"Anniversary Date"
By Jadie Ngo
“It’s kind of hard to enjoy our anniversary together if you keep ignoring me”, Ren said to his wife whose face remained still and gloomy. Tears welling in her eyes threatening to spill out. That expression made Ren feel guilty, regretting his words, but feeling more upset at the fact he received silence all day during this special date. Though this feeling felt all too familiar. She’d been ignoring him so often, but he couldn’t understand why. The bags underneath her eyes grew darker day by day and her smile began to fade. Ren just wanted to help her but why did she always ignore him? He couldn’t understand why. His wife reached for the lighter, ready to light the candles on the cake she worked so hard on. Saying, “Happy Anniversary” alongside her whisper, Ren blew his candle whose fire stayed lit while his wife’s disappeared. No matter how strong the breath, the fire stayed and Ren couldn’t understand why. Scared, Ren reached out for his wife’s hand which went right through hers and he couldn’t understand why.
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"Allusions of Delusional Illusion"
By Evan Li
On this Earth he walks, he can only recognize only one face — the everlasting beauty of his love reflects across the mirror, hazel eyes crinkled and she laughs at him for the bewilderment beset upon the man, as he grasps at his craggy complexion, clearly in disbelief of his own appearance. He decides that pondering over these self-absorbed thoughts is unnecessary when he has the most beautiful woman in the world next to him, the only woman he will ever have eyes on. Even as his wife tugs on his wrist to leave the restroom, he takes a final glance at the dark bags casting a shadow under the sallow skin barely holding his hollow cheekbones together, the jagged years-old scar prominently running across his cheek, the soiled bundles of unkempt hair knotted amok. If the word grimy was a person, it’d be him. His wife trails him as he trudges out of the dimly lit restroom into the deserted street, soft steps mending the annihilation he leaves behind in every step.
She is the only constant that remains in his world, a volatile blur of prosopagnosic apparitions. These days, he can barely remember where he is headed on his perpetual wanderings. For now, he squints at the crinkled map. His destination today lies at the end of a set of weathered, steep stairs inside a monotonously designed two-story building — a clinic for people considered to be deranged lunatics not unlike him, he supposes .He reaches out a hand to hold his wife’s, momentarily pausing as he seemingly decides against it as he gingerly retracts it. He has forgotten that under no circumstance can he touch his wife — she disapproves of skinship to a great extent. He begrudgingly clambers up the steps, wife lithely shadowing him. He enters what looks like a waiting room, and the smell of old moist carpet immediately hits him. He shuts the creaking door behind him and his wife as the background noise of fluorescent lights (which occasionally flicker) buzzing surrounds them and the mono-yellow wallpaper, which have scarce cracks and holes in them.
He approaches the front desk, and the clearly disinterested receptionist, who tells him to wait until his name is called in a dull tone. He sits in a tacky plastic chair that creaks with every subtle movement he makes, as his wife does the same next to him, who nods when asked if she feels fine. After what feels like an eternity, he is finally called into a room almost identical to the first, where an old geezer sits behind a shabby wooden desk. Upon closer inspection, tea shades sit smartly on the wide bridge of his nose. Along with the pallor of his skin, the man exudes shrewdness and oozes superiority — the husband hates him already. He introduces himself as the specialist the husband has been referred to, which causes him to unintentionally space out and not listen to the psychiatrist too closely.
However, he catches words along the lines of “agnosic”, “hallucinations”, and “treatment”. Not knowing what these words have to do with him, he pays no mind to the prescription the old man writes him, instead sneaking a glance at his captivating wife every now and then. His undying love for her truly trumps all, as he would be willing to give up the sun and the moon for her. Shortly after, he departs the facility with a paper bag gripped tightly in his hand, scoffing at the bottles of pills prescribed to him. Haloperidol, olanzapine, and risperidone. People like the wicked old hag he met earlier only exist to satisfy their selfish, avaricious tendencies pertaining to socioeconomical Darwinism by malevolent intentions of exploitation of the weak and vulnerable members of humankind.
Lost in thought, he is unable to see the cyclist accelerating at his wife, who is obliviously bobbing on the pavement in front of him, leading them to the subway. He is not sure who he bellows at to be careful, his wife to move out of the way, or the cyclist to avoid colliding with her, but they streak by as if they do not see her, as if she does not exist. He is left slightly puzzled as she turns around, smiling like nothing happened. Later, as they ride the subway home, he sighs, glancing outside at the buildings passing him in streaks as he leans his head on the foggy subway window. He opens the crinkling plastic bag, shaking the plastic orange bottle where the multicolored pills lay.
Even though he refuses to believe that he has any sort of mental disorder, what harm could taking one really do? He curses under his breath. That bastard ceased to give him any instructions on how many to take. He decides to dry swallow one of each, and waits for them to take effect — to see which supposed hallucinations exist in his head. Coughing slightly, he glances at his lover, who looks straight ahead, tucking a delicate blonde strand of hair behind her ear. He frowns when he sees her gloomy expression and is about to ask why when a short, puny boy bounds along the aisle towards them, attempting to sit in the seat she is currently occupying. Alarmed, his fight-or-flight response is immediately activated as he shouts at the kid, demanding to know what the hell he is trying to do to his wife.
He runs off, seemingly terror-stricken, and suddenly, the husband feels eyes on him everywhere — he does not realize how big of a ruckus he has caused, and feels agitated from the rapt attention and cold stares that seem to bore into him, taunting his in capability to interact with anyone other than his wife.He reaches over to ask if she is okay, and chaos runs amok in his panic-stricken mind as he discovers she is not in the seat. In fact, she is nowhere to be found. He checks every row of seats, to see if she could be hiding somewhere from him, and finds nothing.
At the next exit, he sprints out of the train, shoving past people as he calls for his wife, pleadingly searching for anyone that looks like her — nothing. She is nowhere to be found. Hours pass as he searches every street, every corner, every alley, as hysteria sets in. His throat becomes hoarse from yelling out for his wife. He approaches people to ask if they have seen her, but they all back away in fear of his menacing appearance. This continues days and nights on end, as his body becomes brittle and weak from the lack of food or water he has consumed, and begins to lose hope that he will ever find her. His mental state has also taken a turn for the worse, as the pills he has consumed have only amplified the urgency of the screaming voices in his head to find her. He sits now in a dark corner of an alley littered with odorous trash and muddy prints left by animals trying to consume whatever is left over from the bags of garbage. He twirls around a sharp blade he has found lying around the area, pondering whether to just end whatever is left of his life. After she left, loneliness has come in waves to the dark depths of his mind, wandering to deny him sleep he desperately needs. More recently, he has developed a twisted feeling in his head, following him to his search like a viral nag. The discomfort of not having anyone to look forward to seeing every day and talking to has driven him to the point of insanity.
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Blood flows easily out of him as he whimpers into the chilly night through the harsh winter, freezing winds sweeping through the streets. He gazes at his own reflection through the moonlight reflecting from the growing puddle, and he wonders if it really is a hallucination when his wife appears on the other side.He begins to forlornly howl upon seeing her unchanged beauty, reaching out to touch her and wincing when he begins to feel the self-inflicted pain. Even as his vision grows hazy, he watches closely as his wife tells him to join her.He knows he will not make it through another night — there is no one coming to help him, no one to love him like he loves his wife. He must go to her.He arduously utters the last words he will ever speak, gripping the tool that will unite him and the woman he will sacrifice his life for: I will see you soon, my love. With a single, swift motion, the blade clatters to the earth and as does his limp body, falling victim to the darkness of night.
