Rose immediately woke up to find herself laying down uncomfortably on an off colored, deep green retro couch in the living room with the golden sunlight flooding in through the windows, thinly veiled by the slim moth ridden curtains. She looked down the length of her short legs to find Sam on the other end of the couch, glowing in the golden orange-red light and staring intensely at the television set. His blue, sharp eyes looked over quickly to that of a cat's curiosity, and they gleamed in the orange bloody red light with a contrasting cold color made warm with fire.

"You're awake." He said cooly, but yet somehow there was a hint of worry in his tone.

"Yeah, I. . .am." Rose grunted as she sat up and looked over to see he was watching t.v. It was a small box t.v. though, with the little antenni coming off from the top like it was wearing a little hat. The screen was that faded nineties early two thousands look and also had the static Rose remembered as a child. After watching for a few minutes, Rose realized he was watching a documentary on Fitzgerald; the narrator's voice crackled and seemed to be very distant.

The pain started to come back slowly minute by minute, and after a short while, Rose lifted her hand to her face to feel a wet slippery liquid that plastered her face.

"What the—" She brought her hand down slowly to see it smeared orange red.

"Ah—" Before Sam could explain, she was running to the bathroom with its green tiles and black and white stripe lining the wall.

In the mirror, she saw a gash the size of a thick knife cut across the side of her face from eye to lip.

It was horrendous! Oh, God, the sight of such a beast made Rose sick with horror.

She was disgusting—a beast—a horrible—ugly—beast.

She felt angry with herself she'd let such a thing happen. Coming out of the bathroom back into the empty living room with just a t.v. set and a worn down couch and a drug addict, she began to cry.

Sam looked over.

"What wrong? Why're you crying?" She stood there and looked up at him still whimpering.

"What the hell happened to me?" She softly spoke through her tears.

"Oh. . .well. . .you were tripping pretty hard there for a couple of hours, so I took you to the living room here—at the time I actually also was still high—but something in the kitchen bothered you, and. . .and. . .well, it got the best of you, Rose. You saw the knife there and. . ."

"Did I hurt you?"

"No, I'm—I'm fine." Rose felt that if she hadn't been so irresponsible, she wouldn't have this shameful cut on her face. The monstrous. The unspeakable. The most abhorrent of crimes one could do to oneself. Not to mention arrogant, self loathing, and possibly extra-supercilious in a way to think one is too good for oneself and too good for this dastardly world. After that, Rose never stopped seeing those horrifying bloody bodies lying about the room, and wherever she went, she saw them, too, laying unmoving or twitching on the sidewalks. They forever haunted her living world and in her dreams where they bled out the stolen blood of her dead family and friends. She consulted with doctor Comfrey, but he only suggested that the shrooms actually aided her in finding out what was causing her delusion: she was lonely. Poor Rose couldn't leave Sam because she was alone, and Sam was the only person in existence that depended on her to believe in him, but Rose barely did that at most.

"Would you like some more medication, Rose?" Doctor Comfrey was lethargic this afternoon, but Rose was quite anxious which only made the conversation feel more one sided.

"No, I'm not finished. I really do see those bodies everywhere. . .Tell me Dr. Comfrey, did I really fuck up my brain with those shrooms?" Doctor Comfrey sat up with an audible grunt as he spoke a muffled reply.

"Yes, that could have happened, but it's unlikely: shrooms are pretty safe."

"But I had a bad trip, like, a really horrendous one, doc." Doctor Comfrey looked at her puzzled, contemplating.

"Well, there's nothing I can do for you. I'm sorry. However, the only thing I can assure you is that they won't last forever."

"How long then?" Rose asked quickly with an anxious tone.

"Up to a year or two, so not that long." Jesus, a year? How awful. How horrible. How tremendously devilish those little mushrooms were. It's fine, they said. I'm fine, they said. Life is just normal, they said. But at what cost? Yes, at what cost? Rose heard the answer loud and clear: the cost of her sanity. On top of that, she was dying as well. But there were more than the constant hallucinations that persisted for years, there was the anxiety, the fear which being scared for life really holds it's true meaning.

"What am I going to do, Doc?" Rose's head came down into her restless hands, and she began tearing away at her roots.

"I'm sorry, Rose, but we all have to die, and yes, some sooner than others." Doctor Comfrey rested his hand lightly on her shoulder. "There's nothing one can do about life and death. It's mother nature's way of staying on top of us. We may never get ahead, but what we can do is chug along with her on her train and just enjoy the ride." The room became darker as the bright sun was starting to get covered by the solem grey clouds, and the rain started to pour down. Doctor Comfrey looked over at his wrist watch and noticed time was up. He got up slowly and began to end the session. "What I think you should do before next time is go out with your coworker on a double date and—"

"—was it you?" Rose's head jerked up with an epiphany, yes, a sudden realization of what comfrey was.

"I'm sorry?"

"It was you! You—you bastard! Those damn pills!" Rose carefully got up, but Doctor Comfrey stood tensely still regardless.

"I—I—I—uh. . ." He slowly backed up as Rose came closer and closer, until he backed into the door.

"I can't believe I trusted you! I can't believe I trusted those pills! I can't believe you'd do that to me! How dare you! How fucking dare you!" Doctor Comfrey quickly opened the door just enough for him to slip by, and with a whish of his false-white lab coat, he escaped, locking Rose in the room.

If it weren't for the story Doctor Comfrey explicitly elaborated on that Rose wasn't really delusional, just lonely, Rose wouldn't have walked out of that room with extra pills and would have rather been stuck in a mental hospital. The rain heavily poured down, soaking Rose head to toe. Everything was grey and colorless on her walk home through the rain, all except the red balloon she saw tied to the wrought iron fence outlining the apartments small front porch. How lonely that balloon was, so Rose reached over the faded green browning leaves and untied it. It was a beautiful little thing, and as she walked, it bounced happily behind her like a little bunny wishing to hop along another path but to then be pulled the other way. It stopped, then bounced forward, stopped, then bounced. It kept at it lightly being swayed the other direction from its desired destination, and at most times when stalled, often swirled indecisively. Rose found the red balloon when the rain had stalled, but she and the balloon were still very wet, and after her long walk home, she made it up the stairs, but was horribly overcomed with lassitude. Rose had tied the red balloon to her wrist, so she completely forgot about it when she opened the door to an empty house.

"Sam?" Rose walked in and saw the same living room when she woke up this early afternoon with Sam, but it was dark and lifeless. She walked into the kitchen and wandered behind the stairs to the back with the slight putter patter of the rain echoing off the roof, but still couldn't find him. The balloon darted this way and that as it was strangled like a horse to turn every which way possible.

"Sam? Sam! Where the hell are you?"

She began to worry he really was gone, or never have actually existed. Dashing past the French doors, Rose was taken aback when she noticed a body out there. She opened the door to the cold air and walked across the deeply rich vibrant green lawn.

"Sam!" He turned around from gazing at the blanket of clouds, and ran up to him with the balloon being pulled along behind her. She ran into him and wrapped her arms around his chest, squishing her face into his warm, dark green sweater. In the midst of all the movement, the knot undid itself, and the balloon slipped from her grip. Rose turned, gasping at the sight and reached out for the lush red balloon, but it was soon shrinking in size as it rose higher and higher with no sign of stopping.