“Mind (noun): the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.”

(The New Oxford Dictionary of English)

________

“UH, I gave you a twenty,” said Gord, holding out the change that he just received.

“No,” calmly replied the cashier, “you gave me a five.”

“No, I gave you a twenty.”

“No, you only gave me a five.”

“No … ,” Gord began but was cutoff.

“Actually, you did give him a five,” another customer in line intervened.

Bewildered, Gord looked at the man and queried him: “Are you sure I gave him a five?”

“Yeah, I saw you give it to him.”

Stunned, Gord looked down at the currency in his open wallet. But that’s not possible, he thought. I know for a fact that I gave him a twenty.

He distinctly visually recollected handing over a twenty-dollar bill. He crystal clearly remembered looking at the twenty in his wallet while contemplating giving a five; however, he decided that he could use the small denomination currency, thus pulling out the twenty and handing it over.

Noticing the sincere total bewilderment displayed upon Gord’s face, the cashier asked, “Are you alright?”

Gord left the store with an unshakable, worrisome conviction that either he was slowly losing his sense of reality or that he’d just been ripped off. But Gord was intelligent enough to recognize the error in even considering the concept of having been cheated out of fifteen dollars; for, due to the store’s basic shift-changing methodology (which he’d witnessed before), no cashier had any plausible means through which to pocket, for example, fifteen dollars out from his or her cash register.

It then occurred to Gord — who wouldn’t have left while truly believing that he’d been taken for fifteen dollars — that matters could’ve turned sour, physically and legally, especially considering the atypically very small body frame of the young adult cashier, had that guy in line not witnessed the transaction and spoke up.

Upon arriving at his apartment and being in private, Gord briefly wept. Apparently, the sole realistic explanation was, in a manner of speaking, his mind erroneously told his eyes what they were seeing or not seeing, thus his own eyes were being overruled and fooled by his flawed brain and therefore his mind.

What the fuck is wrong with me?! he mentally cried out.

During the restless night to follow, Gord recalled similar perturbing incidents, one of which involved a ‘missing’ flash drive. After 30 minutes of futile search and therefore considering it lost, it reappeared out from nowhere. ‘Seeing should not necessarily mean believing,’ Gord cynically thought to himself, and ‘not seeing shouldn’t preclude believing.’

It was two months later that Gord was looking around the telephone stand upon which for some years had consistently lay his blue pen. He made a concentrated though futile effort to find it: He lifted the entire phone three times to take in a very good look of the telephone stand surface followed closely by a thorough look on the carpeting around the stand, though the pen was nowhere to be found.

Confirming that it all was not just him somehow overlooking its actual presence, Gord went to his bedroom to retrieve another pen. But upon returning to the living room, where he instinctually took another glance, there lay the ‘missing’ blue pen — right next to the telephone, as blatant as an inanimate object could be.

Exceptionally worried about the gradual accumulation of mind-malfunctioning incidents, for there were also a few such experiences that went unmentioned, Gord considered what plausibly may have cerebrally compromised him to such an extensively alarming degree.

He thought about, as one of two main suspects, the heavy dose of anesthesia he received prior to the invasive open-heart surgery that he underwent about a half-year earlier to have his congenitally malformed aortic valve replaced — anesthesia being a substance that can leave a surgery patient with permanent cerebral dysfunctions.

Why didn’t they tell me that before I went under the knife? Ah, I would’ve went for it, anyway; what else would I do — it was life or death? Thinking such led him to recall a character in the horror movie Pet Sematary (based on Stephen King’s book of the same title), who tearfully told his neighbour, “sometimes, dead is better.”

Gord then considered an alternative and even more plausible theory than that involving anesthesia, a possibility involving a terrible vice he permanently quit only a few months earlier: Are these perturbing occurrences the result of possible brain damage due to all of that heavy pill popping? Or perhaps a combination of the pill popping and the anesthesia?

As for the pill popping, it was at least as plausible of an explanation as the anesthesia-culprit theory. During the previous ten years, Gord occasionally abused various opiate painkillers, though he especially seriously abused non-opiate medications and sedatives, the most notable being off-the-shelf, extra-strength sleeping-aid pills. Although he not once intended to overdose, nor even considered the possibility, it amazed him how not once did he even in the least feel compelled nor any need to go to the local hospital’s emergency ward.

Sure, I managed to readily absorb so much of the potential-overdose drug potency that I didn’t even once require my stomach be pumped out; but, really, at what cost did I survive? Damn! Gord cursed. I was lucky enough to be born with a healthy brain; then I go fuck it up real good!

