Bliss: Prologue and Chapter 1

Nia looked at the man lying beside her, who seemed to fit so perfectly around the curves of her own small body. He was asleep and his long lashes (which had always made her jealous. What did a man need with such gorgeous lashes?) touched his cheeks. When he was here with her everything was perfect. It was sweet relief from the pain of being away from him. She could forget the nagging issues in her life. She could forget he wasn’t in love with her.

She was in love with him though, even if she tried to tell herself she wasn’t. She had to be, because even though she knew he didn’t love her in return she still wanted him—felt like life was pointless without him. That was love, right?

She put an arm around his warm body and snuggled next to him. She breathed in his smell—deodorant and cigarette smoke and it suited him perfectly. She loved seeing her skin against his, how they were both the same earthy shade of brown. He woke up, and turned and gave her a kiss.

“Good morning, baby.”

“Good morning,” Nia replied with a smile.

“Was I snoring?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, well sorry.”

Nia shrugged while still smiling down at him. When she’d lived with her family she couldn’t sleep in the same room as her sister because of her mild snoring. Kevin’s snores were at least twice as loud when he really got going, but somehow Nia didn’t care. She still wished he could stay over every night. His eyes were warm and soft as he gazed back at her.

“You have such pretty eyes you know that? Like…hot chocolate.”

Nia giggled. “That’s a first. No one ever described my eyes as ‘hot chocolate’ before, but thanks.”

Nia started and her eyes went wide at the sudden sound of a vibrating phone. Her stomach clenched as she realized it was Kevin’s. Was it her, texting him good morning? Maybe asking where he was? The sheets whispered and the bed groaned as he rolled over to glance at the screen, and turned back, a little too nonchalantly. The words were on Nia’s tongue: who was that? But why confirm what she already knew? She cringed as, like clockwork, the whispers started. It wasn’t just sounds, she could literally feel the voices in her head, like bees crawling and buzzing at the base of her skull. She shuddered.

“I need a pill,” she said, though she wasn’t necessarily talking to the man beside her. She always needed one first thing in the morning for some reason, no matter what time she had taken one the night before. She shook one into her palm from the large bottle on her nightstand and downed it with the glass of water she kept there. She felt his big arms come around her, and his chin settle into the crook between her shoulder and neck. The creepy-crawly sensation began to fade.

“Are you alright, baby?” He murmured into her ear, and kissed her on the neck. She smiled at the feeling of him around her, and the feeling of the drug kicking in.

“Now I am,” she said, leaning against him. “Wanna go out and get breakfast?”

“Actually I need to get going. I’ve still got a lot of work to do planning out that mural for the record store. I wanna get on it.”

“Oh, OK.”

He let his arms slip away from her so he could grab his pants. Nia sighed and slid her fingers through her short hair, absently trying to tidy it as she watched him struggle and hop into his jeans.

“Remember Rufio?” she said.

“Huh?” He was pulling his shirt over his head.

“Rufio, he’s the guy we were listening to the other night, the one you said had good rhymes.

“Oh. Yeah?”

“He’s on this Saturday at Change Bar. You wanna go?

“Uuuh, I dunno ‘bout that…”

“But you said you liked him!”

“Well…how much is it?”

“Twenty bucks cover at the door.”

“Nah, I don’t like him that much. But you have fun.”

Nia could feel her anger rising. She’d been popping four, sometimes five Bliss pills a day lately, and she hadn’t had a therapy session in over a week. Suddenly, he wasn’t so cute. Suddenly, she hated him, hated this “arrangement” they had. She hated the secrecy, hated that when someone asked his girl’s name, some other bitch’s name would come out of his mouth. And she hated herself, because she was a parasite, leaching affection from another girl’s man, trying desperately to believe this weak-willed, hedonistic asshole could become the prince charming she’d never had.

“Cut the bullshit OK, Kevin? She’s in town this weekend isn’t she? You have plans and that’s why you don’t want to go out.”

His back was to her. He continued to pull on his shirt.

“I have to work boo…”

“Work what, her bed?! I’m so sick of this shit Kevin! You said you were gonna break up with her when she went away to med school! You keep saying you see a future with me, not her, so why the hell are you still with her?!”

He turned and at least gave her the courtesy of looking her in the eye. Or maybe it wasn’t courtesy at all. He knew she hated to see him sad. He was so big and strong, but sensitive. Something about seeing him upset usually pulled hard on her heartstrings. It was like looking into the eyes of an abused circus bear. However, at the moment all she could feel was rage.

“It’s not that easy. It’s like, usually one plus one equals two, but in this case one plus one equals five. It’s complicated.”

“Get. Out.”

“Look, Nia I don’t like your attitude. You knew what this was when you got into it. I’m just asking you to wait a little longer-“

“GET OUT!!”

