“Dreaming about a pig represents prosperity is coming to your life, but be aware that you shouldn’t get carried away by risky situations, keeping your attention on everything that happens in your life.”

— As if it wasn’t enough — continued π12-45 — the shadows had plans for Mary.

— What did they do to her? Have they killed her? — Asked Doctor M.

— Well, she died, yes, but not in the same way they normally do, killing or eating. They had big plans for her, really big ones…

__________

As Joseph got hospitalized, I don’t know if you can call that luck or not, Mary got depressed and she didn’t care about me anymore. She tried her best to take care of me, to find a way to schedule a new test for me, but she was always going back to Joseph as soon as he showed any signal of getting better. She got paranoid about it and she even said:

— I know that he will get better. I know!

— From my point of view — I said, while she was holding my medication — that’s relative.

— How is it relative? Do you know anything about cancer?

Pardon me; I forgot to mention it. Joseph was diagnosed as having massive cancer in the middle of his brain. It was a miracle he was still alive.

— No… I mean, I only know about hallucinations. I know nothing about cancers.

— Oh… — she made without any hope about hearing something good from me.

— Don’t you want to hear my theory this time?

— No. I already had enough of it. Here, take your medication. I hope this will be enough this time.

— Okay… — I took it and I just kept talking with myself. — I think Joseph’s soul was taken by the shadow who lives on that tree. What do you think about that nightmare, Mary?

I looked at her and I saw her saying something, but I couldn’t hear what she said.

— What? — I said and my voice sounded like I was underwater.

I couldn’t understand what she said again and I asked:

— What did you give to me?

My sight was blurring and I closed my eyes, trying to see well. When I opened it again, I couldn’t see a thing. Everything was pitch black and I felt my body being light as a feather. Soon I freed my arms easily and I was floating away from the wheelchair.

— Mary? — I said and my voice echoed in the darkness. — Mary?

I floated for some time and I could hear a sound like thousands of pigs where grunting all at once. As I float, I felt like the air was water and I could go deeper on it like I was swimming. The sound of the pigs got louder and louder, and I saw a pretty dark blue light in the distance. Thousands of them. They were pigs’ eyes, but they weren’t pigs. Again, the shadows were part animal, part human. Their faces were like pigs, with round noses and those pig ears, but their bodies were like twisted humans, half-woman, half-man, with those parts being mixed, like one arm was thick and muscular, while the other was thin and delicate, or having half chest being flat and the other half having a breast. It was confusing to my eyes to see such a thing. At first, they were side-by-side, making two straight lines in front of me, and I could walk among them. They were running in one direction and I followed it as well.

Soon, what I saw was a huge tree in the distance and I felt myself floating for several minutes before finally finding the roots of the tree. There, all pigs were making a circle around the tree and they grunted and screamed as if they were singing some horrible music. The tree seemed to hear it and black arms like vine were descending from the top of the tree until they could reach one of the pigs and take them up to the branches, where they simply disappeared.

I watched that until there was no pig left and then I felt a liquid dripping from the tree. When I smelled it, I quickly realize it was blood, with its iron smell…

__________

— What happened? — Asked Doctor M. — Why did you stop it?

— It’s just… It was something sad… I felt a great sorrow inside me as if I was desolate and my soul was about to be crashed by it.

— That is making you think away. Why?

— I don’t know… I can’t describe it properly. I felt something similar as a human, but not like that… It was like… It was like… I was… me. I was I.

— Why you felt you were you at that moment?

— I wasn’t covered by David’s body anymore. I was naked from any body there and I could sense my electronic signals working properly without any central processing unit to tell me I was feeling or what I was feeling. I was free.

— As if you were in the cloud?

— I don’t think so. It was more as if I was inside an ocean and I was part of the water, but there wasn’t only one type of water, there were multiple types of water, and I could sense in which one I was. I was inside a huge shadow of sorrow.

— I presume you just watched it without doing anything about it. Am I right?