Apparently, self-forgiveness and the water-under-the-bridge perspective were a no-go with him, especially when he considered how easily that (or so he believed) he could’ve avoided the whole gratuitous vice matter if only he’d respected himself more. Now I can’t even be sure of what my own fucking eyes are seeing!

Gord also contemplated a third and final theory, albeit with very little plausibility: Could it be the mind manipulation of a host haunting or possession by a malevolent or even diabolical spirit?

When Gord decided to relate all that he disturbingly experienced to his sole sibling, his older (by three years) sister Marie, she considerately avoided patronizing him by not downplaying his worries. ‘Brain tumor,’ however, was her unnerving theory as to the most likely culprit afflicting Gord, but she dared not exacerbate his anxiety. Instead, she arranged a string of appointments that were necessary to procure referrals in order to have Gord’s brain thoroughly examined via image-scan, and she did so without unnecessarily informing him of every stomach-turning step of the way.

Gord also began sharing with Marie other disturbing occurrences that he was experiencing. He also noted for her how “things in life have been particularly crazy for me since I was discharged from the hospital after my surgery.”

He told her about his repeated dreams in which he’d always lose his gold chain necklace and crucifix. Never able to locate it before the dream’s end, Gord felt teased, even mocked, by some derelict consciousness that would closely surround him; it allowed him to get close to finding the jewelry yet then throw him way off the trail at the last moment. He then experienced worse dreams, in which the same gold necklace and crucifix would get snapped right off of his neck by some invisible force.

About seven weeks after the nightmares began, Gord awoke one morning to find that the necklace was nowhere to be found. He always left it on his dresser before climbing into bed, as he was certain that he did the night prior (although it seemed that “certain” was not at all necessarily “for certain”). During spare time on the following three days, he spent hours futilely searching for it.

Were his eyes yet again erroneously informing his flawed brain, or vice versa, as to what was or was not before him. Regardless, Gord felt strongly that he wouldn’t see that necklace and crucifix again.

As it were, eventually those nightmares became but mild preludes to truly very bad nightmares.

Around a quarter past two early one morning, when Gord awoke from his typically disturbed REM sleep while positioned on his right side, he was quickly overwhelmed by a nauseating sense of a malevolent presence immediately behind him. Gord was certain that some nasty presence was attracted to him; even worse, he sensed its intent to get even closer. I’m not just dreaming this! he confirmed. No, this is for real!

Terrified, Gord felt the presence wrap itself around his entire body, all of which had the complete wrapping of his blanket, as he continued pretending to be asleep and therefor unaware of the malevolent presence.

Feeling that he isn’t fooling the entity with his faked sleep, Gord attempted and miserably failed at a prayer-through-thought resistance — a theological concept with which he was raised as a Catholic but had not believed while growing up would actually work: In the name of …, the holy words began flowing in his mind, but he couldn’t continue his rebuke of the presence past the word “of.”

In the name of … I rebuke you in the holy name of … In the blessed name of …

Gord couldn’t even express the main holy words mentally, for what it was worth, let alone express them out loud — the latter which he was plainly too petrified to dare, lest the thing get pissed off and blatantly show its clichéd ugly self.

Only a minute later, the extra-dimensional finally got physical. Gord could feel something solid, like two fingers tapping one after the other, gradually making their way along his blanket-covered body’s left side (which, of course, was turned upwards).

Is there any way this can all be just one of those more normal horrific night-terrors things or something likewise?! he mentally screamed out, rhetorically. One that’s not at all real?!

Even as the physical contact gradually ceased, Gord remained still, stiff, maintaining his (already presumed failed) faked sleep and total obliviousness to any malevolent presence. Yet after about an hour of apparent entity-non-presence, Gord managed to adequately relax in order to slowly fall asleep again.

Not that surprising, upon awaking the next morning (around nine), some aspect of his troubled psyche stubbornly clung to some possibility that he was actually half asleep and half dreaming the ordeal. Meanwhile, another though greater aspect of his burdened mind persistently grasped to a large possibility that the unforgettable terror was not at all but a product of semi-sleep and partial dreamscape.

Sitting in his recliner chair as he replayed the worst nightmare that he experienced ever, Gord considered a concept that could hit two very problematic birds with the same stone: What if the two negative phenomena — i.e. the short-circuiting between his retinas and brain, and the presence of some entity — are of the same source?

What if the entity is somehow causing my visual sensory flaw?