Kevin grabbed up his bag, he paused when he saw the tears on her face.

“Maybe we need to stop. I don’t wanna hurt you anymore-”

“WHAT DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND ABOUT ‘GET OUT’?!”

He shook his head and without another word left her apartment, closing the door quietly behind him.

Nia buried her face in her pillow, and wrapped her arms around herself, like she needed to physically keep herself together, yet she always felt so strange crying over Kevin, like she had no right to or something. Though she couldn’t stop them, the tears felt somehow fake. After about ten minutes of awkward crying she lay with her head on her pillow, eyes red and raw, sniffling. And that’s when she felt it again, that cold horrible feeling travelling up her spine, to the base or skull and back down again, this time like someone’s cold fingers, but somehow inside her, as frustrating as an itch that couldn’t be scratched. And the whispers began again, soft and unintelligible, but insistent.

“What the hell?” she said to herself. Was she really hearing this? But she’d just taken Bliss not twenty minutes ago! Nia knew if left alone the voices would get louder, and she didn’t want to know what they had to say. She literally dived at her nightstand, shook out another pill and swallowed so fast she choked on the water. Quiet tears fell from her eyes now. Tears not of heartbreak but fear, and they felt a lot more real. Mercifully the voices began to fade and stopped after thirty seconds or so. She took a deep breath and breathed out. She reached for her phone, found his name and hit dial. Kevin got it on the third ring.

“Hello?”

“Baby? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get all emotional…”



Chapter 1

If it were up to her, they would hold the woman down and forcefully give her an injection, since she would just spit out the pill. But the doctors weren’t the ones who had to deal with her every day, so what the hell did they care? It was a wonder they even had enough sense to keep her and her kind upstairs in seclusion. Almost every time she came up to this room the stupid woman was sitting in a chair with the seat worn down by her narrow ass, looking out the window and repeating the same phrase.

“Death, die, die, death…die a death…we all must die a death…"

It was criminal, really. She was young, attractive even…no. She could be good-looking: Her jabbering came from lips that were like a split heart shape, and just as red. Her face was pointy with cheekbones that stuck out a bit too far. Andrea had always thought this patient looked like some kind of little animal, especially with those eyes: They were very round and dark, too dark, like the plastic eyes of a teddy bear glued to her face, and wide in concentration. She held her hands clasped together in the lap of her grey wool dress.

Andrea’s forehead creased as she eyed the woman. This patient had no history of violence, but Andrea hated the idea of having to be her nurse, to…cater to someone like her. Any given day she could suddenly snap. Her kind were a bunch of unpredictable, irresponsible hippies.

“This is ridiculous,” Andrea said to herself as she put down a tray of food on the tiny table next to the bed. “Should just force her to take a shot, and she’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, well that’s illegal.”

Andrea whipped her head to the right, still bent over the tray, to look at the woman. This was the same parlour trick she always pulled when they examined her. She seemed so lucid, but she wasn't. She wasn't! She hadn't been taking her medicine. Andrea stood up quickly, stiffly, and looked at the woman like she had just crawled out of a sewer. The woman simply looked back at her with her round, brown eyes, one of them peeking from under strands of black hair.

Unfortunately she was right, it was illegal to force someone to take the drug if they didn't want to, though why anyone on Earth would willingly stop taking Bliss was beyond the nurse's comprehension. She truly felt for those unfortunate souls who had built up immunity to the drug, but this woman was a…what did they call them…an un-dependant--some nutcase who decided she didn't want to take Bliss anymore. And who on God’s green Earth did they think they were putting people at risk like that! Andrea shook her head. It wasn't a crime to stop taking Bliss, but it should be.

“You’ll die, and the doctors too. Everyone…everyone will die.”

Andrea turned quickly and her clunky black work shoes thudded on the hard floor as she marched out of the room. She had to get out before she strangled the woman. What nonsense was she going on about? Everyone would die? Andrea’s breathing was hard, her face felt hot. She was halfway down the hallway and she could still hear the woman whispering. She stopped and looked back at the room over her shoulder. As she'd thought, the door was a dark rectangle of burgundy in the wall. She had closed it.

The whispers were in her head.

She thrust a shaking hand into the pocket of her pink nurse’s scrubs and yanked out a small pill case. She picked out two pills and shoved them into her mouth, throwing her head back to help her swallow without water.

* * *

“How was therapy?”

“Fine.” Her son wouldn’t look her in the eye.

“David! Boy, look at me when I’m talking to you please. You feel better? Not gonna be punching any more holes in my walls?”

“Yes ma’am”.

“Good, and pass the salad dressing. David, boy why don’t you cut your hair? Every night at the dinner table I feel like I’m sitting across from Shirley Temple. You’re in college now it’s time to cut it. It’s too long and curly for a young man.”

