Are You a Lizard?

This following is a short, fictional horror story that I wrote.

He had schizophrenia, but he was cool. His name was Frank. He was short in stature, a little scrawny, with light brown hair and blue eyes. He always kind of reminded me of Eric Foreman from That 70s Show in the face. He was a cool, good looking guy; very calm, chill, and introverted. He was jittery and kind of awkward sometimes, but it was also kind of cute in this strange way. We all loved him despite his eccentricities, in the beginning.

His family also had a history of the condition, and every one of our friends knew that eventually, the sickness would take our friend too. The first time anyone saw it happen was one hot summer day, the kind of day that you didn't want to be spending outside in the hot, sticky, Virginia humidity. Frank was outside. We approached their house. It was an old, beaten down house that was literally sinking into the ground. Every step I took in that house I felt like I was going to fall through the floor. But it's where all the parties were. It's where we used to hang out on the weekends, get super stoned and talk about lots of things, nonsense mostly. They didn't have a TV in the living room, so we really just sat around and talked about anything and everything, which sometimes got very interesting and very philosophical, but not always.

Today, we approached the house and saw Frank outside in the front yard, busily digging small trenches in the ground in front of the house. We asked him why, but he didn't answer us. It was as if he couldn't even see us, and didn't realize we were there. His roommate came out of the house and told us what had been going on.

He was having some kind of schizophrenic episode. His roommate had woken up one morning, knocked on Frank's door, but heard no answer. He waited a few hours: still, nothing. The rest of the world was awake and going to work, and Frank was...somewhere. His roommate stepped outside onto the porch with his coffee, and that's when he saw him. Frank was muttering something to himself and digging these holes in the yard.

"Hey man, just what do you think you are doing?"

Same reaction as us. No answer, no reply; we were invisible to him. It was the strangest thing. When his roommate went back upstairs to Frank's room, he noticed the door was locked. How could it be locked like this with him downstairs? Apparently, Frank had changed the lock on his bedroom door in such a way that he could lock it behind him, preventing his roommates from getting inside for whatever reason. As his roommate grabbed a bobby pin and began hurriedly picking the lock, he noticed a piece of string stick out from under the crack of the door. Once the lock clicked and he opened it, he saw something so strange, there weren't even words that he could use to fully describe what he was seeing.

It was like nothing he has ever seen before. There was string, twine, lots of it, running along from one side of the wall to the other wall on the other end of the room, like some kind of trap or giant spiderweb or something. He couldn't even step forward unless he could maneuver himself just the right way to step under and over the strings without tripping and becoming tangled in all of the mess.

He could just go get some scissors, he thought. But what would Frank do if he ruined whatever this was? Nothing good. So, his roommate decided it was within all of their best interest to call the hospital, and call his parents. By the time his parents arrived, we had gone home. He stayed in a facility for several months and we didn't hear from him, but by the fall, he was back in the house again, medicated we believe, and acting more like himself again.

That fall, we invited Frank to come over and hang out with us, my roommates and I. My roommates were all guys. I just found living with lots of other girls to be, a lot to handle. I always just got along better with guys, and I didn't mind being the only woman in the house. It meant that I had a lot of things to myself, like underneath the bathroom sink, where I could store every single item I needed whenever it was that time of the month, and I wouldn't have to worry about any roommates "borrowing" some of my supplies without asking. But that's not even the point. The point is, on this evening in our old house, Frank came over and it was the weirdest thing I have ever experienced.

We immediately noticed that he seemed a bit off. Frank came inside and was looking all around the ceiling, as if something was flying around us. I didn't see a bug or anything, and I couldn't fathom exactly what he was seeing, but I could see the slight wave of anxiety begin to hit him as he sat down on the couch and grabbed a beer, zipping his eyeballs from one side to the other and ducking his head down, as if something was about to just grab him and take him away. It was strange, but we continued to act like it was just a normal night. We didn't want to escalate anything. We all grabbed a beer and took a sip. I figured it would be a good night to just turn on the TV and watch a good show, so I switched it on and put on one of our favorite TV shows.

Frank wasn't really watching the show, though. He started rocking back and forth and counting. Random numbers; lots of them. Sometimes, it got so loud we couldn't hear what was happening on the TV. My roommates and I looked at each other from across the room with blank and uneasy stares, not sure how to approach such a situation. Do we call the hospital? The police? His parents? No, no. It's just Frank. He's fine, he's just a little tipsy, that's all, I told myself.

After we tried watching the second episode of our favorite show, despite the constant bouts of Frank counting and mumbling things, I decided to go outside and smoke a cigarette. Frank followed close behind me, saying nothing. I assumed he wanted to bum a smoke from me, and when we got outside on the front porch in the cool, evening Autumn air, I handed him a cigarette. He put it to his lips and shakily but steadily waited for me to light it for him.

