White Pills

He doesn’t know much. But there were some things that he does know.

He's in love with her; he knows that.

She’s in love with him, he knows that and so does she.

She’s lovely, he knows that too. Pretty? No, no, he wouldn’t classify her as that. It would almost seem...derogatory to classify her as that. She’s so much more than “pretty”.

She’s his.

And now, he’s walking on a road. The road to find her.

He can’t remember when he started on the road, he figures it was a couple of months ago after the explosion in the pharmacy that separated her from him.

He can’t remember much, but he can remember that day like the back of his burned hand. It was a normal Tuesday and just like every Tuesday, he was on his way to pick her up from work downtown so they could go to their favorite Chinese restaurant.

She had texted him a few minutes prior and asked him to pick up his prescription since she wouldn’t be able to make it before the pharmacy closed. It was odd because she never asked him to get the prescription, he didn’t even know what prescription he took. She just put the white pills in his pill box every morning, and he trusted her enough that he blindly took them.

She said they would make him feel better when he started taking them 2 years prior. He doesn’t remember if they made him feel better, but he does remember that he ran out of them a week ago. He remembers her being very anxious to leave him alone for the past week when she had to go to work. She said he needed his pills, but he didn’t see why. He felt perfectly fine and he wanted her to know that he was fine, so he was going to the pharmacy to prove it.

Because he was fine.

He remembers the people in the store looking at him. Everyone was staring at him and it made him frustrated, but he didn’t want to be frustrated. She never liked when he got frustrated, although he did it often. He fiddled with the metal locket in his pocket as he walked down the aisles towards the back of the store and towards the pharmacy department. He always did that when he was feeling frustrated. It reminded him of her. It reminded him that she wouldn’t want him to be frustrated.

“Prescription please” was all that he could manage as he walked towards the front of the line and to the counter.

“Sir, please go to the back of the line,”the lady in a white coat commanded him with an exhausted sigh, “you’re skipping the line.”

“The pills,”he insisted again, his fingers fidgeting in his pocket. “I need the pills. They’re white. The pills.”

“Sir, please, I’ll get to you in a second—”

“The pills please!”

He took a deep breath and squeezed the locket. Don’t get frustrated. Don’t get frustrated. She doesn’t like when you get frustrated.

“Sir really—”

“I NEED MY PILLS, PLEASE!”he yelled, spit flying in the lady’s face as she quickly backed away. “SHE NEEDS ME TO GET MY PILLS!”

That’s the last thing he recalls before he heard the bang. He remembers it being loud and then a light flashed across his eyes and there was a fire. Oh yes, there was a fire and he realized he was in the fire and—

He needed to find her.

He ran through the smoke because he was faster than it and he was so proud of himself because he was faster than it, but the other people in the store were being swallowed by the grey fog. But he didn’t mind, all he cared about was getting to her.

He needed her to be safe.

But when he got outside, he realized that the grey smoke was everywhere, and this time, he wasn’t faster than it. He was being surrounded by it.

No matter, though. He knew how to get to her office building with his eyes closed.

He continued down the road, stepping over mauled bodies as he did.

His curiosity got the best of him, and he stopped and kneeled down by one of the bodies. It belonged to a man who looked no older than 40. He had used so much gel in his hair in the morning that it hadn’t moved a centimeter during the explosion. His face was covered in cuts and his business suit was bloodied, his briefcase sprawled open beside him with papers flying being picked up in the wind.

He remembers touching the man’s face, his fingertip drawing along the crimson blood covering the man’s cheek. The man twitched and looked at him, his brown eyes bleary and glossed over but clinging to life.

But he was slowing him down, he couldn’t get distracted. And this man—this body—had made him get distracted and that made him so frustrated, so he collided his fist, that was still tightly gripping the silver locket, with the man’s face, his skull cracking against the concrete and his chest stilling.

He decided he wouldn’t tell her about his outburst. He would skip over the parts where he got frustrated, but she would be so proud of him for finding his way through the city to her work. He’d save her! She’d be so proud! He almost giggled at the thought of her face of admiration when she finally saw him.

