Controlled Chaos (Deadly Dreams Book 1) Read online

  When Steve and I got to the car, I wanted to know what that was all about.

  “Look, Steve,” I said. “You and Munson had your own little language in there. What the hell was that about?”

  “You’re overanalyzing everything, the way you love to do. We were both just surprised you healed fast.”

  I looked at Steve and sat back. “I need to get to my house. Maybe that will clear my mind. Right now, I’m not sure what the hell is happening.”

  Chapter Ten

  1:00 a.m. Wednesday Morning

  When I got home, I thought about how oddly Father Fitzpatrick treated me. I wondered why I felt the need to keep that part of the story from them. Father treated me like he was saying good-bye forever. I didn’t know how to take any of what was happening to me.

  I woke up feeling pretty shitty and fairly disoriented. I had a pretty interesting morning on the way to work. I typically head out and get some food before heading into work. I’m not a huge cook, and aside from pouring myself coffee in the morning, I have no real interest in doing anything else. There were changes going on in my body I couldn’t understand, but they made my life significantly worse.

  When I attempted to go out to my car in the morning, the sunlight hit my skin like a red hot skillet. I thought I would pass out just getting to my car. There was some sort of radiation effect coming from the sun, and it didn’t matter where I went; my skin burned.

  I hopped into my car, and although it alleviated it a bit, it was still unbearable. I screamed with rage, filling the inside of the car with negative energy. I looked at my skin, expecting to see it bubbling up with blisters, but it looked no different than it had that morning. Yet I felt like I was dying. I drove to work as fast as I possibly could to try to get out of the sun, not understanding what was happening to me. I made a mental note to contact my doctor to have some tests done. I must be reacting to some form of drug they had given me when I was brought in to the hospital.

  I arrived to my office and ran faster than I ever have before from my car into the building. I dashed through the doors, screaming, “My skin is on fire!” I had never known such pain. I wasn’t sure how I was going to go on existing if I could never go out into the sun.

  I shared the floor of the building with six other professionals, and Sara was the receptionist for all of us. She looked at me as if I had lost my mind. Maybe at this point I had; I had no explanation for how I was feeling.

  “My goodness, Mr. Simon! Are you alright?” Sara screamed back at me.

  It took a while for me to catch my breath. I must have looked ridiculous. My skin felt raw and I knew deep down I had a real problem. I glanced fearfully out the front door and wondered what would happen if I stayed outside.

  “Sara,” I said very slowly. “I need you to do me a favor today.”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “When you go for your lunch, I need you to find me the blackest blinds available and exchange them for the ones in my office. I’ll buy your lunch, whatever you want, I just can’t do it myself.”

  “Okay,” Sara said. “May I ask what is wrong with you?”

  I laughed. I went into the hallway, where there was absolutely no sunlight.

  “I seem to have caught something, maybe while I was in the hospital. The sunlight hurts. Can you also call my doctor and make an appointment to see him?”

  “Absolutely. I hope you’re okay; you look a mess.”

  I laughed, knowing she wasn’t exaggerating. I walked down the hallway and opened my office door. I walked back out to ask Sara a question. As I approached her desk, I stayed out of all sunlight. But I also heard a beating sound. I couldn’t quite place where it was coming from. The closer I got to Sara, the louder it got. I looked at her closer and thought I could see the vein in her neck pulsing. That was when I realized the noise was the sound of her heart beating. I wasn’t sure: was this an anomaly, or was this going to happen all the time?

  “Your heart is beating fast, Ms. Davis,” I said.

  Her eyes grew large. “How can you tell that?”

  I looked at her and as honestly as I could, I said, “I seriously have no idea.” Then I smiled and turned away from the sun. Realizing that I must have sounded like a madman, I shrugged and walked away.

  I walked back to my office and opened the door. I stepped in and quickly closed my blinds. Luckily I was not getting direct sunlight hitting my ass, being that I was on the east side of the building. Needless to say, I shut the blinds all the way.

  I had some cardboard boxes and some duct tape in my bottom drawer. I had an idea.

  I emptied the cardboard boxes in a pile in the corner of my office. Then I broke up the two boxes, leaving me with two large, rectangular cardboard pieces that were perfect for my office windows. I looked psychotic as hell as I duct-taped these card board boxes to my windows. But they were going to fit. No sunlight would enter my office.

  I went to my phone and pressed the intercom button for Sara in the main lobby. “Hey Sara, cancel all my appointments until further notice. I’m thinking of strictly becoming a graveyard person.” I wasn’t lying. It was the only thing that made sense. Something was permanently wrong with me. I felt to my core that this sun problem wasn’t going to be a phase, but a long-term deal.

  I sat back in my chair behind my desk. I looked around my office. It was small and rather boring. Although I had pictures on the wall, I had never put any real thought into decorating it. Hopefully, the room didn’t depress my clientele so much that they went back to drug use. It was inside a government building and it could have used some sprucing up, but that would have to be another time. It didn’t really matter; I rarely saw patients in my office. All I could think about was eating; I was starving.

