The October Amaryllis: Everything Has a Cost

Chapter 9 - January 1st, 2015 8:05 A.M.

After another vomitous journey inside a dumpster for careful measure that made me feel like I was being torn apart, I ended up five years into the past. I decided to make up for all the years I wasted before I knew my dad had cancer. I never forgave myself for not spending more time with him, so I figured this would be my atonement. Why did I travel five years into the past specifically? The doctors who first diagnosed him told us that stomach cancer usually develops unnoticed over many years, so I figured five years would be a good time to travel back to. Well… from my present anyway. I was wiping the slate clean.

The first thing that I noticed was the height of most furniture; it seemed to be much taller than I was, which made little sense to me. Had everything become more elevated, or had I instead become smaller? Perhaps time travel had changed my perception of size, I thought for a brief moment. A way to describe what I was experiencing is that it was reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland syndrome. I’m weird; I know all about these obscure diseases and disorders, such as Morgellons and Cotard’s syndrome. And although I am in no way qualified to diagnose myself, I would say that I have a histrionic personality disorder. I exhibit pretty much every sign. For example, I can be quite manipulative at times. I often describe my problems as if they’re the worst ever when really they’re quite minor. I also constantly crave positive attention; it’s the one time I actually feel good. Man, I genuinely hate myself sometimes… Why couldn’t I have been born normal? Instead, my DNA had to give me all the worst traits. Narcissism, greed, apathy, I’ve got it all.

I took a step forward and felt that walking had suddenly become alien; it was as if I was suddenly in a new body that I did not belong to. I can’t explain it no matter how hard I try; it just felt wrong. It was as if I was learning to walk all over again. It was what I imagined being drunk was like, although I’ve never actually tried alcohol in my life. I’m sorta straight edge to tell you the truth. I’ve seen what alcohol did to my uncle on my mom’s side. He… Well, I’ll get into his story another time. Long story short, he would become verbally and physically abusive while drunk. I have a cousin who’s a month younger than me named Grace, and she would often tell me about h0w he’d go into psychotic rages and break countless plates only to yell at her to pick them all up, threatening to beat the crap out of her if she didn’t. And she was only seven at the time… He even hit me twice before I learned to fight back. He’s a lot better now, but he was an absolute monster when I was a child. If he ever touches my cousin again, I swear I’ll kill him; I don’t mind doing twenty-five years for her. I never saw her as my cousin; I always saw her as the sister I never had. I was supposed to have one named Victoria, but my mom had a miscarriage, and so she was never born. I still remember hearing her cry for hours in her room. I visited her after a little while and told her how much she meant to me. She was fiddling with her rosary when I came in; she always did that when upset.

How strange…

That was when I was hit with the painful realization that I had reverted back to being ten; it wasn’t at all like in Back to the Future where there were two different copies of the same person; instead, I had become a younger version of myself but with the memories of an older me.

Calm down, all you have to do is act like an average ten-year-old, and you won’t seem off. But what was I like when I was ten?

That was when I remembered the posters. When I was a kid, I had about twenty posters in my room of every show, movie, and book that I liked. I had about five Stars Wars: The Clone Wars posters in it. They meant so much to me that I refused to let my mom paint over my walls. The only posters I have in my room now are of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, two of my favorite animes of all time. The first poster is of Spike Spiegel saying, “Whatever happens, happens,” and the second is of Mugen crouching. Call me a weeb, but I can play the saxophone part to Space Lion from the former series. That piece gives me shivers every time. I even cry listening to it sometimes because it reminds me of my dad and all of our beautiful memories. My dad gave me so much, yet I never appreciated him until he died. Isn’t that how it usually is? People will probably talk a bunch of horse crap about how great of a person I was after I die. Yeah, great, I’m about as great as a kidney stone.

I took one step upstairs before I heard the worst creak of my life. We arguably had the creakiest stairs in existence until my parents replaced them when I was thirteen. Trying to climb up them right now would have been disastrous. My parents hate being woken up, especially my mother. What she’d do is she would cuss you out in Italian, which is the language her parents speak. She would turn into a Bronx housewife when swearing, it was hilarious, but I didn’t dare laugh. She would also threaten to bring my uncle over in Italian by saying, “Vuoi che porti lo zio Dante a lezione?” Basically, she said something along the lines of “Would you like for me to bring Uncle Dante over so he can teach you a lesson?” She sounds terrible, but my mother means well; she’s sacrificed so much for me. She’s not perfect, and if she was, I’d probably hate her. I hate perfection; it’s nothing more than an illusion. Unfortunately, fantasies are far more pleasant than the truth. The truth will never be popular because most of you bastards don’t want to hear it.

No, no, they’ll wake up and yell at me. But what do I do?

I went back to the kitchen and noticed that I was holding something in my right hand the entire time. It was so dark with the curtains drawn that I could hardly make out anything but the furniture. Squinting at it, I could make out that it said Intertiza on the top.

Oh, yeah, that’s why I came here, to begin with…

After remembering that it was water-soluble and that my dad loved hot cocoa more than life itself, I decided to make him some with the pill dissolved in the mug.

I soon found that was easier said than done since he kept the cocoa powder on the uppermost cabinet in the kitchen about six feet up. He probably kept it up there so nobody else could reach it, to be honest with you.

“This really shouldn’t be this hard…” I whispered, annoyed, as I grabbed a dining chair and stood upon it to grab the powder. I nearly fell off right away as the chair rocked from side to side unevenly.

Please, I beg you don’t fall.

Once I finally got the unsweetened powder, I poured about two tablespoons of it into a mug, shoved the pill deep inside it, coating my fingers with the powder as a result, and poured hot water inside.

I let out a sigh of massive relief just as I heard the click of a light switch in the kitchen. My cover was now blown.

Oh, great…