He wasn’t getting there fast enough, that’s all he knew.

He’d been walking for ages. Time was passing and his hair was growing longer, curling at the ends around his ears. She never liked it when it did that, she liked it shorter.

He blinks his way in the fog, the grey color muting all of the other colors in the world, but it didn’t mute the color of...balloons. Red and orange and yellow and...scissors.

The man was using scissors. He was cutting the strings of the balloons and handing them to a crowd of children with sticky faces and hands.

Scissors would make her happy. Scissors would let him cut his hair and that would make her very happy.

He walked up to the man, pushing through the crowd of children. He pushed one to the ground, but he didn’t mean to. No, no, he didn’t mean to. That wouldn’t make her very happy. She always liked children.

“Sir, what are you—”

He took the scissors out of the man’s hands and looked at him viciously as he took a strand of his own brown hair and chopped it off, the whips falling to his feet.

“Sir, please hand those back,”the balloon man cautiously pleaded, taking a few steps back.

The fog was covering the balloon man’s face, but the man could tell that he was looking at him viciously. And he didn’t like that. No no, he really didn’t like the look in the balloon man’s eyes. The look made him frustrated and then he was frustrated that he was frustrated.

And he was frustrated and frustrated and frustrated and—

The red, orange, and yellow strips of rubber were the next thing he saw by his feet. And then his ears were met by the screams of children.

Why were they screaming? That really hurt his ears.

He looked to the side of his feet and found the reason they were screaming. The fog was covering the balloon man, but his throat was impaled by the scissors.

You see, he didn’t mean to hurt him. He was just frustrated. He was so frustrated and he needs to find her.

He looks over at the crowd of trembling children, some have run off, but some were too scared to move. And then he sees her.

She’s tiny and has black hair and she’s holding something in her hand.

A silver locket.

The silver locket

His silver locket.

And he’s so frustrated that he charges at her and rips the dangling locket out of her hand as she shrieks, taking a few steps back, tripping over the balloon man’s body and stumbling to the ground herself.

But he can’t get distracted with this little creature, no, he needs to focus. He needs to find her before it’s too late. He needs to save her. Because now the fire’s catching up.

Oh no.

The fire’s catching up and he needs to find her.

He needs to find her.

To find her.

Her.

***

His eyes want to open, but he doesn’t want to open them. Because then he’ll lose his place on the road and he might forget where he is and he’s getting so close to finding her and saving her and—

She’s there. She’s sitting there when he groggily blinks open his sleep-ridden eyes. She’s blurry and fuzzy and she looks a few years older than he remembers, but she’s there. Right next to him in a plastic chair. Her long brown hair is exactly how he remembers it except it’s now garnished by a few grey strands that cup her face. Her chipped green polished nails tap against the arms of the chair, playing a beat that he can’t quite put the words to even though he knows he knows it. He knows he knows it and that makes him so unbelievably frustrated. But he swallows it down because he doesn’t want her to know he’s frustrated. She’s here with him finally. He saved her and the last thing he wants is for her to leave because he was frustrated.

When he swallows, his throat is thick and dry, the spit creaking on the way down. He feels air being pushed into his nostrils, and his hands feel heavy.

But they’re heavy with something. He squeezes his hand tighter against the white hospital sheets and feels the metal light up his skin with a cold electricity. He gently drags his overgrown and dirted fingernails over the edge of the heart locket.

It’s there. And she’s here. And it’s everything.

She looks up from gazing down at her lap when she hears a sharp intake of breath from him.

Her smile.

It’s exactly how he remembered it, except now it’s adorned with a few frown lines.

She watches carefully, her eyes following every movement of his hand as he slowly lifts it from the bed, holding his palm out towards her with the silver locket placed in it.

“For you,”he whispers, looking into her blue eyes that are filled with an understanding that only she could possess.

“I know,”she murmurs back, a tear falling down her cheek. She reaches her hand out towards his and slowly closes his palm against the locket. “Go back to sleep, love.”

And he does.

He goes back to sleep.

And it all starts over again as he’s dropped back onto the road to find her again.