“I gotta drive”

“We do this all the time Justin”

He took another sip out of the bottle. Maybe Trace was right. After all, the hotel wasn’t too far, and Tiny was going to be pissed if he found out that he and Trace had been drinking the night before an important meeting. “Alright,” he yawned, pushing his way out the door…

Justin awoke in a cold sweat. Where was he? Everything was so strange.. He wished there was some sort of warmth or familiarity he could cling to. But this room was disorienting. Strange objects seemed to rise out of the floor, their pulleys and levers jutted this way and that, reminding Justin of something out of a science fiction movie. He sobbed. He wanted his mother. Where was she? “Mom,” he called out in a raspy tone. “Mom!”

“Shh,” Trace stepped out of the darkness, putting a finger to his lips. “She’s not here.”

Trace was glowing, the only illuminated thing in the dark room. He didn‘t understand, but he trusted the vision at the same time. “W-what‘s this place?,” he stuttered.

“You need to calm down,” Trace whispered, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. “Pull that cord behind you, and somebody will come.”

Trace was dead. He remembered now. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he said.

“Just do what I tell you,” Trace rolled his eyes, and lit a cigarette.

He did. Immediately the lights snapped on and a buzzer went off. He looked. Trace had vanished. Seconds later the door flew open. A familiar looking woman was standing there. Her hair and clothes were disheveled, as if she had suddenly been woken up. He squeezed his eyes shut. Who was she? He thought long and hard. A doctor? Yes. She was that doctor. Doctor Williams. His mother had left him here. He opened his eyes. He remembered everything now. It was the middle of the night and he had been asleep since nine. The exercises she had done with him later in the day had exhausted him.

“You alright?” she asked him breathlessly, flicking a switch that made the buzzing stop. She rushed to his bedside and began checking him over like he was a priceless work of art.

“Fine,” Justin grunted, leaning back into his pillows. “I just got disoriented is all.”

She let out a relieved sigh. “It happens to everybody on their first night,” she told him. “Let me just change your catheter bag, and then we can get back to bed.”

He looked away from her as she began her task. He couldn’t even take a piss. He remembered when they had first told him that. It had sucked the last of his dignity out of him. It had been bad enough that he couldn’t shower by himself, but not being able to have his privacy and use the conventional method of relieving himself? God must have truly had beef with him.

“When did they put the tube in?” he heard her ask.

“Right away,” Justin whispered, continuing to stare at the wall. “After the initial shock had passed anyway.”

“They tell me you don’t like the parallel bars too much.”

His eyes widened. Why was she bringing that up now, at this hour?

“Justin?”

“What?” he grunted.

“Is that true?”

“She’s gonna find out eventually,” Trace said, reappearing suddenly. “So you might as well just tell her now.”

“Shut up,” he sneered. Justin figured, if Trace was going to show up, he should just do it, get his point across and then go away. Reappearing, as he tended to do, was more annoying than anything else.

“Is that any way to talk to me?,” Trace scoffed. “After I got you the help you needed and all?”

“That attitude isn’t going to get you anywhere,” Karen replied, disapprovingly. “You need to understand that Justin.”

“I always talk to you this way,” Justin said to Trace, not hearing the doctor’s comment. “If it bothers you that much, you should have started bitching about it a long time ago.”

“Your doctors told me you were hard to handle,” Karen said with a sigh. “So I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt seeing as how its your first night here. But I’m telling you right now young man, talking back to me like you just did, is only going to land you with a punishment in the future.”

He glanced at her and shook his head. She had thought he was talking to her. He looked back toward Trace, ready to ream him for making him look bad in front of her. Of course though, he had retreated back to where he had come from…the depths of his mind. He sighed. “That came out wrong,” he muttered.

“Maybe it did,” Karen said. “But it doesn’t give you an excuse to talk like that,“ she finished tacking the fresh bag to Justin’s bed post. “Get some rest. You have a long day tomorrow.” With a flick of the light switch she was gone again.

And Justin was left alone with his thoughts.
************
“You need to eat that,” Karen pointed at the full plate of food that sat in front of him with her fork. “You lose energy when you don’t eat.”

He didn’t meet her gaze. “Just leave me alone,” he mumbled. He was exhausted. After the previous evenings episode had taken place, he hadn’t been able to fall back to sleep. All he had been able to do was lie awake and think about the wreck his life had become. Trace hadn’t come back. Of course he hadn’t though. Trace only came around when he didn’t want him there. The next time he was going to be prepared though. The next time he wasn’t going to say anything to him. Maybe if he ignored the vision of Trace long enough, it would simply disappear and never come back.

“Your mother says you love pancakes,” Karen persisted. “Come on. Eat up.”

