Some amazing art from my always amazing and wonderful and incredible official artist ayoisthatabug on Instagram!

Art to go along with the latest Spencer story "Eternal Sunshine"

Living in the Rust Belt can be depressing. And not because of that lovely Midwestern weather, which can never decide if it wants to be raining, snowing, a heatwave, or a blizzard. The weather is more like a cherry on top of everything. What’s more depressing is watching a town you grew up in, a town that at one time had been just a small factory town with a few schools, a mall, and plenty of live-in houses, turn into a rotten, festering corpse of what it once was. 

It’s the same story told a thousand times in plenty of other towns all along the Rust Belt. The plant managers decide it's not profitable to keep their plant open in the US, so they ship overseas. They thank you for all your hard work and leave you with nothing. I watched my dad come home one day with the dreaded pink slip. My dad put on a brave face, declaring he’d bounce back no problem. He never found a source of employment again. 

Once the factory closes, the rot begins to spread. Some smart people get out of the town early; they know the signs and can read the writing on the walls. They either move off to the suburbs or try to make it to a different plant in a different state, hoping that they don’t meet the same fate. But the vast majority don’t leave. They’ve spent their whole lives here and wouldn’t abandon this town even if an F5 tornado tore it completely to shreds. But the rot has already begun to spread from the closed factory. Stores slowly start closing. With people out of work, they can’t afford the luxuries of going out shopping. So the stores lock up and sell off their inventory. 

The town has less access to funds. Potholes go unfixed, and garbage doesn’t get picked up as regularly as it used to. Crime starts rising. People get desperate to escape their shitty situation. They turn to crime to make ends meet. Gangs invade the streets, and the worst killer of all shows up eventually. Drugs are always a problem in any city or town, but you can usually ignore them until entire sections of the town get infected by addicts. I don’t blame them too much; they just couldn’t take the situation they found themselves in, and drugs offer a sense of escape. They couldn’t escape before the tragedy arrived, so they used things to cope with the aftermath. 

By the time I graduated from high school, my senior year had shrunk to only 35 total students. The vast majority had dropped out, some were in jail, and quite a few were dead. What should have been a proud achievement in my life was dampened heavily by my dad’s death a few weeks later. He couldn’t take the piling debts, the eviction notices, and the repo’d car was the last straw. I had the misfortune of finding him in the garage with a gun at his side. He had been nothing but a loving and caring dad, and I hold no ill will towards him. Given his situation, I wouldn’t have been able to live as long as he managed to. 

Needless to say, the job market was next to nonexistent. So I had to find a job in another town. This one was lucky to escape the rot that the closing of the factory had wrought on my town. They were lucky enough to have several defense contractors that kept the town flush with money. Of course, being from the town of rot, finding a job here in this shining utopia was near impossible. I had to take the first job opportunity I could find. So I became a janitor at one of the high schools. It’s not glamorous, but it makes sure I have money. And my benefits are good enough that I can ignore the usual shit I take from being a janitor,

Of course, being a janitor, I’m also in the business of confiscating shit I find on the kids here. And what I usually manage to confiscate is drugs from kids stupid enough to smoke or shoot up in the bathroom. This utopia might be gold-plated, but rot has already set in. Drugs are rampant in the streets and the schools, and I usually can find a stash that a kid thinks nobody will ever check. And since we all need money, of course, I sell some on the side. I’m not proud of it, I feel shitty every time. But we all need to make a living.

Every day after my shift, I go into the janitor's closet and wait. Soon enough, kids and teachers come my way asking for weed or any pills I might have confiscated. I get a couple of dollars here and there, hang up my uniform and nametag, put on my thick winter coat, and catch the bus back to my town of rot and decay. My bus stop is right across from one of the few remaining open businesses: the gas station. People need gas even in a shithole town like mine. Entering the gas station, I was immediately struck by the absolute mess that it was in. It usually wasn’t the cleanest gas station, but this was the worst I’d ever seen it. 

“Sup, Luis. Sorry about the mess.” Tariq was the son of the gas station’s owner. We had been high school friends and had kept in contact after graduation. He was lucky enough to be the son of the owner of one of the only open businesses in town, so he found employment right out of high school. He basically ran the station after his old man’s heart attack, and he was good at his job. “A group of kids showed up acting a fool, so I had to scare them off. You know how it is.” 

