Neon woke up to the early rays of sunlight penetrating through the thin, purely decorative curtains of the ward, in the early hours of the morning that some would prefer to call very late night. There was an unspoken serenity in the air, a calm, humid feeling of a sleepy, heavy world waking up from its slumber.

He closed his eyes just for a moment, but, when he opened them, the sun was already up, and the corridor was filled with sound: not the sound of the facility, but rather, the sounds of the outside channeled through the open windows through the corridors. He got up from bed in a single jump, laughing aloud to him, a pleasant warmness in his chest. He felt like the world was giving him a chance, a chance to do better, a chance to feel all right.

And then he realised it was the effect of the antidepressants.

Every morning would begin with pills, from now on. Every dinner would be followed by more pills. And, before he could go to bed, there would be more pills still. Neon got up and looked at the morning pills before swallowing them thoughtfully. He glanced around for a clock, but there wasn’t one. Was it because of ticking? Ticking was mentally taxing, and for those who…

Neon remembered that there wasn’t really a set time for the appointment: it was whenever he was ready. He left the ward, still dressed in a tracksuit, and walked on towards the now-familiar door. The words Michael Rude MD adorned the golden-like plank on the door. What a weird surname for a doctor. He knocked at the door.

The doctor was wearing small, rectangular spectacles which clashed so much with his plump, round face. He smiled upon Neon’s entering offered him a seat in the big beige armchair. Neon took a seat and immediately felt himself drowning in the softness of the chair. “Good morning, doc.”

“Good morning to you too, Nigel…” The doctor looked through the papers on his deck. “Neon. I mean, Neon. How are you? How are you feeling? Is there anything you want to tell me?”

“I’m fine, I’m feeling fine because of the pills you’re giving me, and no, I don’t think I’ll tell you anything unless you ask specifically.” Neon shrugged. There. Can I go now? Though, the very idea was hypocritical: he liked it here. Well, not really: home was much better than the hospital, but here, he knew he was under supervision. He knew he couldn’t hurt anyone here.

“Have you had time for morning exercise?” The doctor touched his spectacles, which were still out of place on his black, plump, sweaty face.

“I don’t do morning exercise,” Neon replied, “and, besides, they wouldn’t let me have weights here.”

“Do you know what nations have the fewest cases of psychological issues?” the black man asked, putting his spectacles on the table. Without waiting for Neon to answer, he replied to his own question, “The Chinese and the Japanese. Ever wonder why?” Again, without waiting for Neon to answer, he said contentedly, “Because their days revolve around breathing exercise, physical exercise, and a healthy diet.” He frowned. “Well, at least they used to be. I haven’t been in the East for over ten years.”

Neon sighed and rubbed his nose. “Exercise cannot kill the thoughts.” He looked around, wishing that there was a blue ‘smoking allowed’ sign on the wall. Like in that show about the Sixties. What a show, really.

“The ‘thoughts’? You haven’t mentioned any ‘thoughts’ before,” the doctor said with interest, resting his elbows on the table, his hands clashed in a tight lock.

Neon frowned. “Yeah, because we only talked, like, twice?” He took a deep breath. “Look, I am not insane. I am not a maniac, nor am I paranoid. I don’t hear voices and I don’t see hallucinations. It’s just that, sometimes, I have those nasty, obsessive thoughts that refuse to leave my head and they kinda paralyse me.” The man steadied his tone as he sensed that it was getting out of control. “Listen, I am not an autist. I can communicate with people all right. But sometimes the thoughts will arrive, you know what I’m saying?, and I can’t talk or walk or do pretty much anything until they leave.”

“And do you have any ways to remedy the situation?” the doctor wondered, putting his head on his handlock. “Some way you make the thoughts go away?”

“If I sit in place enough, they’ll just disperse eventually,” Neon confessed, looking around frantically, searching for the sacred blue sign. “Sometimes I do things to assuade them… Eh, I’m not an idiot,” he said suddenly. “I know it sounds like OCD.”

“It certainly does,” the doctor agreed, “but you knowing the problem isn’t a way to solve the problem. It isn’t even the first step, contrary to what some may say. Sometimes treating a mental illness,” he took out a pack of cigarettes, “is easier when the patient doesn’t know what we’re treating. Sometimes knowing,” he took out a metal lighter, immediately filling the air with the smell of petrol, “makes the patient worry even more.” Finally, following Neon’s hopeful gaze, he handed him the pack and the lighter. “They would fine me for smoking indoors, or letting you smoke on hospital premises, but apparently, I’m their number one shrink and co-founder.” He laughed as Neon tried to light his cigarette frantically. “Returning to your problem, mere OCD very rarely makes people commit suicide.”

