Back in his apartment, Pete was on his laptop looking at any therapists within a forty-five minute drive. Finding someone called Alessa, who specialises in PTSD and trauma, he looked at her calendar and found there was a 16 month wait for the first possible session. He clicked off it and found a more non-specialised therapist with only a three month wait period and booked on.
With a great sigh he closed the laptop and rubbed his face. "You alright man?" A voice called out, it was stretched out and relaxed. It belonged to a blonde woman with un-cuffed cargo trousers and a tie-dye t-shirt holding a bong.
"I have no idea, I feel like crap, I wanna fall asleep but I feel like I can do more about my situation… I saw him today Kay, he chased me down a never-ending path and I woke up about to run into a main road." Pete started pacing, staring at the floor the entire time. A silent moment passes and he pauses, a disturbing thought passes through his head. He slowly turned towards his roommate, paranoid if she will be grinning when he looks at her.
He turns the final point with his head and sees her lighting her bong, still stoned and only having a relaxed smile on her face afterwards. "That's rough man, you need therapy or something." She said before taking another hit from it.
"Thanks" Pete muttered. Kay left to go back to her room, smoke trails following her like a fog. With peace in the room, Pete leaned back in his chair and once again tried to push the images in his mind out.
Creak
He spun to look at the front door, the lock was broken, no it was sliced perfectly through the gap in the door. Worst yet was a figure stood in front of it, a middle aged woman, her fingers interlocked below her naval with a tilted head bearing the same crooked grin.
"Oh god no, mum?" Pete stood from his chair and backed away, locked into painful eye contact with a twisted memory of his youth. He stumbled over the chair leg, knocking himself onto the floor, "Go away! You're not here, you're not real!" He commanded, still trying to push away from the image. A moment later and the sound of a door opening could be heard, "Pete are you ok? Did you have another episode?" Kay walked over from her room and grabbed Pete's attention.
"No wait! It's not safe!" He shouted out, pointing over at the door. He turned his head towards it, just for it to be in pristine condition with no unwanted guests. "Oh god I'm losing it." He covered his face and lay still on the floor, completely shamed and frustrated at hisself for believing that something was actually there!
Kay calmly walked over and patted his shoulder, "Hey it's alright, it's alright. Tell me what you saw, it'll be like trip sitting." She crouched down to his level and gave a polite smile.
After a moment to catch his breath Pete spoke, "It just felt so real… the lock was broken and… it was my mum, just stood there with that same smile!" He was still looking down at the floor, wallowing in his own misery.
Kay's grip reassuringly tightened for a moment, "Well how do you know?"
"Know what?" Pete looked up to meet her face-to-face. Kay's smile was slowly turning cold and wide, her eyes lost that glossy look from the drugs and gained a painful clarity.
She leant over to his ear and whispered, "That it isn't real?" Pete pushed her away and shouted, begging for her to leave him alone. Pushing away from the grinning figure again he checked behind him for any kind of weapon to improvise, gripping pieces of loose clothing on the floor he started throwing recklessly ahead of him. A moment of frenzied action took over him and once he regained clarity he was in an empty, albeit messy, room.
He shakily stood up and walked to his room, locking the door shut. He sat on the side of his bed, placed his headphones on and started sobbing. His phone buzzed and he ignored it, far from the correct state of mind to hold a conversation, the only piece of mind he has is that despite everything he is still home.
——-
Hunched over the desk, snoring peacefully was Pete. His hair seemed a few shades lighter since his deep dive into 'schizophrenia and the mind' late last night, and he's came out of it with nothing substantially good to say. He came upon an article released three years ago in France, specifically on smiling-based hallucinations.
Familiarity in the subject brought nothing but dread.
"7 days, I've had 2… next wednesday I'm suppose to die? Jesus Christ, I'll pray to any God, any being that will get me out of this!" He called out, for no response to be given. "Makes sense, this all seems violently unholy. Doubt any God would touch it with a ten-foot pole." With a sigh, he pressed up from the desk and opened the blinds, deciding to at least get outdoors somewhat until he can get his therapy and meds.
Locking the door behind him, he walked over to the Costa that he used to work at, still at early hours the café was empty. Getting a hot chocolate disguised as a coffee he once again started searching for more hints on the hallucination driven suicides in the article. Apparently after one year, the weekly suicides stopped abruptly, there's some graphs of work efficiency and educational achievement that is perpendicular to the suicides dropping, though nothing surprising.
The concerning part is that apparently one of the patients caught a ferry over to england, landing further down south than Whitby though. However it wouldn't be surprising how if this weird suicide virus managed to travel north to Whitby and somehow got a hold of him. He knew it sounded strange and outlandish, but this entire time he could just tell that something was watching him and relishing in his misery, his trauma.
With a plan and a backup in place, that is to find the chain of suicides and how it originated, ideally how to stop it. And obviously if this is all a severe psychotic episode then he will check himself into a psychiatric unit. The first step is to find who killed themself in front of Jed, and so on. How hard would it be to track the actions of an off the grid, recently deceased homeless man?