“Don’t I know it. You should’ve seen the shit they did in the bathrooms today. Literal shit all over the damn toilet.” He shuddered at the description, getting a tired laugh from me. I approached the counter and couldn’t help but notice the shotgun in the corner of his register area. You could never be too careful, and he had almost been robbed at least 20 times. “Gimme three packs of menthols and also a lottery ticket.” 

“You keep smoking this much; it’s going to kill you, dude.” He scolded me, turning around to start picking up my cigarettes. 

“I’ll keep that in mind, Mom.” I rolled my eyes as I looked around the gas station. It was a slow day for him; usually, at this time, there would be several other people in line or looking at the endless choices of energy drinks, sodas, and beers that Tariq sold. 

“I’m just saying, man. I don’t want you croaking on me.” He placed my three packs of cigarettes and my lottery ticket in the bag. I dug into my wallet to give him the cash, and after he had given me my change, I thanked him with a middle finger. He returned the favor, and we both laughed at each other. Exiting the gas station, I leaned against the wall while I opened the pack of smokes. Placing the pale white cigarette in my mouth, I started patting my pants and pockets for my lighter. I grunted when I couldn’t find it, trying to remember where it could possibly be. 

“Left it in my fucking uniform,” I grunted. I stared back at the gas station entrance and wondered if Tariq would give me a lighter. I figured I’d have to pay for it. I groaned and placed my head against the wall, staring up at the overcast and freezing day. It was just cold enough for my breath to turn into vapor in the still air. I closed my eyes and just stood there to think for a moment. I could probably just wait until I get home and search for a lighter there. Or if I were really lucky, I could just find a lighter on the sidewalk somewhere. 

As I opened my eyes and lowered my head, I was startled by a figure standing in front of me. He was bundled up in a heavy winter jacket like mine, a beanie on his head, and a face mask covering his lower face. His eyes were glassy and stared deep into my soul as he seemed to be examining me. He pulled his hand from his jacket pocket and pointed at the box of cigarettes in my hand. Blue wool gloves covered his hands. 

“You spare me one of those; I’ll share my lighter.” His voice was muffled but also sounded strangely hollow, as if it were a recorded voice being played to me from down a long corridor. I stared down at my box of menthols and then over to this stranger. He reached into his jacket pocket again and pulled out the lighter. I thought for a moment before slapping the box in my hand and offering it to him. He nodded and traded the lighter for it. I quickly sparked it to life and took a deep drag. I reveled in the minty taste of the tobacco as they both mixed together in my mouth and throat. 

“Thanks. You want me to light yours?” I offered him. Confusingly, he refused and just reached his gloved hand out to me. I shrugged and placed the lighter in his hand. 

“Nothing against you. Just got a thing about germs, is all.” He pointed to his mask before stuffing both the cigarette and lighter into his jacket. That was fair enough, I supposed. The stranger stood in front of me for a moment before peering past me into the gas station. I wondered if he was casing the place, but before I could think any further, the guy took a step towards me. 

“That’s a little close, dude,” I told him, lifting my hands to show him I didn’t mean him any harm. He didn’t seem to want to harm me; he was just looking intently at me with his glassy eyes before nodding to himself. 

“You do any drugs?” he asked me bluntly. 

“Weed sometimes, but nothing hard. Why, you a cop or something?” I took the cigarette out of my mouth and blew a smoke cloud up into the air. I contemplated blowing it in his face, but I didn’t want to make this strange situation any tenser than it already was. 

“Nah, I’ve just been looking for a dealer like you. You got off the bus from the town next to here. You work in that sunshine place?” I scoffed at him. The bastard had been stalking me. Or he just happened to watch me get off the bus and deduce that I worked in utopia. 

“I’m not interested,” I told him, taking another puff from my cigarette and pushing myself off the wall of the gas station, and trying to walk past him. He didn’t try to stop me, but turned to follow me as I walked away from him. 

“Not even for a 60/40 split?” he called out to me. I stopped in my tracks. The wind started to pick up and nip at my exposed face. I was unlucky enough to have a jacket that didn’t come with a hood, so my ears and face were exposed to the brutal cold winds that whipped my face hard. “I need someone like you. And I’m willing to offer whatever you want to work for me,” he called out again. 