“Good thinking, Gordon,” said the ‘voice’ from deep within his mind. “But then again, how do you know that I’m not just of your own mind — say, a mind with a mind of its own? Or that I’m just a part of your psyche that’s telling you there’s something else in here besides your own consciousness, hmmm?”

Gord ‘heard’ that mental voice, or thought, or whatever, more distinctly than any such thing he experienced throughout his entire life. Am I going nuts?!

“Perhaps … ,” it derisively replied. “Then perhaps I’m going nuts along with you … you think?” It then chuckled.

“Go fuck yourself!” Gord blurted out before realizing what he just orally did. Oh, man — I must be going nuts! He knew that no matter what was behind the apparent madness within him, either way it all was a very bad sign. Oh, God, what should I do?

“‘Oh God’ has nothing to do with anything,” reverberated through Gord’s mind. “I should know.”

Yeah, you seem to know everything, don’t you … Hey, I know; I’ll test it … me … whatever.

Okay, smartass, Gord intensely thought, so as to ensure that his thoughts would definitely be ‘heard’ if some derelict consciousness really did exist in his head. Tell me something that I could not possibly know — I mean, not at all possibly know.

Gord then clearly remembered the $50 note that went permanently missing about a week after he was discharged from hospital.

“Uhh, good one,” it said. “Try looking in between the folded clothing in the dresser … No, not the one in your room; look in the old one in the corner of your tiny dining room. There — amongst your new, unworn sweaters; try looking at the very back, left corner of the bottom drawer.”

Oh, man! Gord hastily leapt to find out if the unbelievable would be proven to actually be quite believable. He yanked the drawer completely out of its oak dresser-rail encasing and anxiously grabbed every piece of clothing, throwing them all out behind him as rapidly as he could.

“I knew it! Nada!” he gleefully blared, as though his mind having a mind of its own, relating untrue ‘secret information’ was the much better way to go.

“Oh, no, no, Gordon. Look inside the still slightly folded sleeve of that ugly, green one furthest behind you,” it smugly ridiculed him. Turning his head and face toward the grass-green sweater with one sleeve somehow still somewhat folded, Gord’s psyche rang with, “Yeah, that one! It’s there; go look!”

Gord’s heart sank, for he so strongly felt that it was going to be right — that the $50 would in fact be there. He looked, and it was.

For a couple minutes, he sat there cross-legged on the carpeted floor, stunned and motionless, with the $50 in his hand. Slowly getting back up onto his feet and feeling burdened with worry, Gord stuffed the fifty into his pocket.

How in hell did you know the fifty’s exact location?

“I observe everything you do — every second, minute, hour, day after day; more so, I observe almost everything entirely from deep within your mind … As for how long I’ve been around you, that’s something I’m sure you’ll soon figure out for yourself.”

Was it all your doing that scared the shit out of me while in bed the other night? And if so — why? Gord mentally queried.

“I did, and because I could. And because I figured that, judging from your religious trinket necklace and very apparent rearing, you’d try to cast a godly spell to exorcize me ‘back to hell’ … Really, where do you people get this notion that anything unseen and nasty must be demonic and not just some mighty-pissed-off human ghost who survived bodily death?”

I don’t know what else you do with your spirit form, Gord replied, but your maliciousness is demonic enough for me … But Gord received naught following that last poke at the mean-spirited entity, at least for the time being.

About two weeks later, however, it returned to its invasion of Gord’s psyche.

During some of Gord’s most vivid dreams ever, the entity revealed undesirable aspects of his life and death; more specifically, though, how he died of heart failure just hours before he was to finally receive an aortic valve transplant, after his scheduled surgery was delayed a full day, all of which thus cost him his life: “It was the surgeon’s last-second decision to delay my procedure, supposedly for a more urgent case — an old, Asian immigrant, who couldn’t even speak or understand English!”

His lingering, spiteful spirit cursed (though, likely to his disappointment, without any effect) every health worker involved with the very most costly delay possible to him involved with his scheduled heart surgery.

Soon, the entity included within the dreams more-revealing specifics about his life.

Calling himself Jonathon, he was so exceptionally bitter during so much of his life, “one of bleak hardship,” that his spirit, without a hint of regret, declared that he was and still is an ardent atheist. Although, Jonathon was not at all the compassionate secular-humanist sort, but rather one who felt only contempt towards collective humanity: “You all can go to hell! And if there is in fact a God, a Christ, or what-have-you, he, it or they can also go to hell!”

