A Man Among Ghosts by Steven Hopstaken

Author:Steven Hopstaken
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror; gothic fantasy; dark fantasy; flame tree press; creepy stories; horror fiction
Publisher: Flame Tree Publishing
Published: 2023-02-09T12:56:51+00:00

Chapter Seven

A Pill That Makes You Smaller

David barely slept that night. He checked out of the hotel before sunrise and returned home.

If these horrible visions are coming from my mind, he thought, I was stupid to think I could get away from them by changing locations. And, if I’m haunted, I’ll have to deal with that too.

In bad horror movies, people always went back into haunted houses instead of leaving. Now, here he was doing the same thing. But if there were any answers to his problems, they were inside. It was something he would have to face.

How exactly was he going to find those answers? He had no idea. But as the sun came up, he was determined to at least get on with his life as he tried to figure it out.

David went to work and had an uneventful day, at least as far as hallucinations went. But on the bus ride home, his mind began to race again. He had a hard time sitting still and was grateful when he finally got to his stop.

Instead of going home, he decided to just walk around for a while. Maybe that would burn off his nervous energy. He was out of Xanax so it probably was just a side effect of coming down off of the drug. It was a onetime prescription, and he hadn’t asked his doctor for a refill yet.

David stopped to watch some kids playing basketball in a small park. Then he felt like a creep just staring at them, so he walked on.

Between the lack of sleep and the Xanax withdrawal, David felt very strange. He became breathless and sweaty and felt like he was going to faint, so he sat down on a park bench to rest. He put his head between his legs because that was what he heard you should do to avoid fainting.

“You okay, man?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

David sat up and saw the kid he had seen at the bus stop a few weeks back. The drug dealer. David had seen him around the neighborhood a few times after that day, so figured the kid lived nearby.

“Just got a little dizzy,” he said. “Just went off my Xanax.” David had no idea why he told him that. The kid was a drug dealer, not a pharmacist.

“I got some if you need it,” the kid said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Whatever you need. Xanax, Molly, Ritalin, Adderall, Viagra. Not that I think you need Viagra, man, but, you know, for recreational use. I don’t sell crack or horse, those are nasty. But I can get just about anything else.”

“How much for some Xanax?”

“Fifty for five.”

“Okay,” David said. He figured that would hold him until he could get a new prescription from his doctor. He took two twenties and a ten from his wallet and handed it to the kid. A baggie of pills went into the palm of David’s hand as the cash came out.

“You got anything for a scattered brain?” David asked.

“Yeah, Adderall. Helps you focus.

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