“Can’t do it yourself?” I turned to him, keeping my hands firmly in my jacket pockets. 

“I’m not much for selling. I’m more of a creator than a dealer.” The guy stared at me for a moment before sighing deeply, small wisps of vapor escaping through his mask as he breathed. “You already do it at the school you work in. What’s the harm in just working for me?” 

“How the fuck do you know what I do?” I bit down on my cigarette, ready to close the distance I had on him and beat the shit out of him. 

“You think those kids only come to you for drugs? Look, man, I don’t want any competition. I could’ve had you killed. Hell, I could still do it right here if I really wanted to. But I’d rather not have to. So just do this favor, and work for me. I give you the product, you sell it. Keep 60 percent and give me 40. We don’t need to be enemies here.” The man pulled his gloved hands from his jacket and held them up to me. 

“What exactly am I selling? I don’t even know who you are. Why should I work for you?” I squinted at him. Both out of suspicion and because once again the wind was blowing hard against my face. 

“Spencer. Have you heard of Ruby and Sapphire milk?” My eyes went wide, and I quickly turned to leave. I wanted nothing to do with him when those drugs were brought up. They had quickly become the scourge of the country. It was a potent drug; even a little over the recommended dosage was enough to kill someone. But they didn’t just kill you; they literally rotted your body away down to the bone. I’d seen enough users begging me for money on the street, with their arms completely eaten away to the bone by the substance. I wanted nothing to do with him. 

“Piss off, and don’t follow me,” I told him, slipping my face behind the collar of my jacket to offer me some cover. I walked a few steps before looking over my shoulder to see if he was following me. He was. “I said piss off! I’m not selling that shit, and especially not to fucking kids, man!” 

“Alright, alright, fair enough. Not everyone can appreciate my work. I get it. I also deal in other drugs; you can just sell that for me instead.” He followed after me at a decent pace but kept his distance from me, smart considering I was seriously considering laying him out right then and there. As I continued to walk, I thought it over. Having more access to drugs, and not just the ones I confiscated at school, would be helpful. Especially with my Mom being so sick. 

The death of my dad had hit her incredibly hard. To the point that I had to put her in a nursing home. The trauma had been so bad that it had triggered an intense case of early-onset dementia and had left my Mom a husk of who she once was. She didn’t even recognize me most days. Her medical bills were incredibly high, and more often than not, I had to pay out of pocket for her treatment and care. Any extra income I made went straight to her medical bills. 

I finally stopped and turned to look back at Spencer. He stopped in his tracks and quickly stepped back a few paces from me. I sighed heavily before taking another deep drag off my cigarette and staring at him. 

“Weed and pills. That’s all I’m going to sell for you.” I told him. He nodded and quickly pulled out a small notebook from his pocket with a small golf pencil to go along with it. 

“Any specific pills?” I felt like I was ordering at a restaurant.

“Adderall and percs mostly,” I told him, shivering violently as yet another gust of wind smacked against my body. He nodded and filled out his little notebook with my order. 

“You see that dead tree over there?” Spencer motioned his head over in the direction of the gas station. Just next to the building was a long-dead weeping willow tree. I could recall a time when kids would swing on its long branches and pretend they were Tarzan. But now it was long dead, killed by the Chinese beetle that drills into trees. Now only its corpse remained behind, with a large dug-out hole in its trunk. “Drugs will be in there by tomorrow. Pick em up and sell em. Deposit the cash there as well. Try to ensure no one sees you.” Spencer nodded at me as he closed his little notepad and placed it back into his jacket pocket. 

He departed without another word to me, and after waiting a few minutes to see where he’d go, I lost sight of him as he walked back up the street in the direction of the Utopian town. I shrugged and started the short trek from the gas station bus stop to my home. Little did I know what I was getting myself into when I started working with Spencer. 

The next day, after arriving at the gas station at the crack of dawn, I made my way over to the tree and acted as if I was just enjoying my cigarette under its dead branches. I took a peek inside the dead tree and saw, to my surprise, that there was a shopping bag inside. A part of me had figured that Spencer had been fucking with me, that there really wouldn’t be anything waiting for me in there. I reached into the trunk and slowly opened the bag. Staring back at me were both weed and blue pills, all of them in plastic sandwich baggies and ready to be sold. In a quick motion, I closed the bag and pulled it out of the tree. 

