Andrew P. H. Clyde
Picture this: A love story that isn't a love story at all, but is the memory of the story of a love story.
Confused yet?
Lithiumbuzz is that story.
Marcus Dolby is not well. He's 30. He's got serious mental health issues. He's losing his mind. His fiance just died. And to cap off the high times, he just got out of a mental hospital after an accident involving a kitchen knife and his neck.
But there's something he has to do. His fiance died while carrying his child, and her parents don't even know they were seeing each other. To make this right, Dolby decides to drive across the country to tell her parents about the child, and reveal his relationship with their daughter to them.
There is a catch, however. Upon leaving Hartford on his way to New Mexico to break the news, he loses his medication. So where does that leave us?
Picture this: A love story that isn't really a love story, but is rather the memory of a love story as told by a total psychotic...
Lithiumbuzz is that story.
Andrew P. H. Clyde was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1999 while living in New York City. He has been writing since the age of seven, and is currently at work on his 15th novel, one he hopes will be slightly better than the one he wrote in 1985. He lives in Scranton, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Demetria, and their cats.
"When the sickness comes, when it grabs my head and seeps in through my nose and ears and mouth--when my mind turns to shit--my words become mumbles. I think of things from the past: my sister, my brother, my father, my mother. And suddenly I'm no longer me. I'm Me. Me with a capital M. So, what now? I think to myself as The Brain turns to jelly--strawberry, raspberry, grape jam. Little bits of memory stuck inside like seeds in the preserves. Nothing more, nothing more. And now and now and now I am no one and everyone, I am Me and Myself. I am him and her.
When I look out the window, I see the crazycrazy people--the real crazy people. The ones who call themsleves Jesus Christ; those guys. The ones who call themselves Lucifer; those guys. The ones who mutter and grumble under bridges and entryways and in back alleys. Those guys.
I think back to when I was just a boy, just a little kid and there I was, with Suzie and Donald in the park or at the beach or at the--no!
Memories hit me of that day, that one day, with the spiders and the hand on the shoulder and now I'm half asleep in a gravel pit, half dreaming, half screaming, and my head caves in, and I look up and ask my mother where Suzie went. Mom doesn't know.
Probably went on ahead...
But she did not go ahead. No, no! No, nonono! She's in a fucking garage being hurt and pokepokepoke and someone help her!
It should have been me. I should have screamed. I should have done something--anything! I should have felt her hand fall off my shoulder. I should have heard some goddamn sound--
But I didn't.
And she's dead.