But eventually came the time that Gord sought more than just the imagery in his dreams; he really wanted hardcopy proof.

“I looked at some files in the hospital’s library, Marie, and he was there,” Gord emphasized, excitedly wide-eyed. “It read …,” he began while looking down at the folded sheet of paper onto which he wrote, quoting the library records, word for word. “It read, ‘July 10, 2006 … congenitally malformed aortic valve transplant heart patient Jonathon Worsky, aged 52, expired pre-op. Surgery scheduled for 6 a.m. but pushed back for one day due to priority emergency heart patient’.”

Though she gave much credence to what he was telling her — there was too much strange phenomena occurring to simply dismiss it all — she nonetheless insisted that her brother get his brain extensively checked, “to be on the safe side,” extensive tests and image scans which she was able to arrange only by utilizing her spare time while off work and tireless effort.

“Really,” she responded, taking the paper from his hand and perusing its written content.

He then fervently went on that the information supported his theory of how the angry entity may have come to be.

“By the way, Gord, do both of us a favour and don’t immediately tell the neurologist about the ghost, entity, ‘Jonathon whatever-his-last-name,’ anything about … you know. You can tell him about all that sometime later, so that the doctor can sharply focus on your visual-related problems. That’s the main reason I worked hard to get you that appointment — remember, for Tuesday at one o’clock.”

“But what if the visual stuff is directly related to …?” he attempted to legitimately point out but was cut off.

“Like I said, Gord, just wait a little while, please.”

Regardless of the past-twelve-year absence of their single-parent mother, who lost her fight against brain cancer, Gord still had a mother-role-model in his big sister; and with some family history of mental illness, Gord, with urging from Marie, agreed to be tested for schizophrenia or any other psychiatric disorder that causes hallucinations. To their great relief, every test result was solidly in the negative.

Lastly, and most important of all the testing, Gord underwent a Positron Emission Topography scan, i.e. PET scan. (It wasn’t considered to be of an urgent necessity in Gord’s case, a conclusion that cost him a bundle because he could access such a PET scan only in Seattle; PET-scan units are accessible in Canada only in rare cases of urgent medical necessity or important research.) The findings of the PET scan of his brain, according to neurologist Dr. Radis Dronovich, were not of a cut-and-dry ‘negative’ or ‘positive’ finding nature, but rather they were “inconclusive.”

What was revealed involved an abundance of irregularity in the part of his brain that processes his visual perception of the immediate environment surrounding him.

Gord anxiously looked over the three PET-scan image hardcopy prints, then he glanced at his sister sitting next to him.

Wearing a bewildered facial expression, the doctor continued explaining: “Through colour variances of PET-scan images, your scan clearly indicates a significant amount of anomalous neural activity in that specific region of your brain. In fact, I’ve never seen or even heard of such PET-scan-image findings. It’s as though … It’s almost as though there are two independent sources of consciousness functioning in that very region. But, of course, there has to be an acceptable, reasonable explanation; I will definitely discuss your scan images with other reputable …”

“Are you saying that I have a split personality or some other mental disorder?” Gord anxiously interrupted the doctor, with desperation in his voice.

“No — and that’s just it: If it was a matter of a split or multiple personality disorder (nonetheless serious as that definitely would be), the pieces of the puzzle, so to speak, would at least fit together.”

“What do you mean, ‘pieces of the puzzle’?” Gord again anxiously interrupted.

The doctor pondered for a moment before deciding to just come out and say what was baffling him so.

“According to the varied-colour PET-scan images of your segmented brain activity, the other ‘consciousness,’ or what it appears as, could not be a product of your own brain functions or, more accurately, dysfunctions; rather, it looks to be that of an … of an external source or sentience. However, like I said,” the doctor quickly began his next sentence to avoid being cut off yet again by a panicky Gord, “I’ll discuss the …”

“Oh, God, I feel nauseous,” he nevertheless interrupted, holding his hands to his belly. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Marie placed her hand on his. “Maybe you should go to the …”

“No, I think I’ll be okay,” he assured his sister.

Furthermore, the doctor rather reluctantly continued, the area of Gord’s brain at issue has neural connections with almost all other regions of the brain — though most notably the part which specifically deals with the sense of sight and the cerebral connection between the eye retina, the optic nerve and the brain’s visual-image information processing centre.

“Fully understanding what the PET scans are displaying,” concluded Dr. Dronovich, “would considerably enable us to explain most, if not all, of the brain-function abnormalities you’re experiencing.”