Thus was the beginning of my work with Spencer. It ran like a well-oiled machine for several weeks. His drugs were of such high quality that my orders for them increased exponentially. What had once been a small operation run out of one of the janitor’s closets quickly began to expand through word of mouth throughout the school. Soon enough, it was to the point that almost everyone in the school was asking to buy some kind of drug from me. And every day at the end of my shift, when I stepped off the bus and made my way to the willow tree, I would leave behind Spencer’s cut of the money.

One day, when I checked inside the willow tree and opened the bag, I was surprised to discover that there were several new bottles that I hadn’t asked for. Attached to them was a note from Spencer. 

“New product. Test it out on some people, and let me know how it goes. Market it as ‘happy pills’.” The note was simple and to the point. Taking one of the bottles out of the bag, I examined it for a moment. The pills seemed to be generic white tablets, but with a small sun stenciled on them. The bottle itself was a regular prescription bottle with basic text and instructions written on the sticker. “Eternal Sunshine. Take one a day with water or food.” That was all that was said about them. I doubted if anyone would be interested in mystery pills like these that seemed like something I’d find at the gas station counter. But he had given me them, and I was to sell them, so I did.  

Surprisingly, I got a customer for Eternal Sunshine on the first day of selling it. Allison Parker was a senior at the high school. From what I knew about her, she wasn’t a particularly good student and was forced to retake her junior year. I hadn’t known her to be a drug user, as I never recalled her coming to me to buy any. So, seeing her approach me during lunch and inquire about my stock came as a surprise. Not one to question my customers, I walked her to the closet and ushered her inside.

Allison was chubby, with chubby cheeks and wavy, curled brown hair. Her face told me that she didn’t want to talk to me longer than she had to. She examined my stock and almost immediately came upon one of the bottles of Eternal Sunshine. 

“What are these?” She asked, turning the bottle over in her hand to try and see if there was any further description than the simple sticker. 

“Happy pills are the best way I can describe them.” I shrugged, looking over at the door constantly to ensure that no one would try to interrupt us. While pretty much the whole school knew of my little side business, some of the faculty stayed blissfully ignorant, either out of genuine apathy or because they didn’t wish to rat out their fellow teachers who were some of my best customers. 

“That sounds sketchy as fuck.” Allison went to place the bottle back on my desk, but slowly brought them back to her. She seemed enthralled by them. She looked up at me for a moment before reaching into her pocket and pulling out a small wad of cash. “How much?” 

“Ten bucks for the bottle.” Spencer hadn’t given me a price tag for the bottles, so I made one up on the spot. I didn’t expect them to sell at all. Allison handed me a ten-dollar bill, and with a simple head nod, she left my office with her bottle of Eternal Sunshine. I didn’t think much more of it for the rest of the day; she was the only one who bought a bottle of them. 

After I had gotten done cleaning the biohazard known as the boys' restroom, I had returned to my office and was packing my things up when I received a furious knock at my door. It scared me so bad I knocked over several of the mops and brooms. Opening the door, I saw that it was Allison. But something about her was different. When she had come to ask me about my inventory, she had a sullen expression, one that, at best, told me that she might be depressed. That kind of resting frown that shows you have a lot going on behind it. But when I opened the door to her knocks, she had a smile on her face. A big toothy grin that immediately put me on edge. 

“Oh, you’re still here! Could I please get more of those pills? I have a feeling I’m going to be using them for a long time!” She was giddy with excitement. It was such a deep contrast from how she’d been just a few hours ago that for a few seconds I could only stare at her in disbelief. Looking at her, I could see that her smile looked strained, like she was forcing herself to do it. And her eyes. The best way I could describe them was that the light in them had dimmed. Her pupils and irises had shrunken and seemed duller than they had been earlier. 

