workshop story 1

Eric turned off the faucet reached for the torn white towel that normally hung next to his sink.  He finally snapped out of habit when his hand grasped air and he remembered that the familiar towel had to have been thrown away the night before.  Eric wondered if the towel ever even existed in the first place, or if it was just another hallucination.   Cursing under his breath, Eric angrily shook the water from his hands as he returned through the door to his bedroom.

Eric's apartment was a run down, single bedroom with only a small bathroom and kitchen.  The walls cracked, the lights flickered, and the entire flat had a rusty, metallic smell that Eric was deeply afraid he'd never succeed in getting rid of.  He tried to maneuver his way through the piles of dirty clothes and trash that cluttered the floor, but accidentally stumbled slightly and smacked his leg into the corner of his bed.  Increasingly aggravated, Eric forced his way through the rest of the mess and made his way to the kitchen.
Hoping to relax his frustration, Eric opened his old, pale beige refrigerator.  Eric, a recent college graduate who found himself without employment, didn't venture out of his apartment often, but thankfully he'd remembered to go out and grab drinks the day before.  Relieved, he popped the tab on his Vanilla Coke, fell onto the nearby plaid armchair, and began to drink.

He looked over to the photograph resting on the table to his right.  It was a photo of himself, smiling and holding a frozen banana on a pier with the brilliant blue ocean shining behind him.  The photo was taken just a few weeks after he'd met his first and only girlfriend, Maddie.  She used to live with Eric in his small apartment, but since the events of last night Eric now lived alone.  The day at the pier was he and Maddie's first date, in the spring of Eric's junior year of college.  Eric remembered looking out the window of the taxicab while Maddie continued talking rapidly.

"I can't wait to get there!" she had exclaimed enthusiastically.  "I want to eat a frozen banana and feed the seagulls and maybe we can look into the ocean and see a dolphin!"

Maddie had talked on and on with disproportionate enthusiasm for what Eric remembered viewing as an unremarkable destination.  Though appearing distracted, he had listened to every word.  He had liked her enthusiasm, the way she could turn the mundane into something special and worth looking forward to.  Eric often isolated himself from his peers, but he had found himself unnaturally drawn towards Maddie, possibly because her personality had contrasted his so much.  Eric had disliked the pier, but it made him happy to know that it would bring her happiness.

Eric frowned, not happy to be reliving the memory but instead angry to have been living a lie.  He shook the thought from his head and closed his eyes.

---

It was a warm Thursday in September, 3 weeks after Eric began the tenth grade.  Eric was looking up at his friend Robert, who was sitting in his usual spot: just beside a crack on the far end of a large stump.

"Try it," Robert teased.  He shook the can in front of Eric's face naggingly.  This mocking display became a regular occurrence since Robert discovered that Eric had never before tasted a Vanilla Coke.  Eric, impartial to sweetness in his beverages, always drank plain Diet Coke when he hung out with Robert.  Robert, on the other hand, would drink Vanilla Coke every single day.  Though it happened regularly, Eric was never able to habituate himself to Robert's sweet tooth and found himself still sickened by Robert's display of gluttony.

"Fine," Eric responded, as he reached for the can.  He'd realized that this pathetic ritual would probably continue until he finally acquiesced, so Eric opted to do so early on.  Taking a hesitant sip from the can, he instantly spat out the light brown liquid, much to Robert's entertainment.  As Robert rolled in the dirt with laughter, Eric couldn't help but find himself annoyed.

Eric often found Robert's antics aggravating, but stuck with him out of a lack of other stable friendships.  He'd met Robert over a year ago, just before the start of ninth grade, and they'd been friends since.  As irritable then as he was now, Eric found himself largely rejected by his peers, and so he instead chose to spend his time in the woods behind his house with Robert.  Robert too had his own issues that left him glued to Eric.  Though enthusiastic and energetic, Robert was frightfully shy, and found himself unable to interact with almost anyone else.  If Eric's mother came outside calling for Eric, Robert would scurry away into the woods until she had returned inside.  Even the soda cans had to be purchased by Eric, as Robert was too uncomfortable to purchase snacks from the convenience store.  Eric found Robert's behavior strange and wondered how Robert even managed to walk to the forest and back to his home every day, but he never found himself curious enough to risk broaching the subject.

One day near the end of tenth grade a large stormcloud rolled in suddenly.  Eric's mother, fearing the two would get hurt, ventured outside towards the forest.  The thick clouds had darkened the already shady forest and, though looking through the branches normally revealed Eric, this time she couldn't see deep enough to spot him.  She normally stayed at the forest's edge since she hated feeling the branches tug at her clothing, but this time she grit her teeth and proceeded into the forest.

Eric's mother wandered in the woods looking for the two of them to get them inside safely.  Following the directions Eric had given her in the past, she stumbled upon a tranquil clearing with a large stump: a place that Eric had often mentioned to her but that she herself never visited.  It was, largely, exactly as Eric had described: an open, grassy clearing with a stump perfect for sitting.  But there was one detail that caught her eye Eric had not mentioned.  Resting just next to a large crack on the far end of the stump was an enormous pile of litter—cans upon cans of Vanilla Coke.  There must have been over four hundred piled against that stump, and all but one were completely unopened.  The singular open can laid in the grass in front of the stump, slowly spilling its contents into the dirt.

