The Journey With No Return

Jonathan woke up in terror.

As every night, his nightmares would not let him find a moment of rest. He ran toward his parents’ room and burst in, shouting, his face pale with fear.

“Blood! No! Help me!” the boy screamed, while his mother, trembling, reached for the syringe that held his antipsychotic dose. His expression was frightening enough to make even his own family recoil.

Jonathan was not usually violent, but whenever his hallucinations came, he lost all control over his actions. His parents no longer knew what to do--every doctor they’d seen agreed it was one of the most severe cases of childhood schizophrenia they had ever encountered.

And the worst part was that his condition wasn’t improving. If anything, it was getting worse.

Still, his parents refused to give up. They loved their sons--Jonathan and little Saul. The brothers were close; since Saul’s birth, they couldn’t imagine how their eldest would have endured his illness without the warmth of his younger brother.

But every night was the same. The same screams, the same violent impulses, the same terrible visions. Their home had become a living nightmare.

Sometimes, though, there were better days. Jonathan’s condition fluctuated; his sudden moments of calm gave his parents fragile hope, like light leaking through a closed door.

But peace never lasted. Soon enough, the next crisis would come; louder, crueler, darker than the last, and the fragile quiet of their house would shatter under Jonathan’s screams and the sounds of breaking things, his voice lost in sobs as he failed to recognize the world around him.

He would later describe those visions to his psychiatrists: scenes of horror and fire, like a journey through hell.

He said the walls bled. The air burned. And in those moments, he couldn’t tell what was real. He saw bodies, flames, destruction; and sometimes, himself, standing among them.

His mother injected him in the arm. Slowly, his pulse began to steady, though the fear didn’t leave him. Nothing ever did.

His worst fear was the one thing he’d never done:

killing.

The guilt would destroy him. The voices knew that.

They whispered, taunted, commanded.

Do it. Finish it. Coward.

His trembling made his mother want to cry, but she held herself together. Someone had to be strong.

She hugged him tightly, clinging to the faint hope that one day the medicine would finally work.

Meanwhile, Jonathan’s father frantically searched the phone book for the psychiatrist on call. So many had already quit, telling them there was nothing more to be done; that the boy should be institutionalized.

But they refused. They couldn’t abandon him.

If they sent him away, he would be lost forever inside that abyss he called his mind.

The doctors’ prognosis was bleak: isolation, confinement, endless observation. A life behind glass.

“Blood!” the boy suddenly screamed again, his eyes wide, staring straight at his mother as if she were the monster in his dreams.

Jonathan knew he was losing his mind; and deep down, he also knew something terrible was going to happen.

When the doctor arrived an hour later, he was barely more than a resident; too young to face such a case, especially one that had defeated seasoned psychiatrists.

Yet he stayed. Maybe out of pity. Maybe out of curiosity.

Either way, Jonathan wanted nothing to do with him. He clung to his bed, refusing every pill and word of comfort. The doctor’s enthusiasm meant nothing. His efforts failed, like all the others.

Then, without warning, Jonathan jumped from the bed and ran to the kitchen.

He barricaded the hallway door with a chair.

The doctor tried to open it, but --like his treatment-- it was useless.

Jonathan screamed again, staring at his hands, now covered in imaginary blood.

In a panic, he grabbed a kitchen knife.

While his father kicked the door, desperate, the boy stood trembling, his mind drowning in voices.

“Do it! Finish it! Murderer!”

And then, he saw it.

A grotesque creature crawled out from the pantry, limping toward him.

Its greenish skin dripped blood. It looked like a small demon, dragging itself across the tiles, leaving a red trail.

Jonathan’s eyes widened. He stepped back, clutching the knife.

The thing reached toward him, arms open, as if wanting to embrace him.

For a moment, it even looked confused--almost human.

Before it could touch him, Jonathan thrust the knife into its chest.

The creature let out a shriek so piercing that his mother fainted, and his father screamed for help.

“No! Saul!” his father shouted, voice breaking. “Jonathan, what have you done?!”

At that moment, the fog in Jonathan’s mind lifted just enough for him to see the truth.

The thing he had killed wasn’t a monster.

It was his little brother.

The look in Saul’s eyes--pure terror, frozen in his final breath--destroyed him.

Jonathan understood that his journey had no return.

He turned the knife toward himself and drove it into his chest.

When his father finally broke through the door and reached his dying son, Jonathan whispered through a mouthful of blood, his voice faint but clear.

“Dad… he just wanted a hug…”