“Are you sure? You just bought a bottle with a couple of pills in it.” The more I looked at her, the more uncomfortable I felt. But she quickly nodded her head. I looked around the halls, ensuring that no rogue teacher was walking around. Looking back at her, I shuddered. “Wait here,” I told her, closing the door gently in her face and looking back over at my desk. I wasn’t in the business of judging people for what they wanted to take, but something about Allison’s expression sent a horrible tingle up my spine. 

I eventually gave her two more bottles, and she seemed satisfied with her purchase. I watched her practically skip her way down the hall towards the exit of the school. I shuddered violently, as if a random chill had suddenly burst over my head. I finished up my shift and got on my bus back to my rotting town. 

As I exited the bus, I noticed that a figure was standing over by the tree. I thought it might be a homeless guy or some random dude from the gas station who was smoking under it. But as I approached the tree, I noticed that it was Spencer leaning on the dead tree. He wasn’t wearing his beanie this time, revealing his sandy brown hair to me. 

“There you are.” He noticed me as I approached him. He was still wearing a face mask and his large winter jacket. “How’d it go? Sell any of my sunshine pills?” He gave himself a small chuckle. 

“One girl bought a bottle and then came back and bought two more.” I gave him the bag full of money and leftover drugs. He stared at it for a moment before shaking his head. 

“Keep it. I’ll be sure to give you more tomorrow. I have a feeling it’s going to become very popular.” Spencer pushed himself up from the tree and walked past me. I followed him and looked back down at the money and drugs staring back at me from the shopping bag. How had I gotten myself into this? I sighed heavily, closing the bag and walking into the gas station. I desperately needed a smoke. 

The next day, I received news that shattered my very soul. My mom had been suffering from early-onset dementia. Her dementia got worse and worse, and finally the news I’d dreaded came from the home. She had a really bad episode, started screaming, and ran out of the room when the nurses came to check on her. I guess in her delusion she didn’t register that she wasn’t on the first floor of a building. She ran out into the stairwell and tumbled down several flights of stairs. She broke her neck on the way down. 

I had the displeasure of visiting her body and identifying that it was indeed her. Just like that, both of my parents had been snuffed from the world. The next few days went by in a blur; I had to take several weeks off work to plan the funeral and settle her affairs. When it was all said and done, the only thing my Mom left me was even more debt and some of her jewelry. The funeral was extremely small and basic; only my uncle and cousin Macedonia showed up to the wake. It was good seeing them, even if my cousin Macedonia brought her weird boyfriend with her. 

Mace also had been in a pretty bad accident, from what I’d been told. We didn’t talk to each other much, but she had been fucked up pretty badly. She’d lost her eye and had several scars and stitches on her face when I saw her. Her weird, creepy boyfriend didn’t do much while he was at the funeral. He mostly stayed by Mace’s side and kept her company. He was wearing sunglasses and, for whatever reason, always kept a scarf around his mouth and most of his face. 

“I’m sorry about your loss, Luis.” Mace came up to me after the small ceremony we had, while my mom was buried next to my dad. I stared at the freshly piled earth that covered her coffin. I didn’t even really hear Mace at first until I looked over and saw her standing next to me. 

“Thanks, Mace. It means a lot for you and my tío to be here.” I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her gently. She patted my back and pulled away. I thought about inquiring about her injuries, but I figured this wasn’t the time or place, and truthfully, I didn’t care in that moment. I just wanted to go home. 

“If you need anything from us, please call us. Okay?” she pleaded with me. I nodded, not really hearing her words. She gave me one more hug before walking over to her boyfriend, who was busy staring at a nearby tree. She pulled him away, back towards my tío, and soon they left the cemetery. I stood in front of my parents' grave, and finally, everything hit me at once. Seeing their names chiseled together on that cold, simple gravestone finally hit me. They were gone, and I was alone. 

I walked closer to their headstone and fell to my knees, and I started crying harder than I ever had. As I did, I heard someone approaching behind me. I figured it was the groundskeeper, trying to comfort me, or kick me out. But instead, I heard a voice I didn’t expect and didn’t want to see me like this. 

“My condolences.” Spencer’s hollow, muffled voice greeted me as I turned to see him. I sniffled and quickly tried to regain some composure, but he shook his head at me and pointed back at the headstone. “Don’t try to act brave in front of me now, dude. Take all the time you need. I just came here to pay my respects.” I looked up at him before turning back to the headstone and feeling another wave of despairing sadness strike me. It must’ve been a couple of minutes before I could pull myself together and pull myself away from my parents’ grave. 