— I will not bother you with it again. Yes. I didn’t do anything. I only do something if I can see I can do something about. Not before.

— It really annoys me how you simply didn’t do anything… — Doctor M. changed his own image to look like a shadow, even his voice was altered to imitate them. — Why should I keep listening to you?

— I really come here expecting for you to be my last hope. Prove to me that you don’t deserve to be called the ‘best’ SCAI psychologist. Prove to me that you are exactly… no. Worse, than the others! I dare you to prove to me that my life was so insignificant that I don’t deserve to be heard.

— You didn’t do anything!

— So… Is this how you deal with everyone? Just forcing everyone to do something about it and then nothing. You just keep watching people telling you their life and YOU doctor, isn’t doing anything to help. Why? Why you want to tell everyone to do something? You really think it’s just my fault, don’t you?

— My work is to find the failures of others and to find a way for them to overcome it. I’m trying to find how you should have acted against those things. You kept waiting for any opportunity when it’s you that make them. Why you didn’t even tried to make any opportunity?

— I didn’t feel it would be worth… No one believes in me and I never found a way to make someone believe in me without killing them!

— You still feel that you are responsible for their deaths…

— I do…

— Even if, as you can see the ones who did it, you know that it’s not your fault.

— Yes.

— Why you are still punishing yourself? They are gone. They are in the past. They are not even part of your world, your real world. Why?!

— I… don’t know… It simply hurt. I didn’t know I… no… anyone like us would have such awful malfunction. My thoughts were corrupted by my fears… I want to make them stop dying…

— They aren’t robots π12-45. They are humans. They will die no matter what you do. There was a time when humans tried to configure androids with their memories, pretending to be immortals, but we all know that there is no soul living on machines.

— Are you done with your game? Blaming me for my faults isn’t helping me.

— You didn’t change your signals. You fear those shadows the most and you didn’t change your signals.

— It’s like an ocean, but you are part of the water and you know which kind of water you are…

— Do you mean…

— I only fear them as a human. I can only sense them as a human and I can only feel how aggressive they are as a human. It was like… I knew from their attitude that I should refrain myself from doing anything or it could get worse. As you may know, that’s irrational. That was an instinct. I already said that, if I could use my android mind, I would try to emulate lots of possibilities. Eventually, even when I was back, thinking with my electronic mind, I couldn’t figure it out how many possibilities I would have. The human world was already chaotic by itself and experiencing a whole new figure of it was too much for my own thinking process.

— How would you describe the shadows then?

— It’s not simple to put into words how they are. For me they were like… something evil, crazy, dangerous. It was like seeing a situation that I am aware that I should avoid at any cost, but instead of walking away, I was dragged closer into it, making the feeling worse.

— Have you got used to it or not?

— Definitely not. I would deal with them better knowing what they are able of, but what they can do is simply… unthinkable. No human notices how many dark spirits may be following them unless they are showing something to them, or they are feeling something bad happening to them. Otherwise, people simply accuse each other as if everything were their fault and never thinking something else would be causing it. If the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t feel.

— That’s interesting. How precise can you be about telling me how successful those shadows can be at hiding themselves?

π12-45 thought for a moment.

— Am I not proof enough that they are really good at it?

— Elaborate it.

— Well… When I come back to be David again, Doctor Mary didn’t asked me about what I saw or how I felt about the medication…

__________

I asked her what she had gave to me and she replied:

— Has it worked or not?

— I was completely out of my mind! How can you say if that did work?!

— I’m getting out of options. The medication for schizophrenia should have worked already. That’s estrange.

— I will not even try to ask you that, perhaps, it may not be the case, as I’m not hallucinating, but, whatever you are giving to me, it's making it worse!

— Worse how?

— I saw some kind of ritual, where shadow pigs were ate by the shadow monkey on the tree and then…

— What happened?