Marie drove her brother home, with neither uttering a word. With the car parked outside his apartment complex residence, Gord suggested, “Do you want to order Chinese, tonight, instead of pasta and sauce, again?”

“Sure — why not.” Although not openly saying so, she was feeling quite concerned over his excessively bizarre cerebral condition, perhaps even more worried than Gord himself.

They locked the car doors and went inside.

Sitting herself down on the couch, Marie clicked the TV remote control and began channel surfing for something not too boring. Gord, however, went straight to his bedroom and began rummaging around for a couple minutes, then blurted out, “Where the fuck did I put them!”

“What?” She turned her head to look down the short, narrow hallway (or “stubby,” as she often mocked it), then got up. “Where’s what?”

“My damn keys,” he replied, as she stood in the doorway. “I just put them down a few minutes ago. I’m sure that I placed them down on the dresser as usual, but they’re nowhere to be found.”

Marie, pretty sure of what her brother was presuming, tried reassuring him: “Gord, just because you’ve misplaced them doesn’t necessarily mean that …”

“Actually,” he cut in, “I am beginning to think that, yet once again, it was not I who ‘misplaced them’.”

Then, having briefly scanned the room, his sister spotted the set of keys laying on his dresser: “Look,” she said, procuring Gord’s glance at her, then at the dresser top.

“What? Look at what?”

“That,” she repeated, maintaining her stare at the keys. “Right there.”

“Once more — what and where?!” he asserted agitatedly, having again looked at Marie and then the dresser.

“Right there!” she insisted, pointing hard as she became frightened by Gord’s serious visual disability. “You’re looking right at them. You can’t see them?”

Gord was about to frustratingly answer in the negative, when his eyes blinked and the keys appeared out of nowhere — all four of them (including two superfluous keys to a long-gone Cadillac), ringed together and hanging from his lucky rabbit’s foot keychain.

“Now I can see them, Marie.”

After staring, stunned, at the keys for but a moment, Gord heard laughing break out within his mind, a sinister bellow like that of a madman.

Looking wide-eyed at Marie, Gord decided that he had nothing to lose by attempting to audibly, firmly declare the holy words; and he did his utmost to start and finish stating them all, but the words clumped together uselessly like they were stuck inside the throat of a sink’s clogged drainage pipe.

Just as with the Jonathon entity getting physical on that terrifying night while cowering under his blanket, Gord didn’t have it within him to successfully utilize those holy words this time, either.

“Look! Look!” Marie urged her brother yet again as she pointed at the keys. “They’re moving!”

The keys slowly dragged along the dresser as the two, astonished siblings (especially Marie) gawked slack-jawed. Then the keys, without any pre-indication, flung from the dresser and directly into Gord’s nose.

“Aw — ooww!” was his reaction to the jagged metallic sting, before rubbing the back of his hand over his nose. The two looked down where the keys lay motionless on the floor.

And that was it. The brick upon the top of all the other bricks that were already breaking the camel’s back, thus breaking it altogether: “I’m moving the hell out of here!”

“You can stay at my place until you can find a decent, local place of your own,” Marie immediately offered

“Thanks anyway; sis; I’ll just move in with Josh. He told me I’m more than welcome to live at his place, split the rent and the rest, etcetera.”

Gord’s head then went a bit numb when the thought was shoved into his psyche that Jonathon might not be at all ready to leave him just yet, let alone permanently.

Well, then, you’re really going to enjoy Joshua, Gord sarcastically, mentally made clear. Josh is a practicing Christian, who’s not shy about his strong belief in and passion for Christ, God the father, the holy spirit — you know, the whole trinity thing. He prays and reads The Bible out loud and has lots of Christian symbolism in almost every room. Shall I think some more …?

Gord’s thought message to the entity was indeed provocative as it obviously was meant to be.

“Go fuck yourself, Gordon?” was Jonathon’s bitter response.

The entity always mocked the notion that he was of demonic origin — in fact, Jonathon basically denied that such diabolical spirits, not to mention the good guys God and Christ, even exist; nevertheless, he found the atmosphere in that emptied apartment unit a little too uncomfortable in which for him to remain after Gord had sprinkled the place extensively with holy water that he acquired from the local church.

Once the two adversaries had permanently parted ways, the Jonathon entity’s ‘voice,’ etcetera, also permanently ceased. And eight days after moving in with Josh, Gord happened upon his necklace and crucifix, in the sleeve of one of his neatly folded sweaters.