As I was lighting the cigarette, I couldn't help getting this weird feeling. Frank was looking at me, but he wasn't looking at me in a normal way. He was looking at me like I was something he had never seen before. He acted a little anxious around me, but also curious, his brow arched upwards as if questioning my very existence.

"Are you a lizard?" he said.

"What?" I replied, chuckling, thinking this surely must be some kind of joke.

"Are you a lizard?" he said, with a little more tension in his voice, "I need to know."

"No, I'm not a lizard, Frank." I said, assuring him.

"You are, can't you see it? Don't you see those scales on you?" he said, pointing down at my arms, inspecting them.

"Huh?"

"Right there! They are coming to get me. YOU are going to kill me! You are all going to kill me!!"

"No, Frank, I--"

Before I could say another word, he ran off, all the way back to that seedy party house sunken into the ground. The last time I saw him was a week later. I was in my house one evening, minding my own business. Sitting at my computer, I glanced out the window. It was pitch black, and about midnight. I had spent most of the night up with my roommates drinking and smoking, and I was starting to wind down for the night.

As I looked out the window, I heard an odd noise that sounded like it was coming from outside, a rustling sound, as if someone was in the bushes. Alarmed, I walked up closer to the window to get a better look. All of a sudden, my heart dropped down into my stomach. I saw two eyes, looking right at me, smiling in this weird way. It was a demented, crooked smile...It was Frank...

Frank had been watching us all night. I walked into another room, and there he was, at the window staring at us. He knocked on some of the windows, as if to ask to let him in. The thing is, his symptoms has gotten a LOT worse. I wasn't comfortable letting him in.

"We are going to call the cops, Frank," I yelled through the window. I could see the disappointment in his eyes, and anger. Lots of anger. It was bizarre. Then, he stayed outside around our house for a few minutes. I heard rustling and walking around. I tried to maintain my calm by going around and making sure all the windows and doors were locked, and they were. Before I knew it, I was waking up with a huge headache, and a large red mark on my forehead, because apparently I had passed out in the living room chair listening for Frank, making sure he wasn't going to try and break inside.

When I awoke and looked out the windows, I confirmed that Frank was long gone. I went out into the backyard, and that's when I saw it. A giant, broken glass jar of pickles.

"What the heck is this?" I thought, as I went inside to grab a trash bag. He has broken a giant pickle jar outside, a jar of whole pickles, and thrown pickles all around our backyard. That's about the time that I decided to move back home, and that was the last time I ever saw Frank.

A few weeks later, I found out from one of his roommates that, in fact, he had a psychotic episode, went to his parents' house, got a knife, and threatened to kill them. Did I mention that his parents also had schizophrenia? Last I heard, he had been put in jail, and I think he was transferred to a psychiatric institution some time after.

Even after all this, I still thought of Frank, often with a sense of worry and dread for someone I called my friend. I even still had an old adult coloring book that Frank had somehow managed to find one night when he spent the night, and he had scribbled all over it in some illegible handwriting. It was kind of creepy, but I kept it. Trust me, I was not comfortable with him crashing at my house back when we let him, because that's when he started getting worse, and I used to think to myself "What if he comes into the bedroom and starts attacking me in the middle of the night or something?"

I wanted him to get better, we didn't want to see him deteriorate, and I most certainly didn't want to discover on the news, years later, that he had a warrant out for his arrest and pending murder charges, but unfortunately, that's what happened to Frank.

One morning, as I was making coffee and getting ready for my day per usual, I turned on the TV to the local news station, and my jaw dropped. I projectile spit my coffee out of my mouth in shock, and it got all over the TV and the kitchen counter. There, looking right at me with those same blue eyes and crooked smile, was his mugshot:

"This gentleman is wanted in connection with the murders of five young women along Route 60 that occurred between the months of November and January. If you have any information as to his whereabouts, call our tip line now.""

I didn't know where he was. I couldn't picture him hurting anyone. Remember, before he got really sick, I told you, he was just a cool, chill guy who would come hang out with us at parties? We would laugh and have a good time. Somewhere along the line, his perception changed. I remember that night he told me I was a lizard, before going off to bed, he told me something else that to this day sends shivers down my spine:

"Everyone is going to turn into lizards. They are all going to get me."

I don't know what prompted Frank to murder all those young women on the side of the road, whether it was because he thought they were turning into lizards or something else. What I do know, is that he was my friend. At one point in time, he was my friend, before he asked me, "Are you a lizard?"