---

It was January 27th, the day before Maddie and Eric separated.  Eric wasn't unhappy with the relationship, in fact he was certain he still loved Maddie.  He still found her sickeningly sweet personality admirable just as he did a year before.  But still, Eric knew he needed to end the relationship.  Because Eric knew that Maddie wasn't real.  She must be a specter of his mind, a figment of his imagination.  He could see her and hear her, but outside of his mind, Eric was certain she didn't exist.  After all, he’d seen it all before.  He loved her and she brought happiness to his life, but Eric could not allow himself to live a lie.  Eric had resolved to himself to see through his delusions to the truth in the world around him, and he was not going to let Maddie get in his way.  He resolved himself to end their relationship that night.

---

When Eric's mother told him about the pile of soda in the clearing—a pile that he himself was unaware of—it took him a long time to accept the truth that he was beginning to deduce.  He'd always thought it weird that Robert refused to see anyone but Eric, that he'd disappear the moment anyone else would draw near.  He found it weird that he knew nothing of Robert's family, or Robert's life outside of their friendship.  His mother had told him about the pile of coke cans, but when he returned to the clearing, he only saw Robert, sitting where he always did:  near the crack on the far end of the stump.

"Hi Eric," Robert said when he heard Eric approach.  His voice was unnaturally calm and mature, something that Eric found himself terrified of.  Eric readied himself and said what was on his mind, something he thought was ridiculous but also the only explanation left to him.

"You aren't real, are you?" He asked Robert.

Robert stood up and smiled.  "And what makes you think that?  You can hear me, you can see me, and you can touch me.  How could you say I don't exist?"

"But no one else can see you," Eric responded.

Robert paused briefly.  "I may not exist to anyone else.  But I definitely exist to you."

Eric became increasingly angry with Robert.  "That doesn't make any sense.  If no one else can see you, even if I can, you don't exist.  You're nothing more than a flaw in the way I see the world.  My mother came to this clearing and she didn’t see you, she saw the truth."

"But what makes you so willing to trust your mother?  If you’re so doubtful of me, how can you be certain she exists too?"

Eric turned around and stormed out the forest angrily.  He'd had enough of Robert playing games with his mind.  Eric was convinced that, even if his brain was somehow incapable of seeing it, there was some real truth out there.  A truth were his mother was real, and where Robert was a figment of his mind.  Eric resolved to seek this truth, to cling to it, and to not be defeated by his own mind.
Eric made his way out of the forest and returned to his mother.  He didn't know what mental disease could cause such vivid hallucinations, but he did know one thing for sure.  He didn't want to spend the rest of his life in an asylum.  He told his mother that he was sorry he and Robert had left their secret stash of soda out and that they had cleaned up the mess and returned it to its hiding place.

From that day onward, Robert's fear of going out into public had all but dissipated.  Normally, Eric would only see Robert in the forest since the streets were filled with other students.  But now, Robert would walk just behind Eric, interrogating him as they walked.  Eric tried his best to ignore Robert during these walks to and from school, to shut him out from his mind, but no matter what Eric attempted Robert would not be silenced.  He wanted to yell at Robert to leave him be, but he withheld himself, not wanting to attract the attention of the other students.  Either way, leaning into his delusions would only lessen Eric’s grasp on reality, something he was completely unwilling to do.

As the days went by and Eric became increasingly frustrated with Robert.  He was angry that his brain would not give him the silence he so desperately desired.  So, one day a few weeks after his and Robert's argument in the forest, Eric resolved himself to fix the problem once and for all.  That morning, Eric slipped a knife into his backpack with the rest of his school stuff.

"Why don't you come to the forest anymore?" Robert inquired as they walked, like he did every day. "I miss drinking soda with you."

Wordlessly, Eric reached for the knife in his backpack and in one quick motion buried the blade deep into Robert's neck.  Robert fell to the ground and a hot, dark-red liquid began spilling over the concrete sidewalk.  Robert tried to speak but the knife had ruptured his trachea and all Robert seemed to be capable of was opening his mouth.  Even so, Eric was more disgusted by the scent than by the pathetic visual display.  A disgusting, metallic smell filled Eric's nostrils and it took all the willpower he had to avoid vomiting on the spot.  Eric, not able to withstand much longer, walked quickly away from the disgusting scent.  After about 100 feet, Eric turned and looked back.  Robert’s corpse lay in the center of the sidewalk in a pool of blood.  Other students, walking hurriedly towards the school, trampled over Robert’s corpse completely unphased.  They students stepped through the puddle of blood and in doing so tracked red footprints along the sidewalk that only Eric was able to see.  Eric turned and began to walk to school.  His hands were caked in blood, but it didn't matter to Eric, since it was blood no one else could see.

---

Eric opened his eyes.  He was trying to shut out the image of Maddie's terrified eyes and the sound of her muffled screams from his head, but those pictures returned to him whenever his eyes were shut.  Even with his eyes open, looking around at his desolate apartment, his face still contorted with disgust at the rusty, metallic scent that filled his whole apartment.  Eric stood and decided to go for a walk for fresh air and to clear his mind. Before stepping through the door to the outside, Eric turned back and looked at the side table, the can of Vanilla Coke, and the picture of him at the pier.  He didn't know whether to frown or to smile, for he knew he'd be alone in his truth forever.