Anti-Psychics

This world is not one for those of creative passion. This is not a world where parents can safely provide for their children. This is a world of loss. Of pain. Of desperation. This world has no place for ambitions.

This lonely world... is my world.

The cold, still air and grossly discolored sky adhere to the dying trees and dry soil; rough, low branches supported only by the molding wood of the base. What remains of the grass and foliage is nothing but a sad, grayed mess. The autumn leaves were even hard to tell apart; they were all tinged gray and black rather than the natural gold of the season. Everything has either died or is in the process of doing so.

The beach, once so lively with people and sea creatures, lies empty and sorrowful. Not a single crab or fish has been seen here for two years; let alone fishermen, or people of any sort. This world is nearly empty. Monsters of human creation roam it now, rather than the humans themselves. Those of us who survived hide in the shadows.

I splashed water onto my face from the broken sink, remembering the time before- before the Desolation. They're probably all dead now; those who used to visit, the family of mine that used to live in this beach house. The Third War ensured that a lot of great people moved on from the face of the earth, including my own father. Now the only things that remain are the Desolate, where no one lives- and the Fragments, where micro civilizations attempt to survive. This house, and the beach, happen to lie within the Desolate.

My cracked reflection stared back at me with dead eyes. They had been so brightly blue once... now they seem to have sunken and become darker. I moved them to my auburn hair, which hasn't been anything more than a dry, tangled mess for two years. I looked entirely aged... nothing like the twenty-two year old I am. I sighed heavily and pulled my diving knife from it's holster on my thigh. This haircut was well overdue, and it was all going. I watched my thin, pale hands move along my head, cutting it as graciously as I could. Of course, it was still uneven. I may as well make the best of it and make it a style.

Content with the final look- or rather, as content as I could be- I re-holstered my knife and turned away from the broken mirror. The bathroom wasn't the only room in disrepair; the kitchen was flooded, the windows were all either cracked or shattered. The very floor boards were rotting away, creating dangerous weakspots and gaping holes. The outside was just as bad; the walls were more than peeling away, the roof was begining to cave in. The house was overall run-down. Trash and debris of all sorts littered the path down to the beach, and into the ocean. I turned my attention back to the inside of the house and entered what was once a living room, where my sister Laina sat on the old couch reading a manga she found.

"Is that any good?" I asked as I sat next to her.

Laina shrugged. "It's cute I guess, but much less interesting when you live in a world like it." Her hazel eyes finally looked at me. "Kira, your hair-"

"I know," I interupted. "It finally got to me."

"It looks cute," she said with a smile. "I like it. I think I'll cut mine soon, too." She tugged at a bleached strand of blonde, showing more of her natural ashen roots. Before all of this, the biggest concern she had was what the next color for her hair would be. It was how she advertized the hair salon she worked at, but now she's twenty-four and has lost everything.

I nodded. "It would be easier. Where's Darius?" I asked about our half brother, glancing around.

"Sleeping in the main room," Laina answered calmly, setting down her manga. "I still get nervous about leaving him more than a foot away from me."

"Yeah, but I think dad would be proud of how we've taken care of him." I leaned my head on my older sister's shoulder.

All Laina could respond with was a simple nod. We both missed our father. "Take Darius and go!" His last words will forever ring in my head. I shook the image of his final moments from my mind, trying to only remember the good. I looked at Laina for a moment. Our dad had told us to come here, to meet up with Uncle Steve, Aunt Cindy and our cousin Ethan. Though we had originally come to this house to find them, no one was home. In fact, everything was already breaking down from the earthquakes- the aftermath of the explosions. We ended up deciding to make it our base, even if just for the time being.

"Laina," the small voice came from the hall, followed by the small form of Darius. His shirt and dark brown hair were in all sorts of disarray; his bright blue eyes looked tired and saddened. "I had a nightmare."

"Awe buddy," I answered sympathetically.

"Come sit with us," Laina smiled softly at him. The small five-year-old stumbled over and she pulled him onto her lap before planting a kiss on his head. He snuggled into her and gripped my fingers before falling asleep again.

