~Subject to change as I continue writing and creating this story~

“It’s like being inside a void. I’m there, but my body, and almost every part of my consciousness isn’t there with me. It’s just black… and silence all around. I’m just nothing, experiencing nothing, in the vast void of nothing. No thoughts about life or school, or even a ‘What am I doing here?’ Just nothingness and an empty universe around me. Mindless and bodyless, with just enough hint of consciousness to know you there.” 

“Hmm-mm” the Dr noised as if everything Mike had just laid out for him was not absolutely and utterly crazy. He finished scribbling on his notepad and looked up “Ok, well we have received your MRI results, nothing abnormal there. Your echocardiogram didn’t show any issues either. Just looking at these results, one would think you are a pretty healthy young man. Do you have these dreams every time you have a seizure?” 

“Not at first, they started like a few weeks ago. It was just one of the 3 or 4 seizures I would get, now it every single one brings on that… experience.”  

“Still smoking cigarettes and marijuana Mike?” 

Mike sighs visibly, “Yeah doc.” 

“Hm-mm, maybe it’s time we start making better life choices and see if that helps.” But before Mike could even reply he went on. “Listen, we have tested everything we can think of, you have seen handfuls of different specialists.” Now it was the Dr’s turn to sigh. “We know it’s not epilepsy, honestly we are not even sure if they are seizures. They share some of the same traits as atomic seizures, but yours seem to last quite a bit longer and generally, most folks don’t lose consciousness with atomic seizures. Have you been going to your psychiatrist? 

“That dude’s a quack. But yea I’ve been seeing him” 

“Yea he’s a strange one, but he is one of the best in town. If there is something going on inside that brain of yours, I don’t think it would be the cause, but very possible there could be trauma of sorts that is fueling the fire, Dr. Mago should be able to help you figure it out.” 

After another half hour of talking and scheduling the next appointment Mike finally left and headed for home. He felt just as hopeless as ever, no answers, nothing to help. Just more questions, more bill his parents couldn’t afford. The car ride home didn’t help him feel any better either, his mom asking every question she could think of and worrying more and more. That was one of the worst parts of this whole situation. The constant worry and strain he was putting on his parents, and their need to constantly treat him as if he were a feeble 95-year-old man. Every time they see him its ‘How are you feeling?’ ‘You feeling ok?’ ‘You need any help?’ It was just all too much sometimes. He knew it was only because they cared about him, and he supposed they had a point about a lot of it. One of his last seizures, or episodes or whatever they were, collapsed him in the hallway and he had knocked his head on the wall pretty good on the way down. In fact, that was actually the first seizure where he hadn’t blacked out, and instead went to that void for the first time.  

‘But all that is crazy, isn’t it?’ He thinks as he gets out of the car and heads inside the house. Immediately going downstairs to his room and starts rolling a joint. Then went out back to smoke in the shed. He wanted to get good and baked to forget about all this crap for a while. Half an hour later he emerged from the smoke-filled shed feeling a bit better. Heading back into the house, he grabbed a few snacks and a bottle of water and went downstairs to play games on his Xbox. 

It was a fairly uneventful night, with no seizures coming on at all that entire day. Mike spent a good portion of the night playing some first-person shooter games with a few friends he made online. He ended up staying up late that night, and fell asleep around 1:00 am, which was hours after he normally heads to bed.  

Mike woke up at 6:00 am in a cold sweat and had somehow kicked everything off his bed. The blankets, the pillows were thrown about the floor all around the bed. He was sweating and panting hard, like he had just run a marathon. And the dream he had was… strange. It was all fading so fast he was desperately trying to grasp for something about the dream. In addition to being weird, it also seemed important, or maybe just relevant? 

“Alchemy” he whispered to himself in a very confused tone, almost a question instead of a statement. “What does that even mean?” He asks as he rubs his face, trying to rub the sleep left in his eyes away. He sat in bed for another 20 minutes trying to think of anything else from his dream, grasping for anything else that might give him a bit more insight to whatever dream he had.  

He couldn’t remember the dream, as in what happened. But he remembers the feeling of vividness and absolute assurance of reality. Whatever that meant. It all left more questions than answers though. 

Mike spent the day researching alchemy, learning about how some ancient civilizations, thought it could turn lead to gold and water to wine, and few thought it could extend life. Now adays it seemed alchemy was just an advertiser’s gimmick, “alchemic spas” and “Ink alchemy, the best tattoos in town”. Not a single thing came up that seemed to spark his memory in the few hours that morning he spent browsing the web for “alchemy” and “alchemist” as well as a few other things that popped up while he was browsing, which was perfectly rational these days to be looking up one thing then the next moment realize what you were originally looking for was over 20 minutes and 6 browser pages ago. He found himself enthralled by an episode of some anime show called “Full Metal Alchemist” and almost starting watching another before he realized how off course he was and corrected himself, getting back to trying to learn anything that would maybe give him just a bit more on his dream. Even just another word, something to spend the next few hours trying to dig the clue out of his mind. But he found nothing, not a damn thing, he spent all morning pasted to his computer and for what? To learn some long dead civilizations thought it could give them extended life, and where the hell where they and what good did this alchemy do him? 