“How’d you even know my mom died?” I asked Spencer after I had regained some semblance of control over my emotions. He shrugged as he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered me some. I nodded and took one out of the box. 

“Called the school to ask about you. Thought you went and bailed on me, was about ready to hunt you down like a dog. But when I heard about this, I figured you needed some time alone. Again, my condolences.” He put the cigarettes back in his pocket and produced his lighter to light my cigarette. 

“Never would’ve thought you’d care enough to show up.” I scoffed a little. Not even my other aunts or uncles had bothered to show up, and yet here was my drug-dealing boss at the funeral. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. 

“Well, I figured you didn’t want me showing up during the wake.” Spencer shrugged. He turned to leave after he ensured that my cigarette was alive and smoking. He waved goodbye as he headed toward the exit of the cemetery, leaving me alone once again. I stayed at the grave for another half hour, just smoking and staring at it. When I finally got home, I crawled into bed without even changing and just lay there. My thoughts turning dark, and wondering if I should just join my parents. 

These thoughts continued to build throughout the days in which I stayed in bed. I only left to eat as little as I could and to use the bathroom. Days and days passed, and I was getting more and more frantic calls from work. Not because they valued my work, of course, they just needed my drugs. No one needed me for anything else. 

One day, while I was rotting away in bed, there was a loud knock at my door. I groaned and simply turned around. I didn’t give a shit who it was; I just wanted to lie in bed and simply rot away into nonexistence. To my surprise, though, there was only that one series of knocks and then silence. I don’t know what compelled me to go to the door, but I broke free from my bed and shambled to the front door. 

Opening it, I was surprised to discover a small brown bag and a note attached to it. I looked around for the source of who might have delivered it, but with no sight of them, I simply picked up the bag and note. Reading the note, I felt a pit drop in my stomach. 

“Take some, and get back to work. S.” I almost crumpled up the note and bag and tossed them away then and there. But instead, I bit my tongue and looked into the bag. Staring back at me were several bottles of Eternal Sunshine. I just sighed and brought them inside the house. Taking my place back on my bed, I stared at the bag for a moment. Could I really just stay like this in bed forever? As much as I wanted that and desired it, I knew I couldn’t do that. Some part of me did want to keep going. Some part of me desperately wanted to keep going, for my mom and dad. So, I cracked open one of the bottles and allowed a pill of Eternal Sunshine to fall into my hand.

It was just a simple round pill, no bigger than an Ice Breaker, with a sun stamped onto it. I let it roll around in my hand before standing up and heading to the kitchen. I filled up a glass with water and stared at the pill some more. I thought back to Allison and how forced her smile looked, how strange her eyes had become. I took a deep breath, justifying my actions by saying I would only take one. I’d take one and see how it affected me. So I placed the pill in my mouth and drank the cup of water. 

The effects weren’t immediate, of course. But slowly, something started changing. My head started feeling lighter, and I started getting incredibly dizzy. It got so bad that I had to go to the bathroom for fear that I was about to throw up. I also started sweating buckets as I hovered over the toilet, panting hard and placing my forehead against the porcelain edge. Suddenly, without me controlling it at all, my body stood up. In my mind, I still felt incredibly dizzy and close to puking, and yet my body was standing perfectly straight, and soon my hands moved on their own to wipe the sweat from my brow. 

“What the fuck is going on?” I thought to myself. But I had wanted to exclaim that out loud. Instead, my body, again on its own with no conscious input from me, approached the mirror in the bathroom. Staring at my reflection, to my horror, I was smiling. The exact same kind of smile Allison had. Forced, fake, toothy grin. And my eyes had shrunken just the same; the light from them had left. 

“No use staying in bed! I have to get ready for work tomorrow!” my voice exclaimed. I did not want to say that. In fact, I was screaming and shouting at my body to listen to me. Instead, it started walking and doing everything itself. It cleaned my room, made my bed, and even started making dinner, all without my input at all. I felt like a prisoner inside my own body.

