This Time Doesn't Count

"Lawrence?"

Raul was the last person he wanted to see.

"Lawrence," he said looking guiltily about him, but not at him. "You aren't real."

Lawrence could do nothing but laugh. Raul was annoying at times, sure, but this was just... crazy. But, there was a certainty in Raul's eye that he just couldn't dismiss.

"What leads you to that belief, Raul?"

"Well," he said clearing his throat, "You are a unicorn after all."

"What about you? You're a Llama!" Lawrence huffed.

"But that's different Larry! This time it's true!"

It was true. Raul had come to him saying the exact same thing several times before. "Raul, I don't believe you. I'm a real unicorn. You're a real llama. We're all real Raul."

"No! I refuse to believe it!!" Raul screamed. He ran off, going on and on how none of this was real. This is reality and we're living it, Lawrence thought.
He flipped open his cell phone and dialed a number. "Yes? Eric? Yes, it's Raul again. He needs... another treatment. Thank you so much. Goodbye."
Lawrence softly closed the cell phone. How he wished to softly close this most recent episode with Raul.

***

"Eric? What are you doing here?" Raul sniveled.

Eric smiled. "Lawrence told me you needed some help...?"

"Help?! This whole world needs help! I think I'm a llama; you think you're an emu and Larry... poor Larry...! He thinks he's a unicorn! Llama's and Emu's maybe, but a unicorn?! Eric, you have to help Larry understand...!"

"No, no, no... We need a strategy first before we go forward Raul."

Raul nodded. "What's the plan? Do we need a plan? Since when?"

"We need to take these," Eric said, taking a candy tin from his pocket.

"Wh-what are those?!" Raul asked uneasily.

"They're to help us think better. I take two, you take two, see?" he said, swallowing his pills. Raul took the two Eric offered.

"We're not real," he cried. "We're not real."

"Now Raul, don't go saying that; with your luck, it just might come true. Come on, let's take your medicine."

Raul went pale as he looked to Eric in shock. He sat there for what seemed like hours as Eric smiled back, his horrible Emu-smile burning a hole in his mind. He looked briefly at the two pills, swallowing them down in one gulp.
"We're not real," Raul whispered.

"You're just a confused llama, Raul. You'll get over this with time."

***

"Is it done?"

"It's done Larry. Painless."

"Thank you Eric, for being so gentle with him."

Eric smiled as he exited the office building. He felt weird. Maybe not entirely because he was Larry's cleaner; it was something else, a deep feeling in his gut. Maybe it was the paranoia that came with his job-- the experience that was Raul Llama and Lawrence Unicorn-- he just felt different. The only way he could explain it to himself later as a complete shock. He tried to beat it back but couldn't.
There was only one true explanation for his feeling.
"I'm not real," Eric whispered to himself while barricaded in his bedroom. "There's nothing that can cure that!"

--John E. Lansing