After a bit of stretching, he made his way to the kitchen to find something to eat. Grabbing a cup from the cupboard he poured himself a glass of orange juice to go with whatever it was he was going to eat. Probably just settle for an apple or maybe a few crackers, the salty ones were his favorite. After glancing at the apples, he quickly decided he would eat be eating crackers, grabbed a whole bag and headed off to his room.  

“Not much to do today, I think I might watch some more of that anime I came across, probably wont do me any good trying to remember this dream but it seemed pretty good at least.” So he sat on the bed a relaxed for a short while getting lost in the adventures of Edward Elric and his little brother. After a number of episodes he felt like having a smoke. So he paused the tv series and went over to his desk, opened the bottom right hand drawer and pulled out a half of a pack of Camel Filters, his small glass pipe and a small plastic jar filled almost to the brim, with weed. It was good weed too, none of that shwag crap that tasted like dirt, some Blueberry Kush he picked up a few days ago. He was about to head upstairs when he stopped, opened that same drawer back up and pulled out an even smaller plastic jar, one about the same size around as the first jar that held the weed, but only 1/6 of the height. “What the hell, I got nothing going on today, lets get dumb” Then he closed the drawer, left the room and headed upstairs and out the back door. 

Stepping outside after being in his dark basement all morning made his eyes hurt from the brightness, and they took a minute or so to adjust before he could finally see well enough to sit down and start loading some of the weed into his glass pipe, after he had a nice amount of weed packed almost to the brim of the bowl, he grabbed the smaller jar from his pocket, twisted it open, then took his pocket knife out of the same pocket and flipped the knife open. Using the tip of the knife he dipped into the small jar and cut a small wedge of a wax-like, buttery substance and proceeded to smear that substance on top of the weed he had just loaded. “Lets try this. . . wax out.”  

Wax was a concentrated form of marijuana, and something only someone with a medical marijuana license could purchase. Mike wasn’t completely sure how it was made, but he know they did something to pull all the thc out of the leaves and buds and concentrate it all down into a waxy goo, or butter. Some of his friends even had a fancy bong for smoking it, but that made Mike feel like a crackhead, he preferred to just drop some on a bowl and have at it. 

About a half hour later, the pipe of weed was all gone and Mike putting out the last of his cigarette, before he got up and ambled back inside. And boy was he stoned, and hungry. “Ooh, I have those crackers downstairs still” And he grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, forgetting about his half drank orange juice downstairs on the end table, and heading downstairs feeling pretty good. Walking into his room, he heads to the desk and opens the drawer he had pulled the weed from to put that and ‘wax’ back away. Closed the drawer and took a step away before remembering his smokes were still on him and turned back to put those away as well.  

Smiling at his forgetfulness, he grabs his xbox controller and flips the console on. A short moment later and he was browsing the main menu, searching for what he wanted to play this afternoon, when he heard a click then a feminine voice, “Hello? Mike?”. Mike scrambled around to get his headset and plugged them in. “Xena hey! I didn’t realize you were online, thought you were at work still.” He replied as soon as his headset was plugged in and on. “Uh huh, sure. You probably just didn’t want your ass kicked haha. Come on, I was just warming up.” Mike flips through a few screens then a moment later he was loading up into the game with Xena. 

“So how are you doing?” Xena asked Mike then immediately followed up with “Team over here to the left of us, let move up on them.” “Right behind you.” Mike replied quickly then hesitated a bit before answering her first question. “I’m... alright, still having issues but my Dr seems confident that we will figure out what's causing all this.” “Well hopefully they do find out and fix it, still waiting for you to come visit me. Nice shot, team wipe.” Xena said and Mike chuckled. “You know I would like to, and hopefully soon I can make a trip out there. Just not sure I could make it all the way out there on my own...” He has sounded like he was about to continue on with something but said nothing more. There was silence between them for a moment before Xena spoke up. “You know I could just come to you? I’ve always wanted to see Colorado and those Rockie Mountains up close.” Mike didn’t say anything for a moment, he was a little in disbelief. “Helllooooo, Mike? I guess that’s a no then.” Xena said not at all hiding, possibly even emphasizing the disappointment in her voice. “No, no. It’s definitely a yes, I would love to have you out here to visi... teams to our right in the storage area, think we can go sandwich one, then hopefully push to the other.” “Nice subject change, saved by the shots huh?” Xena said as she pushed her character up past Mike’s and started pushing towards the other teams. “Oh whatever, you know you're welcome to come visit any time!” Mike replied hastily. “Still hearing shots, let's keep pushing up on these guys.” he added.  