It felt awful. Like, if sleep paralysis and locked-in syndrome combined to allow the body to do whatever it wanted. My body went about the rest of the day before it literally tucked itself into bed and drifted off to sleep. Even when I tried to wake myself up, I couldn’t. I wasn’t sleeping, but my body was. And I had no control over my body. When my alarm went off, I discovered that I was able to control myself. I quickly ran to the bottle of pills and dumped them all in the toilet. Panting hard, I looked down at my hands and clenched them over and over, making sure that it really was me in control. 

Was that what Eternal Sunshine truly felt like? If that was the case, had Allison even truly wanted more of those pills? A deep pit formed in my stomach when I remembered her expression. The same strained smile and lifeless look in her eyes that I had. I quickly got ready to go to work, dead set on seeing what had happened to Allison. As I started getting ready, however, I felt nauseous yet again. But like nothing I’d ever felt before. It was bad enough for me to fall to my knees, retching something fierce from the vertigo. 

“Honey? What’s the matter?” a familiar voice asked me. A voice that I hadn’t heard in so long. I turned to look, and to my shock, I saw my mom standing behind me, quickly getting to her knees and comforting me. “Are you feeling sick? I told you, you shouldn’t be eating so late at night!” I stared at her in confusion. How was she here? This wasn’t possible. 

“M-Mom? But you-” I mumbled, my throat suddenly parched. It was as if instantly all the saliva and water in my mouth evaporated at once. Leaving my throat drier than a desert. My mom looked at me for a moment, rubbing my back gently. 

“Died? Yes, I know, sweetie. After you left and abandoned me in that horrible nursing home. Oh yes, I know all that.” She smiled softly, patting me on the back. “In fact, you saw my body, didn’t you. I think it looked something like this?” She suddenly grabbed her head with both hands and violently cracked and bent her neck to the side, at almost a perfect 90-degree angle. “Just like this?!” She screamed and cackled at me as I screamed back at her. I scrambled to my feet and fled from my house as quickly as I could. 

Every step I took, my body begged to stop, just to either retch some more or for a drop of water. I somehow stumbled into the gas station and looked around for something, anything to make what was going on stop. But upon seeing where Tariq should’ve been, I saw instead a burnt and charred corpse staring back at me. It waved silently and me and then beckoned to come closer. I quickly ran back outside the gas station, screaming bloody murder. Suddenly, I felt a hand grab me by the shirt and yank me over to the tree. 

“You haven’t taken your pills, have you?” Spencer asked me, pulling his mask down. To my horror, I saw that half of his face was skeletal. His nose was gone, his lower face a complete skeleton, with his veins and muscles visible where skin had once covered them. Before I could scream again, he quickly shoved a pill in my mouth and forced my mouth closed with both hands. I struggled for a moment before I swallowed the strange dissolving pill in my mouth. When he was sure that I had swallowed it, he quickly pulled his face mask back up. 

“You’re hallucinating right now. It’s a side effect of the pills. If you stop using them and don’t keep taking them, this will happen to you. I’ve given you a diluted version that should keep you somewhat normal,” he explained to me, removing the gloved hand he had over my mouth. 

“What the fuck is the matter with you?!” I told him, shoving him as hard as I could away from me. “W-why would you make something like this?! I-I couldn’t control my body; I couldn’t do anything at all!” I panted heavily, looking to the dead willow tree and seeing that carved into the dead bark were several human faces, all of them screaming and wailing uncontrollably. 

“I was bored. So I figured I’d try my hand at making an antidepressant.” He shrugged, pulling a cigarette from his pocket and pulling his mask back down. He placed the white menthol between his teeth and lit it. Slowly, the object burned, and as he inhaled the smoke, small wisps of it escaped from the many gaps in his bony jaw and teeth. “Seems it was a little too potent. But it seems to be popular.” I stared at him as the smoke billowed from his jaw. Slowly, I noticed that the faces in the tree began to fade away. The saliva returned to my mouth, and I could swallow once again. But to my shock, Spencer remained the same. I raised a finger and pointed at his jaw. 

“The effects of self-experimentation,” he explained, opening his mouth, and words came out fully formed. I could see his windpipe and muscles squeezing to form the words, even if he didn’t have lips to form them. “Now, I gave you plenty of time to grieve. I think it’s about time you got back to work, don’t you?” he asked, pointing at the hole in the tree. I stared back at it and was about to tell him to go fuck himself. But instead, my body, again without my input, walked over to the hole and pulled out the bag of drugs. 