  I had avoided going out for food entirely as I just didn’t feel like eating. Not till this moment. To say I was hungry was an understatement. I was ravenous, actually. But anytime I thought about ingesting food, I thought I would throw up.

  Oddly enough, listening to Sara’s heartbeat made me thirsty. I wished that I had grabbed more than a coffee on my way out. I certainly couldn’t go anywhere at this point.

  There were a couple of new case files on my desk that Sara had put there for me to look over before my appointments that day. I knew the person I needed to see wasn’t one of my patients. It was my good friend Donna.

  Chapter Eleven

  11:00 a.m. Wednesday Morning

  I looked through my office closet and grabbed an old hoodie and a pair of sunglasses. I hoped it would help me to venture out in the sun once again.

  I exited out of the main lobby in full getup. I was sure Sara had thought I lost my mind. My hands were the only thing visible to the sun, as I was using the entire hood to shield my face. My hands felt as if they were on fire.

  I quickly opened the door to my vehicle and I jumped in. I sped out of the parking lot, driving in the opposite direction of the sun.

  After about five minutes of swerving and appearing to be a drunk driver, I looked up and saw a Home Depot. I drove my car into the parking lot and parked as close as I could to the front.

  I ran inside and was quickly relieved to be in such a warehouse. Most of the store was away from the sun. I went to the gardening section and bought gloves. If everyone didn’t think the thirty-year-old man in a hoodie still over his head was weird enough, I put on a pair of gardening gloves for good measure.

  I got outside and none of my body was visible to the sun. I could look out of my black hood just enough to see where I was going without frying my nose and eyelids off.

  As I drove to the home of my friend, my skin burned underneath my clothes. My outfit was hardly helping. I knew I needed to find a solution or start driving at night.

  What the hell had happened to me? I drove down the street to the apartment where my patient—well, in her case, friend—lived. I wasn’t technically her worker on any level other than she happened to be a junkie and I happened to be a junkie counselor
. I tried to help my friend as if she was one of my patients. I wondered if there was even any point to it at all. Could anyone really be helped? I used to think so, but now I wasn’t so sure.

  Something caught my eye, and I slowed my car down to look back at it. It was a community apartment building, the type that needed card keys to get in. Casa Vista...I knew that name from somewhere, but couldn’t quite place it. It wasn’t until I almost drove by Grind Away that it all came back in a flash. These were places I dreamed of. They were real landmarks. My dreams weren’t a jumbled mess. I wondered if that meant Felix was real as well.

  I was so caught off guard by what I saw that I almost drove by the address I was looking for. I pulled into the driveway of a tiny little house. I fled from the car and took solace underneath the shaded porch, trying to catch my breath before I knocked on the door. Trying not to pass out, I rapped on the door a few times.

  The woman that answered the door was a friend of mine. Her name was Donna. We had dated a long time ago. She used to be so beautiful. She still was—beautiful, that is. But she just didn’t look the same. Drugs had taken her over since high school. She kept living. So I had always had faith in her, and today was no different.

  “Thank God you’re here,” she said. “Why are you dressed like the Unabomber?”

  “It’s a long story. How are you doing?”

  Donna already had real a real thick black curtain that was keeping all sunlight out. Drug addicts don’t like people to be able to see into their house. I closed the door quickly behind me, and finally the stinging stopped.

  There was such desperation in her voice that I wondered if maybe this would be it for me. Maybe she would be the one that I could save. I walked into her home with that thought calming my soul. I just hoped I wasn’t losing my own mind.

  “Hunter, what is wrong with me?”

  “How many days have you been clean?” I asked. That was usually one of my first questions to people I’m trying to help.

  “I slipped up last Sunday hanging out with my brothers. We were all at a sports bar watching football. One moment, I was drinking a beer. The next moment, I was in the parking lot with my little brother Ricky. Before I knew it, we were trading hits off his pipe.”

  “Crack or meth?” I asked.

  “Meth,” she said.

  “Have you ever smoked meth before?”

  “I have been smoking meth whenever I can get it. It’s hard to find good meth. I knew my crack dealers personally, so I knew they wouldn’t screw me.”

  “So you’re saying you could have just as easily gotten hooked on meth if it was more readily available to you?”

  She looked at me with a face that pretty much said, ‘Duh?’

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” I said, entering her apartment. “You’re chasing your drug demon. Not your crack demon, not your meth demon, and not your alcohol demon. But all three of those things can kill you individually.”

  “You know what’s funny? You talk about it and make it sound so grand by calling it a demon. That seems to make it okay for people like you to deal with people like me. Using words like ‘demon’ and ‘crutches.’ The truth is, Hunter, that we’re all just looking for our next high. Sometimes it makes us sick if we can’t have it soon enough, but at the end of the day, we all are chasing getting high.”

  I looked at Donna and I knew it was more than just good feelings and rainbow sherbet. “You make it sound like someone who craves an ice cream sundae. Not everybody sees this life as just another chance to get high. “

  “Hunter, you’re not like me. The difference is people like you have figured out that not pursuing that constant high is beneficial to you. I used to look down at a guy or gal who wouldn’t get high because they had either a religious or moral problem with it. Now, I envy those people. Just because I’m not on a street corner waving a banner that says, Crack Lives! doesn’t mean I’m not just a junkie looking for a high that hates herself for having to be that dependent on anything...especially something as demonizing as crack.”