The two played games for the better part of that afternoon, laughing and chatting pretty much the whole time with the occasional ‘teams to our right/left’, ‘taking shots’ and ‘armor up’ being yelled at each other randomly. Then it was time for Xena to get off and Mike figured that that was a good time for him to jump off the game as well. The two said their goodbyes before Mike clicked a few buttons and his console shut down, and he turned off the tv, setting his controller back onto its charging stand.  

He stood up and stretched a bit, trying to get the ache of sitting in one spot too long, to pass. He smiled, even though it’s been a real rough couple of months, those gaming sessions with Xena, and Brian too when he was available, those were what kept him going. The only bit of ‘freedom’ or ‘escape’ from this seemingly cursed life he lived. He was always surprised at how much those times were able to lift him up and out from the dark places his mind often wandered of late.  

I mean before all these seizures started, Mike had been a pretty active kid. Often heading up to the mountains for a nice hike or deep into national forest for some of the best fly fishing in the Rockie Mountains, well at least he thought so. Now he couldn’t do those things, at least not in the same way that. His father was more than happy to take Mike out when he was free, as he enjoyed the sport as well. And getting out and doing some fly fishing with his dad was really great too, but Mike had found that the seclusion and freedom, or independency of going out somewhere on your own. The feeling of being all alone in the middle of the Rockies, just a fly rod and the beautiful scenery. That what he missed the most, and unfortunately could never get that going out with mom or dad right now. They wouldn’t let Mike walk up or down the stairs by himself if they had their way.  

Though to be fair, that was probably for the best. The last time he had tried to go out by himself ended in disaster and he was lucky to even still be here. He had gone up to his normal spot, deep in the national forest, about 3 and a half hours from his house. The drive there had gone fine, and most the day went fine. But when it started going wrong, it went downhill very quickly. He had been in the middle of the river when he felt a seizure coming on, rushing to get to the shore as quickly as possible, trying hard as he could to remain conscious and balanced until he was on dry ground. Then everything went dark. When Mike awoke nearly an hour later, his lower half of his body was still in the river, but his upper half managed to make it the shore. He pushed himself off the ground and sat on his knees for a minute. Trying to regain his balance and awareness. After a minute he started gathering his things, realized he had landed on his fly rod and broke it in two. Feeling the blood rush to his head with pain and embarrassment, he sat back down and cried for a few minutes. When he thought he was gathered enough to make the trip, he picked himself up and made his way back to his truck.  

Luckily, he made it to the truck without incident, and besides the drive home taking an extra 2 hours, on account of him having to pull over twice and lay in the back seat to calm his anxiety and try to keep another episode from occurring. When he finally did make it back home, Mike had gone immediately inside and went to sleep, exhausted from the day. He never told his parents everything that had that day, but he didn’t need to. They realized something had happened when days went by and Mike never left the house. He wanted too, but every time he started making plans his anxiety would go through the roof just thinking about it and all the things that could go wrong.  

Since then, he hasn’t left the house unless accompanied by someone. And as much as he knew that he needed someone, he absolutely hated it. It made him feel so demeaned. Like he was so much less than he really was. Or maybe it was the fact that he was indeed so much less than he used to be that made him hate it, and at times himself, even more.  

At least today had been a pretty good day, no seizures and he had played surprisingly well earlier with Xena, getting more kills than usual and even had more kills than her for one of the matches, which was pretty unusual as Xena was practically always the kill leader in their group. Mike walked over to his desk and grabbed his pack of cigarettes, stuffing them in his pocket before turning around to head towards the door. Almost immediately after stepping out of his room he started hearing a ringing in his right ear. “Shit” He says and turned to try and make his way back to the bed. It was only 6 or 7 steps away but was a huge struggle for him, as he was gradually losing sight as darkness worked its way into Mike’s vision, starting at the edges and slowly covering everything in a black void. Creeping in quickly and within a step or two Mike had all but lost most his sight to darkness with just a small circle of unclouded vision in the center of his view, and that was quickly becoming a blur of spinning colors and bright lights. 

Mike had made it almost to the bed before the ringing in his ears and the spinning tunnel vision became too much for him to bear. Losing all semblance of where he was and where the bed was as his brain overloaded with all rapidly moving inputs coming in, he reached out trying to find the bedpost and steady himself. Unfortunately, he did make it right to the foot of the bed before his legs gave, but just missed the bed post with his hand as he stumbled forward, the momentum sent him face first into the floor narrowly missing his head on the bed post on his way down. Time seemed to slow as he fell, giving Mike the feeling that he had fallen off a tall cliff and had been falling for a good minute or two before the void finally took the rest of his vision and the ringing faded away as Mike fell away from consciousness.  This time when he fainted, he did not go to the void that seemed to be there for every seizure lately. Instead, he went somewhere else.