We must have all fallen asleep, because we woke up to some sort of commotion not too far outside; Possibly raiders stumbling around looking for supplies. Laina and I looked at each other in shock, then immediatly jumped into action. She took the sleepy and confused Darius into the main bedroom and told him to wait under the bed while she propped herself behind the door, armed and ready. The front gate to the house swung open, creaking every second. I stepped beside the front door, waiting for the intruders to enter. The moment they did, they would find themselves at my gunpoint.

Footsteps echoed outside. One person, must be carrying something heavy. They stopped, just on the other side of the door, seeming hesitant. Finally, the doorknob turned and the door slowly creaked open. The intruder pushed through and nearly fell to the floor before seeing my gun pointed at him.

He crouched to stablize himself and the person he was holding. His overgrown dark brown hair fluffed to the side to show his thick eyebrows, brown eyes and familar features. He stared for a moment, like he was trying to clear his vision. "Kira?" He asked uncertainly.

I lowered my weopon. "Yeah. It's been awhile, Ethan." I gestured my weapon to the girl in his arms. "This your girlfriend? You know they're better when fresh, don't you?"

"Ha-ha, very funny." Ethan stood up and clambored to the couch to lay her down. "You know very well she's my sister, you dork."

My eyes widened. "Wait, that's-"

"Jayda, yes. And she needs medical attention." Ethan pulled off the backpack he was wearing and pulled out a first aid kit. "Is it just you?"

"No, Laina and Darius are here too." I said, motioning for them to join us.

"Thank God," Ethan mumbled. "What about-"

"Dead," I said plainly, then more quietly, "Dad's dead."

Ethan sighed, but didn't seem too surpised. There had been a lot of news like that, after all. "I'm sorry to hear it."

"And your parents?" I suddenly asked bluntly, my desperation to know getting the better of me. "Where are Aunt Cindy and Uncle Steve?"

He didn't look up. "They're in the backyard."

His answer got me so off guard that I couldn't respond. Laina did instead. "Oh, Ethan... how-"

"Raiders." He said plainly. "Right at the beginning. They happened to be coming home from the store, and I got outside just a moment too late." Now he looked up at us, his very presence feeling dark and heavy. "I gave my parents as proper of a burial as I could. As for the raiders... Bone makes excellent armor."

"Yeah, I bet," I jerked my head toward his sister. "So, what's up with crazy? How'd she survive, anyway?"

"She's not crazy," he responded in annoyance. "She's been right about everything. And now she's bleeding and I have to stitch her up, so give me a minute."

"Alright, sorry," I mumbled, watching him work as he delicatly sewed a rather sizable gash along her side. I tilted my head, thinking about what may have caused it, when something shiny caught my eye. Around her thin, pale neck was a silver locket in the shape of a heart, with something like runes engraved into it. I looked her over, realizing just how malnourished Jayda was. She was smaller than me by a landslide; I could probably fit one hand around her neck almost entirely. Looking back to her torso, I realized just how obvious her ribs were to me. Her bones seemed brittle, and her face was ghaunt and ghostly. Her long hair was black and dusty, as though she was wearing charcoal as a hat. Looking at her now, I almost couldn't even see any of her viking heritage she'd always proudly resembled.

"Okay, done." His words drew my attention back to Ethan as he stood up, and my eyes followed him above my head. "Now, what did you want?"

I blinked at him. "Were you always this tall?"

Before the Desolation, my family used to claim that this place was haunted. My cousin used to live here with her parents and brother, until the tragedy.

Her brother tells it like this: one day, everything was perfectly normal. Then, suddenly, it wasn't. She had started spouting nonsense about the house and the water- things that didn't exist, or strange things that supposedly happened to her when she was alone.

Of course, nothing she said ever made any sense. My aunt and uncle say that she fell in the water and hit her head on a rock just before it all happened, and that she sustained irreparable brain damage from that injury. She's been on anti-psychotics ever since; she was sixteen at the time.

They say how sad it all was. Her whole life was ahead of her, but instead of being able to reach out and take hold of her future, fate took hold of her sanity. My aunt and uncle couldn't handle it, so they put her in an institution less than a year later. Her brother fought against it, but they insisted that it was best for her. He was the only one to ever visit her. Now, though, it hardly matters.

