Читать книгу Born Scared - Kevin Brooks - Страница 17

My fear pills are a drug called Moloxetine. It’s not a commonly prescribed medication, and I only ended up taking it after the Doc had tried me on just about every other anti-anxiety drug he could think of. None of the others had been right for me. Some of them just hadn’t worked at all, and others had helped a little bit, but not enough to outweigh their sometimes quite drastic side-effects – hallucinations, mania, aggression, extreme fatigue, hyperactivity, acute diarrhoea, vomiting, panic attacks, severe depression, suicidal thoughts . . .

As I said to the Doc once, ‘I’d rather be terrified all the time for the rest of my life than wake up every morning wanting to kill myself.’

My fear pills don’t stop me being scared. I still live in constant fear, and my life is still ruled by that fear, but with Moloxetine . . . well, it’s hard to describe exactly what it does for me, but basically it makes everything feel not quite so terrible. Of course, there’s a massive difference between feeling ‘not quite so terrible’ and feeling ‘good’, or ‘okay’, or ‘not too bad’, but the way I see it is that any relief, no matter how small, is a lot better than nothing. It’s like offering a coat to a naked person caught outside on a rainy winter’s day. The coat’s not going to solve their problem, it’s not going to stop them being cold and wet, but they’d have to be pretty stupid to not wear it.

The very worst of my fears, the thing I dread more than anything else, is the fear of fear itself. It’s a truly monstrous thing, like a howling demon whirling around inside me, an insatiable beast that keeps getting bigger and bigger all the time . . . bigger, faster, stronger, hungrier. It feeds on itself, so the bigger it gets, the more it needs to eat, and the more it eats, the bigger it gets . . . and if it isn’t kept under control, it can end up dragging me, screaming, to the very edge of my sanity.

Moloxetine helps to keep the beast at bay. I know it’s still there. I can hear it sometimes, a distant low growl, and every now and then I can taste the foul odour of its demonic breath creeping into the back of my throat. But as long as I keep taking my fear pills – six a day at regular intervals, regardless of how I’m feeling – the beast doesn’t get any closer. But if I’m late taking a tablet, or I completely forget to take one – which usually only happens when I’m feeling so (relatively) good that I can’t (or don’t want to) have anything to do with not feeling good . . . when that happens, the beast comes back with a vengeance.

It’s as if it’s there all the time, skulking around inside me, locked in a cage of Moloxetine’s making, just waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting for its chance to escape and come after me. And if the Moloxetine begins to wear off for any reason, the lock on the cage begins to weaken, and the longer I go without the drug, the weaker the cage becomes – the lock cracks and crumbles, the door swings open . . .

The insatiable beast is set free.

Which is why it’s so important that I never run out of pills.

Because if I do, I have to face the beast.

‘It’s coming, Ella. It’s getting closer. I can smell its breath.’

Me too.

‘It stinks.’

It’s only a smell, Elliot. It can’t hurt you.

‘Yeah, but the beast can hurt me. It’s hungry. I need to put it back in its cage before it’s too late. I need the last pill, Ella. I need to take it now.’

Silence . . . the silence of Ellamay’s thinking.

Then, All right. Take it. We’ll just have to hope that we find Mum and Shirley sooner rather than later.

‘And that they’ve got my prescription.’

Yeah.

I take the pill bottle from my pocket, shake it

like this

then I unscrew the cap and carefully tip the last remaining tablet into the (slightly cupped) palm of my hand.

Mind you don’t drop it, Ella says.

‘Yeah, right . . . like I hadn’t already thought of that myself.’

She gives me an imaginary cuff on the back of my head.

‘Hey! I nearly did drop it then.’

Sorry.

I pop the pill in my mouth and swallow it dry.

Bye-bye for now, Mr Beastie . . .

Bye-bye.