“Look,” Neon mumbled, inhaling the smoke blissfully. It has been too long. “I know I feel like I’m getting on the defensive here, but I really knew I wouldn’t die.”

“How so?” the plump man took the spectacles from the table and put them on his nose. “Did someone… else tell you that?”

Neon glared at his doctor through the thin haze of smoke. “I told you: I don’t hear voices. It’s just that…” He took a long, thoughtful drag. The doctor waited, then sighed and took the pack from Neon’s hands, extracting a cigarette for himself. “It’s a way to counter the ‘thoughts’... I guess I can call them obsessions?” The black man nodded, lighting his own cigarette eagerly. Neon took a brief glance, wondering why all smoking men he’d met had such wise, painful, thoughtful eyes when they took a drag off their cigarette or cigar or pipe. “I have the so-called ‘set-in-stone’ moments. Bear with me here.” Neon took a look at the table, where a piece of paper and a pen lay before him. A pen, not a pencil. If I make a mistake, there’s no way to erase it. “Let’s say, there is this ‘moment’, okay…” He drew a horizontal line. “That everything will be fine with me and my sister, Vinyl…” He glanced up. “See? Nothing that happens can change this ‘moment’. If I had died then, that would have changed it. And since change is impossible, then my death is also impossible.”

The doctor took a long, thoughtful look at Neon, then sighed and put the pack of cigarettes away. “My view is a little clearer now,” he said, waving his hand in the air to disperse cigarette smoke. “Regarding your condition, I mean. However, I am afraid I can’t let you go yet. We’ll start giving you OCD medication, and you’ll tell me tomorrow how it affects you. The antidepressants are here to stay. And so are you,” he said pointedly, no matter how Neon tried to non-verbally protest. “If you need to talk at any time, or just feel like going for a smoke, I’m here in my room.”

Only now did Neon take a closer look at the doctor’s workplace: in the corner, there was a bookshelf, and a wide sofa next to the far wall. A bookcase lined the same wall, and there was a tiny table with the remains of a cake on it. Apparently, this was not just a cabinet: this was a dwelling.

“Thank you, doc,” Neon stood up. I guess. “I don’t know if you did anything to thank you for, psych-wise, but at least thank you for the cigarette.”

“You’re welcome, Nigel.” Catching the glare, the doctor quickly amended his form of addressing, “Neon. I mean, Neon. Sorry, still getting used to you.”

Neon nodded and departed, closing the door softly behind him. The doctor stood up and walked to the window, rotating the pack of cigarettes in his hands. The hot day was smiling with the sun at his window. He sighed and took out a cigarette. “This is what happens when you take an old country nigger and make him fly an aeroplane…”

***

Frederic felt strangely elated as he marched up the street in the direction of the outskirts. A hearty meal of two bagels and bacon pancakes lay merrily in his stomach, warming him up in this otherwise surprisingly chilly afternoon.

The city flew past him as he measured the dry asphalt with his giant steps, people disappearing behind him forever as he passed them. There was a constant blur of faces, a hectic downstream of noises and visuals rushing in one direction, a river of faces, surprised, tranquil, mesmerised, exhausted. The city was breathing with summer madness, and Frederic inhaled in, savoured it, obtained the madness to make his own - and to disintegrate within it.

Like notes flowing one past another to form a melody, images floated before his eyes. Here, a man in a threepiece suit, a shade of diligence covering his face, a timeless, ageless man trying to fit into the new age. A woman in tight leather pants that seemed a questionable fashion choice in such weather, jogging, or, rather, pretending to jog as she slurped some no doubt healthy liquid from a brandless plastic bottle. Plastic destroys the environment? No, are you kidding? Plastic is fantastic.

The city’s sleeping cycles had been ruined long ago, and it half-blinked with its sleepy lights, wondering when the hell the sun had risen, half-yawned in expectation of a midday nap. But Frederic was wide awake, merry and joyful, a juggly trot in his step, a man with a mission. A man who knew where he had to be and what he had to do.

He took a sip of his hot cocoa as his legs carried him towards the skyscraper which was an unusual, sore sight on the outskirts. Drawing near to the building, he threw the rest of the cocoa away in the dustbin and entered the office building.

Seventeen floors later, he was standing, grinning, before a transparent glass door, with a plank above it reading, Silvester Quill and Partners. “Hi, Daisy,” he greeted the secretary with a wave of his head. “How’re our boys? Still winning the tournament?”