We had all settled into the livingroom, sitting around the fireplace as Laina built up the fire. Jayda stayed unmoving on the couch with Ethan leaning back against the front of it, and Darius sat next to me, facing Ethan. Darius stared at him curiously, looking up at the tall man with wide, curious eyes. Ethan looked sad in returning the gaze. It's likely Darius didn't even remember him; it had been at least two years since they'd last met, and at that time he was only three years old. Not to mention that we rarely ever saw Ethan to begin with. The only person he ever really visited was his sister, and when he wasn't with her, he was on some sort of hunting trip with his dad.

I cleared my throat and addressed the situation. "You said she's been right about everything. What do you mean?" All eyes moved to Ethan, and Laina chimed in.

"Ethan, do you know something?" She seemed unsure what exactly she was asking, but pursued anyway. "Did something happen with Jayda?"

Ethan sighed. "It'll be better if she tells you. I'm not entirely sure myself. Besides, it really does sound crazy." He looked at his sister, then back to us. "But I swear on my life, everything she claims has been accurate. I've seen it myself."

I narrowed my eyes at him, skeptical about the reliability of my crazy cousin's claims. "Like what, exactly?"

Ethan's expression was serious- no, grave. "The explosions. The war. Everything about the Desolation- She predicted all of it. Even the monst-" he stopped himself from saying "monsters" in front of Darius, and lowered his voice. "Even the creatures were predicted- drawn- by her. She's seen it all before." He reached into his backpack and handed Laina a sketchbook. "These are the drawings she made in the asylum. Seem familiar?"

Laina flipped through the pages with furrowed brows, then stopped moving her hands with wide eyes. "Kira..." she tore her eyes away from the page to hand me the book.

The image that greeted me was no less than my reflection- just after I had cut my hair this morning. I dropped the sketchbook. "What the hell‽ is this some kind of sick joke‽" I turned to Ethan for an explanation, but he only retrieved the sketchbook in silence.

He held it for a moment. "These were drawn three... maybe four years ago. Some of these are even older... from before she was even admitted." He paused. "To be honest, I probably wouldn't have recognized you if it wasn't for those sketches."

"Ethan," Laina said slowly, "Are you saying... she's been drawing things like this since the accident?"

"Yes," He went quiet again as he put the sketchbook away. Softly, he added, "She's drawn more disturbing things. It can get... gruesome." He seemed pale, like he may lose his stomach over the things he's seen.

Laina sat down next to Ethan and gently laid her hand on his shoulder. "Hey, we're glad you're okay. We've missed you. Besides, it's good to have more family around, you know?"

Ethan nodded. "It really is nice to not be so alone. I only found Jayda two days ago... I knew to bring her here- to bring her home. We weren't all that far anymore, and I'd made sure it was stocked before I went to get Jayda from the institute two years ago. But..." his voice trailed off.

Laina looked at him sympathetically. "What happened?"

"She wasn't at the asylum when this all started. I'd been looking for her for the past two years. The moment everything fell apart, she vanished. When I went to the institute, I realized that she had deliberately left things lying around. Things that had been precious to her- such as the photos of outside that I gave her. I followed every clue she left me- I went to each place in the photos she left. That's when I found her being attacked by-" he stopped again, looking at Darius briefly. "You know."

"Yeah, we know," I mumbled in response.

"So I got her away and bandaged her up. At that time, she was well enough to travel back here. We weren't too far when she fell off a ledge this morning... hence the need for stitches." He glanced at his unconscious sister. "I had to bind it and get her here as fast as possible, before anything smelled the blood. So I picked her up amd ran the rest of the way home."

There was another moment of quiet before I spoke up. "She... fell...?" I repeated in disbeleif. "You're not a very good babysitter, dude."

Ethan rolled his eyes at me. "Shut up. You would do worse."

"Actually, Darius is fine, thank you." I said proudly.

"Yeah, cause of Laina." Ethan responded smugly.

I huffed at him and changed the subject. "Well- what do we do now? Just continue surviving, or are you planning on risking our lives for some 'greater good' crap?"

Ethan sighed heavily. "I don't know what's going to happen, except that things are going to get bad again. Like they did two years ago- but even worse."

"Worse?" I asked incredulously. "How can it possibly get any worse?"

He gave me a look, as though I shouldn't have asked. We all jumped when there was suddenly a rustling in the kitchen, and Ethan realized Jayda was no longer on the sofa behind him. "Wait- what the hell‽ Jayda, get back here!" He jumped up and ran after her, tenderly leading her back to the couch to sit down. She was munching on my potato chips. Ethan looked at me apologeticly. "I can find more food later," he promised. I made a mental note to hold him to it.