David grunted. His mother sighed, she knew it was a losing battle. “Well at least go get it braided up in some neat cornrows or something. I don’t like them much either but it’s a little better than this bird’s nest you got on top of your head.

“OK.”

Andrea turned to her husband.

“I think I’m due for a session too. Almost went off on a patient today.”

“That same one from before?” asked her husband.

“Yeah, that bitch. She’s one of those jackasses who won’t take any Bliss. You know, it’s like she actually wants to hear the voices. Every time I think about it I get so God damn mad! And our crazy left-wing government protects them. I really hope we can get McNair sworn in next year. The conservatives would push to make taking Bliss mandatory that’s for sure. This government, they don’t know what the hell they’re doing. The president doesn’t walk through the halls of a mental institution every day. He doesn’t see these people, see how out of touch and dangerous they can be. I do. I’m the one who has to deal with their crazy asses!

“You’re getting really worked up Andrea, you sure you don’t want to go down to the centre at Meekins Mall and do a session in the ‘box?”

“Nah, it’s too late and too cold, but I’ll go first thing in the morning before work.”

David suddenly piped up. “This therapure lightbox shit is so stupid,” he said. “I gotta sit in that stupid stall for half an hour looking at lights and stuff so I can come out feeling all happy for a few hours. I could get the same effect from smoking a blunt.”

“David!” his father barked.

“It’s true!”

“It’s not true! First of all, marijuana is very much illegal, and if ever find any of that shit on you it’s your ass David! Second, you know that will mess with the Bliss. You wanna start hearing the voices too like them crazy people your mother has to deal with every day? You wanna get locked up like them?”

“…no.”

“Alright then.” His father pointed his fork at him. “Now you listen to me, Dave. This drug has its side effects, like anything else, but it’s the only thing keeping us together as a society. Without it, people are going crazy, hearing voices, OK? Taking Bliss, it gets you riled up after a while, makes people aggressive, but as long as we keep getting therapy we’ll be fine.”

“Well what about the people who can’t afford it? What about people in third world countries—“

“You don’t worry about them. You just keep doing what you need to do to stay in control of your senses, and be thankful for the privilege.”

David put his head down and muttered something. His father clenched his fists on the table, opened his mouth like he had something really important to say, then quickly shut it and exhaled like an incensed bull through his nostrils. He stabbed a piece of broccoli with his fork instead.

“I’m not hungry, I’m going up to my room,” said David. His mother began to protest.

“I come home, after dealing with those lunatics all day, and still work my butt off to cook you dinner and you wanna tell me you’re not hungry—“

“Just let him go, Andrea,” said his father, though he said it through clenched teeth. David concentrated on the sound of the chair scraping the hardwood floor as he pushed back from the table. Still, snippets of his parent’s conversation filtered through to him as he made his way to the stairs.

“I think you could use another session too, Ben.

“Just did an hour at work today during lunch.”

“Oh.”

David didn’t hear the rest. He mostly heard his own muted footfalls on the carpeted stairs. That, and the insistent whispers, so faint he couldn’t be sure if he wasn’t just willing them into his hearing.

* * *

Andrea was in a right foul mood. She had stupidly set her alarm for 7pm instead of 7am, and was late for work and hadn’t had a chance to take a therapy session. She was about to look in on her “favourite” patient. Andrea put her ear up to the cool wood of the door. Yep, she was at it again. Andrea could hear her through the door.

“We’re all going to die…die…die. Everyone…die…”

Andrea’s face contorted in anger. She took a deep breath, but her hand was shaking as she reached for the door handle. She just about threw the door off its hinge as she swung it open. The patient was by the window again, and she jumped and snapped her head around at the sound of the door slamming open.

“Well, looks like everything’s fine with you,” Andrea tossed at the woman from the doorway. Her patient’s reply was to close her eyes, breathe in deeply and say, “You’ll die, I’ll die, and we’re all going to die.”

Andrea came unglued. She practically ran up to the woman and got right in her face.

“You crazy bitch!” she snarled. “What does that even mean? Everyone’s going to die? You don’t make any sense!”

The woman’s eyes were wide and she was trembling, but there was something in her face, the way her eyebrows arched upward and inward, that suggested pity.

“You don’t have to be afraid.”

“Afraid? Who’s afraid? There ain’t nothing to be afraid of.”

“It’s the drug, the Bliss—”

“Bliss is what’s keeping me from losing all my good sense, from becoming like you!”

“Please! You’ll die—“

Andrea screamed and lunged at the woman, who threw her arms in front of her face to shield herself. As she rushed forward Andrea hit her right shin against the foot of the armchair. She howled and hopped onto her left leg, and lost her balance. She fell against the window and put out her hand to steady herself. Her palm met the mesh of the window screen, and kept moving forward as it gave under her weight. The rest of Andrea followed right after.