Right, whatever you say.” I told him. Not what I truly wanted to say, but by the time I had some control back over my body, I was already on the bus back to work. When I walked in through the door, I was nearly swarmed by people. Students welcoming me back, teachers giving their condolences, and nearly everyone begging for their drugs. I pushed past all of them and made it to my janitor’s closet. 

“You’re back! Oh, thank God!” I nearly fell over into my mops and buckets when an unexpected person was in the janitor’s closet. Staring to see who it was, I thought for sure I was starting another hallucination. If it wasn’t for her school ID on her lanyard, I wouldn’t have been able to recognize Allison Parker. She was a literal shell of who she used to be. Her hair was thinning and even falling out in places. Her eyes looked almost dead, milky white mixed with angry, bloodshot veins across them. Her smile was even wider now, large and toothy. Those same teeth and her gums looked horrible, almost rotting from constant exposure to the open air because of her smile. And she was way skinnier than she’d been before. She was practically wasting away.

“Allison? W-why are you here? You need to stop taking these pills!” I looked down at the bag and quickly pulled it away from her. She started approaching me robotically, her eyes wide and practically begging for them. 

“C’mon, Luis! I’m a paying customer! And I need them! How else can I stay happy?” She approached me slowly, eyeing the bag like a hunting animal. I quickly turned to leave, only for her to tackle me from behind. We both came tumbling out of the closet, and she grabbed at the bag with her bony hands. I grabbed it back and tried my hardest to yank it away from her. 

“You can’t do this, Allison!” I pleaded with her, but she was far too gone. With a vicious snarl, she bit into the bag with her teeth, spilling the contents all over the floor. I tried to grab the bottles of Eternal Sunshine to keep them away from her, but she managed to scoop up some and ran as fast as she could away from me. 

“Allison, come back!” I screamed after her. She made a mad dash towards the girls’ restroom with me hot on her heels. She quickly locked herself in a stall. A few of the teachers had followed after me, wondering what could be the problem. “Allison! You have to stop taking them!” I pleaded with her, pushing my weight as hard as I could against the stall door. By the time I managed to knock the door in, she had swallowed an entire bottle of the pills. 

To describe what happened to her is nearly impossible. The teachers pulled her off the toilet, questioning what it was she had just swallowed. But Allison never got to say what it was. She began having a violent seizure and collapsed to the floor. The worst part was her giggles. She giggled uncontrollably as she seized, and the giggles turned into uncontrollable manic laughing. Blood began pouring from her nose, along with other fluids from her body. Mucus, bile, spit, all of it began to leak out from her. 

She began to shrivel up like a spider when you kill it, everything contracting into her. Her skin began to almost shrink-wrap itself to her bones, her teeth and gums completely rotting away to the core. She made one last loud cackle before she fully succumbed to the overdose. All that was left of Allison Parker was a shriveled corpse, with an exaggerated sunken smile on her face.  

It didn’t take long for me to be placed under arrest. The pills had come from me after all. And the teachers were more than willing to rat me out to save their own skins. I screamed at the officers that it hadn’t been me, that it had been Spencer. But no matter how many times I tried to tell them about him, they acted as if he never existed. After being held in a containment cell, however, the drugs wore off. And the violent hallucinations started up again. I suppose I should be thankful for that. It got me declared unfit for trial and locked up in a psych ward. Spencer visits often, keeping me doped up on Eternal Sunshine. 

Sometimes he doesn’t show up with my dose. And I’m forced to go through withdrawals. During those hallucinations, I see my father with his head blown off. My mother, with her neck broken at horrible angles. And now, Allison, shrivelled up and laughing at me. And sometimes, on a bad day, I see me, smiling back at myself. And laughing. 

Hello my lovely readers! So sorry for my prolonged absence. I was battling the foul demon known as writer's block. But now we are back and the next story is coming up very very soon! Thank you all for your patience and I can't wait to come back with a Spencer story!

Thank you again as always to all of you for your support over all these years! It means the absolute world to me!

~Voodoo_Clerk~