He pushed his plate away. “I’m not hungry.” He looked at the picture window to the left of him. There were birds flying high in the sky, high above the world below. They were like kings. Once, he had felt that way too. Like he was soaring high above everybody else, like he was a king. He had been on top of the world then. Back then, nothing had been able to bring him down. But now here he was, stuck in this god forsaken chair, as low as the homeless man on the street. He was a joke.

“You’ll be sorry later on if you don’t eat now.”

He looked back at her. She was pissing him off. If he didn’t want to eat, he wasn’t going to eat. It was that simple. “I told you I’m not hungry.”

“And I’m telling you that you need to eat,” she nodded.

“Aw you know lady…just piss off alright?” He proceeded to roll backward, ready to retreat back to the room he had slept in last night. It wasn’t away from her of course, but it was far enough away where he would be able to tone down the anger that was rising inside of him. The chair didn’t budge. His eyes widened. The brakes were on. She had put the brakes on. He glared at her. “What is this, a fucking prison?”

“No,” she replied sternly. “It’s for your own safety.”

“I want to call my mother,” Justin demanded. “This place is bullshit.”

“You will do no such thing,” Karen told him. “If you’re not going to eat, then so be it. We’ll just get down to work.”

“Damn, you pissed her off huh?” Trace had taken a seat at the table and was now chewing on a roll. It seemed as real as the time he had rubbed his hand across one of the parallel bars. He glanced at Dr. Williams. She hadn‘t seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. It was another hallucination. He sucked in a breath. Don’t talk. Don’t talk to him and he’ll leave. Food. Maybe he really did need to eat. He slid his plate back toward him and began to consume the pancakes. He was pleasantly surprised. They were good.

“Ah, I see your appetite came back,” Karen said. She rose from the table. “Take your time. I’ll be back to get you in a few minutes,” she picked up her empty plate, and with a small smirk, left the room.

Now he was alone. Well, almost alone. Trace was still there, starting on another roll. Justin glanced around cautiously, before letting himself talk to his friend. “Are you having fun tormenting me?,” he asked.

“Tormenting?” Trace laughed, his mouth full of bread. “I’m not tormenting you.”

“Yes you are,” Justin seethed. “I told you I don’t even know how many times, that I want you out of my head.”

Trace laughed. “If I’m in your head, then why don’t you get me out yourself?”

Justin opened his mouth to reply, but then closed it again. Trace had a point. Why didn’t he just get him out himself? He cocked his head to the side, as the realization hit him.

Maybe, just maybe, Trace wasn’t an illusion after all.

“What are you trying to tell me?” he whispered.

“Just think about what I said,” Trace nodded at him. “Think about it hard Jus’,” he vanished again, not hesitating to steal another roll before he did so.

He continued to stare at the empty seat, doing just as Trace had instructed him to. His ghost. Was it possible? No. It couldn’t be. If what he was seeing was really Trace’s ghost, then why didn’t anybody else notice when he came around? Why hadn’t Doctor Williams noticed when that roll had floated into the air? He shook his head. He wasn’t going to let his mind play games with him. Trace was dead. That was the way things were, regardless if he liked it or not. There were no ghosts. There were only illusions. Illusions that plagued his mind constantly, because he just couldn’t let go.

“Do you always talk to yourself?”

Justin glanced over his shoulder, expecting to see Doctor Williams standing there. It wasn’t though. It was somebody else this time. It was a girl. She was about his age. She bared a striking resemblance to the doctor. A relative? Probably. “No,” he managed.

The girl smiled at him. “Mom wants you in therapy now.”

He shot her a confused glance. “Mom?”

“Oh,” the girl blushed. “I meant…Doctor Williams.”

“She’s your mother?”

“Yes,” the girl bent down to undo the brakes on his chair. “Why? Is that weird?”

Justin shrugged. “Dunno.”

She stood back up. “I’m Sheridan,” she smiled.

Justin didn’t smile. Where had she come from so suddenly? He was sure there had been nobody else in the house besides himself and the doctor. “When did you get here?”

“I got into town last night,” she responded, rolling him backward and then forward toward the doorway. “But I stayed with a friend.”

“Oh,” he said. “So what…are you just visiting or something?”

She wheeled him through the doorway. “Oh no…I go to NYU. I’m home for summer break.”

“Neat,” he grumbled.

“I come home every summer to help out…” she began.

“Don’t need to know your life story,” Justin snapped. “I was just wondering who you were.”

“Oh,” she whispered.

He felt bad. But at the same time he didn’t care. He wasn’t ready to let anybody in yet. Especially her. He couldn’t even trust Karen. There was no way he could trust her daughter. But all that didn’t matter at the moment though. He had bigger problems now. Much bigger problems. They had reached the dreaded exercise room. Karen was standing beside the parallel bars, a smug, proud smile on her face. She was going to try and make him do it. Maybe not right away. But at some point in the next few hours it was going to be brought up.

And she’d have to kill him before he‘d ever consider attempting it.