“Ah, Freddie!” Daisy, a lean, sad woman of about forty, shook her head in a manner native to those middle-aged women who are stuck in the same place for ages with no prospects or career opportunities, with a crappy love life and a weird hobby to keep them going. “The Machetes have been losing for three matches straight. Don’t know what’s gotten into them!”

Frederic offer his best fake apologetic smile as she disappeared into the maze of corridors. The choice of planning was weird, if not straight out of a madman’s plan: countless narrow, short corridors intertwined like paths in an ant nest, with two or three doors on each side of the respective corridor. If one were to traverse these corridors by themselves, they would, not doubt, get lost the first dozen times. Of course, Frederic had been here more than a dozen times.

“Hi, Silver.” Frederic entered the office without knocking, immediately spotting the new vintage-like gramophone on the little coffee table in the corner. He passed to the gramophone without looking at the man lounging in the black leather chair behind the fine redwood desk. Under closer inspection, the gramophone turned out to be a hoax; well, partly a hoax, for, while it was suited for playing vinyl records, it had a USB port and an AUX slot. “Ah, I see, your new sound set is just as fake as you are.”

“So pleased to see you too, Freddie.” The man rose, revealing completely bare feet, which clashed so violently with his threepiece suit and stern grey tie and moderate cufflinks. “Now, I know you never visit me ‘just because’ - and neither do I ever visit you ‘just because’, so let’s put pleasantries aside and what. Do you want?”

“I want,” Frederic looked away from the gramophone and into the man’s green, thoughtful eyes, “to re-register a label. Right now it’s a partnership and I want to be the sole shareholder. So I need you,” he pointed at the man, who ran his palm through his short, black, wavy hair, “to do that for me, Silver.”

The man huffed and looked away, coincidentally at the gramophone. “That’s pricey. But something tells me you want me to do that for free.” Frederic nodded eagerly. “And why would I do that?”

“Because,” Frederic pointed at the man again, “you owe me one.”

The man sighed and walked towards the little glass cabinet, fishing out a bottle of Scotch whisky. Silently, he raised a glass in Frederic’s direction.

The pianist frowned. “Honestly, Silver. Whisky in the morning? What’s next? Hookers in a cake?” He rubbed his chin, then laughed. “Oh yeah, that totally happened.”

Paying him no heed, the lawyer poured himself two fingers of whisky and drank it in two big, pleasant gulps. Seeing Frederic’s disapproval, he merely laughed. “Oh come on, it’s ten-thirty, for God’s sake.” He sighed and placed the glass down. “Not many people can say that Silver Quill owes them one.” He looked into Frederic’s eyes with a wise, scrutinising gaze.

Frederic smiled. “Well, I can.”

Silver sighed and walked back to his desk. He sat down in his leather chair, setting aside some papers. Finally, he took up a pen. “I have an Anton Piller on my hands and I’m expecting unwanted guests.”

He put the pen down again, then took it up once more. “How would you like your label registered?”

***

Night had fallen over the city, deep darkness enveloping the streets in its silky cocoon, a midsummer night’s madness doing the cha cha cha on the scorched asphalt. The bar wasn’t particularly cosy, but then Octavia hadn’t come here to enjoy the view.

She had come here to drink.

Now, there is happy drinking with friends, and there’s thoughtful drinking by yourself (with a plush bear to keep you company, of course), and then there is drinking to drown your sorrows, and there is even desperate drinking, but Octavia was drinking because she had become as numb as it could get, and was trying to wake herself up with alcohol.

Gin followed gin, whisky followed whisky, and rum followed rum. Octavia didn’t care what to drink, she just wanted it to be strong and hit her head in the proper way. You only have a drinking problem if you admit it, Devil Octavia assured, tossing an uneasy smile at Angel Octavia.

Octavia didn’t know what her limit was, probably because she had never tried to drink herself fully to oblivion. This time, however, it felt like an interesting experiment: how much is enough? Downing her twelfth drink, she wondered if she could die of excessive alcohol poisoning. How much is enough to kill yourself with a depressant known for somehow helping with adversity? Is one act of adultery and deceit enough? No, of course not. But, coupled with a life of deceit? Now this is where it gets interesting.

Octavia ordered two whiskies in succession, knowing that this bar was as lacking morality as possible, with bartenders ready to serve teenagers and not care if someone vomited on the floor: they’d just charge them more. She deserved to be here. It was one of the places where she deserved to be.

For a moment, Octavia’s vision grew black, but, in a moment, reality reasserted itself in a shaky kaleidoscope of bright lights, bottles and dirty, smelly patrons. The smell of alcohol, urine, and unwashed bodies was making the cellist retch. Then again, it might be the alcohol inside her making her retch. One way or another, she heard herself say, as if from a distance, “One more for the road and we’re good.”