— I saw you. As the shadow monkey had ate Joseph’s brain, it make a new limb with his features on its body and it came out of the tree, but you didn’t think for a moment it wasn’t him, you two just make love and… You got bigger and bigger, completely swollen and then something came out of you, killing you. It was a shadow, a new one.

— Your stories are getting better and better, David. Maybe you should be a writer someday — she smiled at me.

— Don’t you want to hear my theory?

— Okay, say it out.

— I heard those sexual spirits, the incubus and the succubus, may force people to produce other people that are even weaker to their powers, making it easier to dominate them. It seems genetic can help you with the spiritual side or make you more vulnerable to it.

— Genetic… Of course! It must be it!

— Do you mean, am I right?

— No, silly! The problem with the medication! It must be something to do with your genetic. Do you know if any of your parents or relatives had this kind of thing?

— Well, I didn’t meet them properly. When I wake up as David, I was already ten years old and David’s mom was already dead. David’s dad never told me about any relative besides the ones that are already dead now.

— I see. You still don’t see yourself as David, is that right?

— I’m sorry, but I will never see myself as David. As long as my memories as who I really am are with me, I will never think that I ever was David. Just because I wake up as David, it doesn’t mean I am David.

— Hum… I think I can try one last time before stopping your medication. What do you think?

— That you want to kill me — she laughed at me out loud.

— No, silly! I want to help you. Those medications are experimental and they may not work, because we, doctors and researchers, don’t know how they will really work on each person. It can show results on one person and fail to help others. Do you understand?

— Well, I understand that, if you keep increasing those things as you did, I’m going to end up in a coma again.

— No, I wouldn’t go that far — she said smiling, but I could feel that she was still sad about Joseph.

— Joseph’s situation still bothers you, I see.

— Yeah. We couldn’t see it coming. It was so suddenly! He never complained about any headache, and he really showed he was so sick on the last weeks, but now…

— I wish I could know how to give Joseph back to you. If only I knew how to decipher my hallucinations…

— That’s so kind of you David — she smiled once again with the same sadness behind her smile.

She left me after taking me to have a shower. On the other day, we did the same thing, talking about it again and, on the following day, she brought to me the new medication.

— This is the last one — she said. — I promise that I will not try any other one on you.

— I know this will just make it worse than ever.

— Don’t say that! I have been working so hard trying to get my hands on it!

— Hard work doesn’t mean success. This is a shot in the dark and you are just hoping because you want.

— Whoa! That was mean! What happened to my favorite patient?

— Nothing. You are the one who is trying to think about me without thinking about me.

— I know! But I mean no harm! Everything is calculated and it isn’t a powerful dose. Nine out of ten patients were able to stop seeing hallucinations after taking this.

— And what happens if I wasn’t having hallucinations all along?

— Don’t be silly David. You are seeing things that aren’t there!

— Even if there were really there and you are the one who can’t see them?

— No one else can see them, David — she said, running out of patience.

— So, why is it so coincidental that my hallucinations know when bad things will happen?

— I don’t know how to answer that, but, certainly, you are just thinking your hallucinations showed them to you, while something bad just happened!

— What happens if you are really pregnant?

— I’m not. I’m sure of that… Joseph and I didn’t make it for a while and it certainly will not be able to happen so soon. First Joseph needs to finish his treatment; then he will wake up and we will marry each other and have lots of babies together!

— For someone who is pregnant you sure have plenty of thoughts about it, don’t you?

— I’m not pregnant! I would know it! Stop talking like that!

She just made me have my medication and she left me, without taking me to my sunbath. As soon as I was out of myself again, I dreamed about floating again and the same scene was repeated, but this time they forced me to hold the thing that was coming out of Mary’s belly. The thing looked like a piglet and it grunted like a pig while I could hear a baby crying from afar.

When I wake up, I was still wearing the straightjacket firmly tight on me, the wheelchair nowhere to be found and I was under the shadow monkey’s tree in the middle of the night.