Damon was an out of work playwright who began to hallucinate when his psychiatrist put him on a new medication. The name of the new medication Damon could not remember. It was always right on the tip of his tongue. After 7 years of various psychotropic drugs all the ‘pines and ‘pams start to blur together. Much like these new hallucinations. Damon was so depressed that he decided he did not want to tell his doctor about these hallucinations. They were pleasing to him. They were some of the characters from one of his plays. He hadn’t had work in about 5 years and could barely afford to live off of unemployment. His hallucinations started off as “friends” but quickly that began to deteriorate.
Michael Stevenson was a bounty hunter in the Damon Weston play Fugitive on a Hot Tin Roof. It was the first play of Damon’s to flop. This was the play that introduced Damon to Paxil. In the play the bounty hunter was on the hunt for Gregg Flint, a software engineer. Flint wrote a program that brought the stock market incredibly close to another crash. It was a very strange play with not much structure and was far too abstract for the normal theatre crowd. One stale morning Damon woke up to what he thought sounded like dishes rattling around with clinks and clanks coming from the kitchen. When Damon walked in past the refrigerator he saw Gregg in his orange jumpsuit. The hallucination was quite exquisite in detail. Gregg Flint’s inmate number T56903 was embroidered on his chest. Just like in the play.
Just then Stevenson burst through the front door of the shitty Chicago apartment. “Get on the fucking ground right now! GET ON THE FUCKING GROUND!” he shouted to Gregg. “Hey! Hey.. easy, man. Easy!” said Damon. “Shut the fuck up and stay over there!” Michael said. Just then Gregg threw a frying pan full of scrambled eggs at Michael and ran towards the window. Stevenson then drew his firearm and began to unload on Gregg. This is exactly how it happens in the play, minus the frying pan with eggs. In the play it’s actually a rock that Gregg is trying to break his shackles with. As the first bullet begins to part the hair and pierce the flesh of the back of Gregg’s scalp, Damon wakes up in a cold sweat.
Damon looks around the room then down at himself. He realizes he’s still in his dressing room backstage at the theatre. It was opening night for Fugitive. As he gets up from the couch there’s a knock on his dressing room door. It’s the actor who plays Gregg Flint. His jumpsuit was already stained with blood down the front and back. Confused about the apparent special effects mishap, Damon walks over towards “Gregg”. As he goes to speak, the actor falls to the floor. The back of his skull was missing. Damon begins to vomit violently on the floor. As he runs out of the dressing room he runs into “Michael”. The actor’s face was stained and splattered with blood. With a wild look in his eye, the actor took a step towards Damon. In a flight or fight response, Damon rushed back to the dressing room. He slammed shut the door and locked it behind him. There was a desk on the table where he would keep his medications. He scoured the desk but could not find what he was looking for. As Micheal banged on the door with the butt of his pistol, Damon glances up at the mirror.
First out of his focus he notices a post-it note. As he reaches over to grab it the lock on the door begins to break. The post-it note had written on it in red pen: GET SOME HELP! Dr. Kline 555-6903. Consultation 5/30. Dr. Kline was the doctor who had been prescribing Damon all of his drugs. He had been seeing him for years but this note was fresh. He crumpled the note and placed it into his pocket. The lock on the door started to give some more. Damon grabbed his laptop bag and escaped out of the window just as the actor burst into the room. Behind him the police rushed in and opened fire on the bounty hunter performer.
The next day – which was the 30th of May – Damon called the Dr. from a payphone outside of a Holiday Inn. The receptionist took his information. Damon was confused as he did not see any police at the theatre or hear of any reports on the radio in the cab on the way over to Dr. Kline. Once he arrived at the doctor’s office the receptionist told Damon that he was running late for his appointment. Just then Dr. Kline came into the waiting room and told his new patient “I’ll see you now, Mr. … Weston”. Damon was confused as to why Dr. Kline did not remember him. “Mr. Weston have you ever heard of the drug Paxil?” Just then Damon awoke in his apartment to the sound of dishes clinking and clanking around, with the smell of frying eggs in the stale morning air.
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