Octavia always wondered if she would ever get drunk enough not to be able to form coherent thoughts, but it seemed that the effects of alcohol were personal, and this particular effect didn’t seem to strike her. However, as she practically threw the money on the bar counter, she realised that her coordination was suffering terribly. She got up, staggering towards the exit, when she realised there was a set of stairs to brave up before she could escape to the outside.

Carefully, keeping her hand at the wall, she took baby steps, advancing one foot at a time. She was almost to the top when a fat black woman descended the stairs heavily, pushing Octavia aside, followed by a lean black man, bald and handsome, who gave Octavia an apologetic smile. The cellist had a striking sense of deja vu, as if she had seen the couple before. Finally, she was out.

The smell of the night, pristine, clean, airy, assaulted her nose before her eyes could adjust to the dark of the night. The neighbourhood wasn’t exactly peaceful or serene in any manner, but Octavia smelt tranquillity in the air. As she staggered down the street, trying hard to walk in a straight line, the more earthly smells reached her nostrils: oiled tuna used for making salad, eggs gone bad, an odour of sweet summer sweat.

The city wasn’t asleep; it was yawning, rolling in bed, grumbling under the blanket, waiting for sleep to cover it. But instead, insomnia ruled with an iron fist: nightclubs blared with terrible music, drunk hookers littered the empty streets, mobsters participated in hushed conversations. Octavia staggered through these insomniac streets, her brain trying to understand where her legs were carrying her.

Vinyl.

Of course her legs were carrying her towards her girlfriend. Her ex-girlfriend? Octavia didn’t want to believe Vinyl had broken it off with her, that they’d hit the point of no return, that they had walked Spanish down the hall together one last time.

Together? How could there be any ‘together’? How could she even be sure that her girlfriend felt something towards her? It was life, and life was only perceived through her eyes, which meant that the world revolved around her, Octavia Philarmonica, and only she existed, so why was she expected to care about nonexistent people?

Octavia laughed, then froze in place as she saw a shadowy figure approach her quickly. But, if only she existed… then there could be no Vinyl… And for Vinyl to exist… care… She just had to… But what if only she existed...

“P-please,” the man urged, a knife in his hand, his wild eyes wide open and running from Octavia’s face to her pockets. “G-give me your money.” He made a weak thrusting motion with his knife. “I need it for my son’s surgery!” he tried vainly.

Octavia laughed, extending her arm towards the man. “How funny!” She laughed again, while the man just stared at her with mad, pained eyes, the eyes of a man who was on a brink. “You act like you exist! You act like we both…” She mumbled something under her breath. “I mean… You can’t hurt me, see? Nothing can hurt me because you don’t really exist!” She took a step forward, a giant leap, and everything happened too quickly.

The knife slashed against the biceps, cutting open the skin easily and drawing blood. The man stared at horror and what he had done and, dropping the knife, ran away. Octavia laughed again, feeling no pain, as she staggered towards Vinyl’s block of flats, now that she knew where she had been wrong.

Of course she existed. And so did Vinyl. And if Vinyl existed, then Neon existed too. And if Neon existed, there also was Frederic. And since all of them existed, even her father, even the tormentors who had broken her years ago, since all of them existed, she couldn’t shut off emotions any more, she ascended in a lift, she couldn’t pretend nothing had happened, she banged on Vinyl’s door, she couldn’t think she was… only she… “Octavia, I don’t want to- What on earth has happened to you?!” If she only could… Maybe then there was… a way...

“I get it now,” Octavia laughed, her body slumped against the doorway. “I understand. I have to care.” She laughed some more, coughing up saliva. “I have to care about… everyone. Positive and negative. Both have to… So that we can all exist…” She tried to grab Vinyl with her hand. “And so we can both… be…”

“You’re bleeding!” Vinyl shrieked, grabbing the woman in her hands, trying to drag her inside. “You need to lie down, now!” With that, she guided - slowly, too slowly! - her girlfriend to the couch, smelling copper, hearing blood drip onto the floor, seeing the tiny red seam running on the carpet. “I’ll call the ambulance!”

“I get it,” Octavia laughed, feeling darkness take over. She didn’t battle it, but instead accepted it as her saviour, the darkness that would finally give her respite. “I have to care about the others. It’s… It’s so simple.” She felt her lips getting numb as she struggled to speak. “Fffreddie coul’t explay it t’ me… But you…”

With that, Octavia finally closed her eyes, feeling the pleasant sleep wash over her, approving of her realisation.

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