  I looked at Donna and her honesty floored me. It had been years since I felt any of my patients were that honest. Well, she wasn’t my patient. She was a dear friend that I helped get through her shit often. When you’re helping a friend, you don’t look at it as a job or a chance of getting paid. You look at it like saving a life. Whose lives would each of us want to save most? The people that are dearest to us. My problem is that I love easily, and I can find something unique and loving in almost any personality.

  But first, I needed Donna to be very clear with me on a couple of subjects.

  “So, you have been clean all day?” I asked.

  “Hunter, I know the consequences. The only way I get my boy back is that I have to prove I’m clean for six months.”

  “But yet you still put all that hard work we did last month to the side by getting high with your brother in a parking lot. How old is your son now?”

  Donna started to get very emotional. She usually did when she spoke about her son. This was one mother who loved her son with all she had. There has been one thing she hasn’t been able to give him: a clean mommy.

  “I can’t even think about him because it makes me so sad I want to use. But using is the reason why I don’t have him. So, the only way I can see my son is by ignoring his very existence for six months straight. Because even when it accidentally crosses my mind, my heart breaks in a way I never thought was humanly possible.”

  “Why did you use with your brothers? If I’m not mistaken, you would have been on your third month. Then you would only have been three to four months away from seeing him. If you smoke almost anything, it will come up in your next bi-weekly drug test. Well, you’re no stranger to failing a drug test.”

  “Don’t be mean. I hate it when you turn mean, Hunter.” Donna knew me well. We’ve been tight for years.

  “Why, because I’m honest with you? I tell you the truth.”

  “You don’t know my truth, Hunter. You don’t know it at all.”

  “What is your truth?” I asked.

  Donna looked at me with tears running down her face. She swallowed and then sat back down on the couch.

  She had a cup of tea she had been drinking previously on the night stand. She walked over and picked up the tea and drank slowly.

  “My truth?” Donna laughed. “Haven’t I been reduced to labels and tags by this point?”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Meaning it’s easier to say I’m a bad mother. A drug addict. A crackhead. A whore. A bitch. A fucking user.”

  “Are you a bad mother?” I asked, ignoring all the other shit she said about herself.

  I knew this would make Donna extremely emotional, but we needed to get to the core of the problem.

  “When I have my son,” Donna said, sitting down in a rocking chair in her living room, “when he lives with me,” she continued, “I get to make his food, launder his clothes, put him to bed and tell him I love him a hundred times in a day. I make sure he has everything he needs, and that’s what kills me, because no matter where he is, no one can possibly love my son more than me. How is that better on any level; that my flesh and blood doesn’t live with me?”

  “So, you think you’re a good mother?” I asked carefully.

  “When I have him,” Donna responded. “At the present moment, I’m the worst mother in the world. I’m choosing getting high at a chance to have son back. It aches and shames me to no end. I hate myself.”

  “Don’t hate yourself,” I said. “Because you’re a drug addict. That’s a label that’s correct. Until you can control not using, you won’t have a chance to have your child.”

  “Will you help me, Hunter? Please help me. I want my son back so terribly.”

  I looked at my friend and she touched my inner soul. I believed that she did indeed love and adore her son. It made me sad to think someone could love someone so much, yet an outside chemical substance was so strong tha
t they were willing to risk the only relationship in their life worth having.

  “You know, you’re throwing around that you drank like it’s no big deal,” I said to get back on point. “Alcohol is in your court documents with your son. You need to stop everything and get clean. I know it’s easier said than done.”

  “Please, Hunter, you and I have been drinking since high school.”

  “And that was a problem,” I said.

  “Seriously, you don’t look at it as a great time?” Donna seemed generally surprised.

  “What? Going to a high school party and drinking some watered downed keg and mad dogging dudes all night? No thanks. Where we grew up, ‘party’ meant lots and lots of trouble. I began to quit going to them. That was when my life started on the right path.”

  “Yeah, you were always kind of a goody-goody. Even then.” Donna thought to herself and smiled. “Do you remember that camping trip all of us took our senior year?”

  “Hardly a day goes by that I don’t think about it,” I said honestly.

  “Really?” Donna sounded surprised. “You do remember what happened, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, you and I got hammered and we had sex all night once everyone went to sleep. We did the deed in your pink tent a total of nine times.”

  Donna laughed. “It was messy sex.”

  “We were outdoors,” I said. “I remember we swore there was a bear outside and we didn’t care. We kept humping along.”

  “Humping?” Donna laughed. “No one uses that word ever. Even when we were told that it meant sex in the 1990s, we still never used it.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “Maybe when you think hump, you think about rabbits doing it Gangnam style.”

  I laughed. I enjoyed Donna’s humor very much; I thought I had an odd dry humor. I was sure Donna had me beat. She was one of a kind.

  “Can I say something to you, Hunter?”