Jayda stared at me intensely, making me uncomfortable. "Uh... yes?" I finally asked, not sure if I wanted a response. She was silent and unblinking, pushing me to the edge. "Just say something!"

She blinked as if she only just realized I was there, then went back to munching on the chips. "These are good," she said after a moment. "Well snack. Much crunch."

"That doesn't even make any sense!" I yelled at her.

"Easy, she's been off her meds for two years," Ethan said clamly. "Just give her a chance."

"You're as crazy as she is," I snapped at him. "I don't know what cult you guys are in, but I don't want to be apart of it."

Jayda looked up at me, chip in mouth and pencil in hand. She seemed to be sketching something, and Darius moved closer to see what it was. "Pretty," he said quietly, drawing all eyes to look.

Blues, purples, and majentas lined the sky of a metropolis, built in black. The dark buildings consisted of towers, walls, and overall looked like some dark kingdom out of a fairytail. Silver smoke billowed in loose strands along the glowing orange of the city windows, creating a look of mist- or even magic. In fact, the whole peice looked magical. I moved my eyes to Jayda. "Did you just make this?" She nodded. "...How?"

"She had a lot of practice in the institute," Ethan mumbled. "She's only been sketching that for three minutes."

I shook my head. "Where is that?" I wondered aloud, letting my imagination wander with it.

"In the Other," her hoarse whisper caught me off guard.

Laina looked as confused as I felt. "What's 'the Other'?"

Ethan looked somberly at us as he answered. "The reason for everything that's happened in the last two years. And the reason for all the things that have happened to her in the past five years... ever since she had her accident."

Jayda touched her locket. "The Other." She said loudly and clearly, and her locket glowed between her fingertips- the same colors as the sky in her picture.

Before any of us could object, we found ourselves in a darker version of our world- The Other.

Jayda looked like she belonged. She even seemed happy; the dark red ground and purple skies seemed to welcome her. Silver mist hugged her form and tugged at her hair, as though begging her to run to the horizon with it. As she began to step forward, however, her brother reached out and grabbed her arm. "Jayda, what are we doing here? You promised-" Jayda's eyes met his, and we all lost our breath. They seemed to glow an unearly orange, as though she suddenly had pumpkins for eyes instead of her normal sapphires.

"I didn't do it," Jayda said softly. "The locket did."

Ethan blinked in confusion. "What?"

Jayda sighed. "I felt it taking energy. From you," she looked around at us in her attempt to explain. Her brain still seemed muddled, but quite possibly less than it had been. "I warned."

"You warned?" Ethan asked.

Jayda nodded. "The locket wanted to come here. So I said it. I warned you."

Laina held Darius close. "But, Jayda... what now?"

She looked to the sky and reached a hand up, seemingly calling to the silver mist that had cloaked her. Her eyes met each of us in turn, ending with her brother Ethan. "Go home." She said clearly, seeming healthier than she was before. "I only needed you to get me here. I'll do the rest." She held up her locket in her hand and whispered, "Return." Before dropping it her feet and turning away.

"Jayda-" Ethan protested, but the same colors as before enveloped us again, and within a blink we were back home.

We all looked at each other in shock, and Ethan rushed through his parents house calling for his sister, his parents- anyone to answer. My phone buzzed with a text from my dad: "When are you three coming home from Ethan's? Dinner will be ready at 6." I showed it to Laina and we both cried. Darius seemed confused, as we all were. Everything was as though there had been no Third War.

Ethan finally got to a phone and made a call. He came back looking as though he had suffered the greatest loss imaginable. "I called the asylum..." he said quietly. "She doesn't exist." His entire life- all twenty-six years- he had dedicated to his sister. From the moment she was born, she was his best friend. It devastated him when she was institutionalized; I couldn't imagine how he was feeling in this moment.

We all looked around, shocked. My eye was caught by the glinting of something silver in front of the burning fireplace; the golden glow of the fire flickered across a silver heart with runes etched into its face. I picked up the locket, and slowly turned to show Ethan.

Jayda was gone; and the only thing to prove that she was ever here is her locket, and the secret that lies within.