Anti-Psychics

Start writing...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 ambition.

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. 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."

"I like it," she said with a smile. "I think I'll cut mine, too." She tugged at a blonde strand, showing more of her ashen roots.

"Laina," the soft 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."

"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. We fell asleep like that, but woke to some sort of commotion outside. We reacted immediately: Laina took Darius into the main bedroom, and I stepped beside the front door.

The door slowly creaked open. The intruder pushed through, nearly falling to the floor. Overgrown dark brown hair fluffed to the side to show his thick eyebrows, brown eyes and familar features. He stared for a moment, then asked, "Kira?"

I lowered my weapon. "Ethan." I gestured my weapon to the girl in his arms. "Who's she?"

Ethan stood up and clambored to the couch to lay her down. "My sister, Jayda." He grabbed 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 quietly, "Dad's dead."

Ethan didn't seem surpised. "I'm sorry."

The question came mindlessly. "Where are Aunt Cindy and Uncle Steve?"

He didn't look up. "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."

I nodded sadly, watching him delicatly work to see the 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 tiny. Her bones seemed brittle, and her face was ghaunt and ghostly. Her long hair was black and dusty. She looked nothing like the Jayda I had known.

Before the Desolation, my family used to claim that this place was haunted. Jayda 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 made sense. My aunt and uncle say that she fell in the water and hit her head, that she sustained irreparable brain damage from that injury. She had started anti-psychotics at sixteen.

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.

I cleared my throat. "You said she's been right about everything. What do you mean?" All eyes moved to Ethan.

Ethan sighed. "I'm not entirely sure myself... It really does sound crazy." He looked at his sister, then back to us. "But... everything she claims has been accurate. I've seen it myself."

I was skeptical about the reliability of my crazy cousin's claims. "Like what, exactly?"

Ethan's expression was serious- no, grave. "Everything about the Desolation- She predicted all of it. Even the creatures were predicted- drawn- by her." He reached into his backpack and handed Laina a sketchbook. "These are hers."

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. "Some of these were from before she was admitted."

"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. Gruesome things." He paled.

Laina sat down next to Ethan and gently laid her hand on his shoulder. "We're glad you're okay. We've missed you."

Ethan nodded. "I...I found Jayda two days ago..." 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. When I found her this morning..." he looked away.

There was another moment of quiet before I spoke up. "Well- what do we do?"

Ethan sighed heavily. "I don't know."

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? 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 potato chips.

Jayda stared at me intensely, making me uncomfortable. She was silent and unblinking, and I snapped. "Say something!"

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

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

"She's been off her meds for two years," Ethan said clamly. "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. Darius moved closer to see what she had was drawing. "Pretty," he said quietly, calling everyone's attention.

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.

"Its 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."

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's eyes met his, and we all lost our breath. They seemed to glow an unearthly orange, as though she suddenly had pumpkins for eyes instead of her normal sapphires.

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.

"Jayda-" Ethan protested, but the same colors as before enveloped us again. 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. 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 came back looking as though he had suffered the greatest loss imaginable. "I called the asylum..." he said quietly. "She doesn't exist."

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