“I want to take you to Polaris,” said the man who looked just like him. The man sounded so hopeful, for some reason, that it made Tomaso stop typing. But it only lasted for a moment before he realized it wasn’t good to let himself be tricked by the hallucination, so Tomaso pushed what he’d said out of his mind. Telling himself it was just a trick, he took two of the antipsychotic pills on the table. Doing this would make the hallucinations go away for a little while.
This, thankfully, made the man who looked like Tomaso brush away the nooses hanging from the lintel and leave the room. Tomaso’s friend, however, remained. That had never happened before. Terrified, Tomaso could feel himself breaking out in a full body sweat.
Tomaso’s friend spoke to him gently.
“You’re trapped in the past.”
Tomaso’s hands paused over his keyboard. The hallucinations always said and did the same thing before vanishing as if they were following a script, but for some reason they’d started saying different things today. Though he found the hallucinations terrifying under the best of circumstances, Tomaso usually managed to quell his fear because their actions were predictable. Now they’d broken through that and were coming for him.
And yet it felt like a calling, perhaps because it was delivered by the voice of a dear friend he would never see again. He fearfully looked back, where he saw his old friend smiling at him.
“You can’t stay here.”
He could feel his heartbeat slowing. The familiar, kind way his friend spoke to him brought tears to Tomaso’s eyes.
He had always invited Tomaso to play with him, even though Tomaso barely had any friends of his own and was bad with words. His friend was smart and knew a lot, so he could always count on him for advice when he needed it. And he always said the right thing. It drove Tomaso crazy sometimes and they got into fights, but afterwards, he always ended up realizing his friend was right.
Tomaso’s friend stared sadly at him, now sobbing, as he left the room.
Then the solitude returned, and Tomaso heard only the sound of his own sobs. He looked around at the fragments of memories laying throughout his dim room. How much were they worth to him?
“You can’t stay here.”
Tomaso repeated his friend’s words to himself and stood up. He left his room as quietly as possible, and—not turning on the lights so as not to catch his family’s attention—headed for the front door.
How long had it been, two years? He reached for the doorknob to the front door, which he never thought he’d open ever again. Then, he used the same trembling hand that had wiped away his tears to slowly open the front door.
The city at 2 AM was quiet, with only the sound of cars off in the distance. The air was a bit chilly. Even the grassy smell of plants in the air felt familiar. The night sky was filled with stars, just like it always had been. Tomaso searched for Ursa Minor. He’d done this since he was a child, by his count. His friend was the one who taught him that Polaris didn’t move all year long, which is why people used it as a guide on their travels.
It was then that he saw a ray of light tear across the sky. A train, flying through the night sky. Tomaso wondered if his medication hadn’t quite kicked in yet.
“What laid beyond the night? That was what Tomaso wanted to know.”
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