. She glanced at her purse—the sizable dent in her wallet said he had.

What . . . she tried to think, but her mind felt sluggish and words were a foreign concept.

Darla inhaled, forced her shoulders to relax. She shifted out of park and started creeping forward slowly, blinking away a haze. Eventually, sounds started to make sense, words felt ordinary, and she tried again.

What just happened?

A moment of mental silence. Darla flushed and went a bit dizzy. Had it been a hallucination, all of it? Was her grandmother even there? Finally, an answer came.
“I’m not sure. I think you just saw the wreck Edward and I were in several years before his. . . passing.”

The dizziness gave way to nausea. Darla tightened her grip on the steering wheel, begging her body to work at least until she was closer to home.

I didn’t know that had happened. It was awful. Why didn’t I know about this?

“Well it’s not like you’ve been—or you were—a huge part of our lives these past few years. But that’s not what we need to talk about right now. During the memory, a weird thing happened. I don’t know if you noticed it, but I did, and it’s like I felt something ethereal almost leaving his body.”

Almost to the house. Just a little further, then Darla could park in the driveway and pretend to die.

Wait, so, you mean like his soul?

The very idea made her gut clench. So souls were real? That could have some frightening effects.

“Yes. At least I think so. And I think I know how to fix our problem.”

Darla would have leaped for joy had her legs been in any way useful. She turned into her driveway and slammed the car into park, before unbuckling and throwing her door open. Her hair fell into her vision as she leaned out, struggling against an impulse to throw up. The sunlight around her seemed to intensify and her headache seemed to be intent on cracking her skull open down the middle.

So what do I need to do?

Darla wobbled to her feet, grasped the side of the car for support. The pain in her head grew to a crescendo; lightning bolts of agony traveled down her spine. Then as quickly as the pain came, it vanished. Like it had never been coming from something physical—all a game played by her brain.

“Darla,” her grandmother said, “you need to die.”