Read I See Me for Free Online Page B

had taken about three weeks to normalize. I hadn’t experienced any of the heavier-duty side effects — like seizures or dizziness — but the meds made me drowsy. That was cool, though, because if I took it before bed it helped me sleep. I also had to get my white blood count checked every week, but that was what medical clinics were there for — especially on a road trip.
    Medical insurance was the second reason I’d gotten a BCAA membership — for the year’s worth of medical coverage in the States that I could buy through them. The first reason, rather obviously, was I’d just bought an RV more than two decades older than I was. Too bad BCAA didn’t do vehicle inspections on Class A motorhomes, but I trusted Gary’s mechanic. His checklist was really thorough, and Gary had been obsessive about the Brave’s upkeep. The engine certainly looked clean, and was a straightforward design when compared to the minivan. Not that I could identify a spark plug in either case, but I could check the oil.
    The clozapine was an antipsychotic, meant to block certain receptors in my brain. I was in a maintenance phase now rather than acute — as I had been last fall — so I took only one of the orally disintegrating pills a day. Before today, it had been months since I’d had a spell like the one that hit me on the bus. I’d sort of tricked my doctor into writing an early refill — on the basis that I’d misplaced my current supply — so I had extra for my trip. Since I’d never lost a bottle before, he readily believed me and hadn’t bothered calling Carol. Again, I really wasn’t a huge fan of lying, but sometimes it was just the easier route. I wasn’t looking forward to filling an antipsychotic prescription in the middle of nowhere, so I figured I’d avoid that as much as possible.
    The pharmacist didn’t bother to engage me in small talk, and neither did the post office clerk. They knew me and my routine well. The prescription just had to be paid for, and I already had the ‘Fragile’ stickers on the art tubes.  
    I still had to figure out how to fill orders from my Etsy shop on the road, but I was certain it wouldn’t be an issue. A prepaid cellphone paired with my second-hand laptop would make it easy enough to list new sketches and answer emails.
    I was still refining a second grouping of sketches that had been part of my bad stretch last fall. Those hallucinations had been even heavier and more taxing than the first. This series featured — again inexplicably — the curly-haired blond with a samurai sword on a beach somewhere, but she definitely wasn’t on vacation.
    Unless she found it restful to hang with demons.
    Yeah, the beings that appeared in my last round of sketches — the ones the blond was fighting off with her sword — looked a hell of a lot like demons … big, doglike demons with five-inch claws.
    Demons created by my broken brain, destroyed by a golden-haired girl in red leather pants with a deadly sharp katana, then revived in charcoal and paper. Of course, the pants were rendered in shades of black in my sketches, but I’d always remember the blur of red as the blond danced across the gray beach in the moonlight. I’d always remember the demon claws at her throat. The shock of blood on the dark, wet sand. Her falling, the demons swarming, and the pain in my chest when I thought she wouldn’t get up.
    I’d thankfully only gotten glimpses of the demons, because that was more than enough.
    I’d stopped questioning a long time ago why my mind showed me what it did, but I found the series difficult to work on … draining, dark, and edgy. They would sell like crazy if I ever finished them. And I had to finish soon, if only for grocery money. Plus, once they were sold, the hallucinations shouldn’t haunt my thoughts so much. But I could only handle working on refining the images for short periods of time.  
    I’d never seen anything as terrifying as what I saw in my