There is only one person who can identify what a schizophrenic sees or has seen. That person is the schizophrenic himself.

To cut to the point, I’m a journalist.
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to interview a patient at the Johns Hopkins Schizophrenia Center down in Baltimore who unfortunately passed away a little after we spoke. While he wasn’t exactly in the right mind, he was extremely cooperative and understanding even with his condition, describing everything he could to do justice for his own story.
The following chapters and entries are based on things provided by Jason Mellen himself, morphed and interpreted into a short story so people around the world can see things from the mind of a schizophrenic.
With the help of my dear friend Drew Heathen—author of the book series Protect The Heart of Harlem—I was able to make Jason’s experience something you can all live through as well. Please enjoy.

Chapter One
Baltimore, Maryland; 12:42pm

I didn’t think it could get any better. When you have a dry bowl of cereal for breakfast and a day away from any work or exerting any brain power, there is an abundance of random side quests you can take up.
For example: making five peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a picnic with my best friend. Honestly, I don’t even like peanut butter. Or jelly. But I know Seuss does so I guess I’ll just buy a couple of snacks on the way to the tree. And more cereal. The house is out of milk and cereal and nobody has time to get it—or they just don’t want to.
Apparently I have eight missing assignments that are worth a huge part of my grade… When did that happen? I have no idea. I’m not doing it though. That’s just not the mindset, you know? Why do my assignments when I have so many other better things to do with my life—like making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
“You get me,” I say as I drag a flimsy plastic knife through viscous grape jam on a piece of golden toast.
I heard the padding of footsteps trudge into the kitchen: my sister, rubbing her eyes sleepily with her hair sticking out in every direction imaginable. Waking up at twelve. Tsk tsk.
“Are you talking to bread?” She snorted and opened the fridge, groaned when she saw there was still no milk, and instead grabbed a comically large jug of apple juice.
Anya is a sophomore in high school and it hurts my heart to see how fast she’s growing. I could’ve sworn Anya was just in kindergarten two days ago.
I squinted. “No,” I drawled out annoyingly. “I’m talking to toast.”
Anya rolled her eyes at me and poured herself a glass of apple juice. “Same difference. What the hell are you using the entire loaf of bread for?”
“PB&Js,” I replied simply, as if it was the normalest thing ever.
“You don’t even like any of those things.” She scoffed and rustled the empty plastic bag that the loaf used to reside in. Without throwing it out for me, she turned away and picked up her full glass of vitamin C.
“They’re for Seuss.”
Anya gave me a look. “Honestly just say you’re dating at that point.” She sang blissfully and fled the kitchen with a delighted grin on her face. She always loved being an infuriating menace to me. Especially when it came to talking about Seuss, my best friend.
“You haven’t even seen him before!” I called over my shoulder, watching my sister turn on the TV in the living room and flop down onto the couch.
I slathered the last piece of toast with peanut butter and slapped it on the jam slice. Seuss would probably be waiting for me right now.

Chapter Two
Baltimore, Maryland; 01:43pm
The Oak Tree

“Oh my god.” The trudge up the hill is the worst part about getting to see Seuss.
I’d stopped by the convenience store on the way here so now I was lugging a shopping bag filled with five PB&J sandwiches, three soft drinks, and an undisclosed number of snacks. With a lack of milk or cereal. Oops. Better get it on the way back.
As soon as I make it to the crest of the hill, I announce my presence with an exasperated, “My calves are on fire,” and dramatically collapse onto the spiky grass. But there’s no laughing or witty comments that usually came. Which was a little strange.
I push myself up and look around. Seuss is nowhere to be found. I can’t remember the last time I was here before Seuss—probably never—especially not this late. I was supposed to be here like thirty minutes ago.
Maybe he’s busy. That’s fine and totally not weird at all despite how much it admittedly freaks me out.
I’ll just wait for a bit while he gets here. So I sit against the tree lazily and sigh, tossing an acorn in my hand. It’s the same acorn that Seuss and I collected from the tree a while back as a friendship souvenir. It goes under my pillow when I sleep and in my pocket when I’m not. Sure, it’s kinda corny… But Seuss came up with the idea and I wasn’t about to say no to him.
The bark is cold against my back. Cold and rough with the crooked ridges.
No…
No. It wasn’t rough. It was smooth. Smooth like a polished or freshly waxed surface. Like a new stainless steel pan. I turn around and press my hand against it, letting my fingers splay out on what looked like rough edges of bark.
“This is weird…” I mutter to myself, standing up with my palm still pressed against the unbelievable sleekness. As I’m standing there, my gaze wanders over to the small city I live in.
The hill is high up enough to see tops of houses and parks and small copses. A warm hue covers the scene with hints of yellows and oranges and reds and browns. Small flecks of dark green from evergreen trees sprinkle the land with color.
I glance up at the still-bright green leaves of the oak tree. Oak trees aren’t evergreens, I recalled from my ninth grade biology class from six years ago.
It’s the middle of autumn….

Chapter Three
Baltimore, Maryland; 02:18pm
The Oak Tree?

There’s a cocktail of confusion and doubt of my own stupidity mixing in my brain. I’m a smart guy, don’t get me wrong. I aced ninth grade biology and had a few courses in summer camp where I had to study trees. This tree—the tree I’ve been visiting nearly every day for the past year—was an English oak. One of the many oak trees that are deciduous.
It’s already late November and not even one of the leaves have started to shift into a yellowish color.
And Seuss still isn’t here.
God, literally everything is weird today.
Maybe I’m overthinking this. But seriously, this oak was supposed to be completely naked of leaves by now, especially here in Maryland or really anywhere on the east coast at this cold time of the year.
I reach up on my tippy toes to try and grab a leaf. It’s a pretty big oak—around forty-ish feet tall with the amount of sunlight it gets from sitting atop a huge hill. It quite literally soaks up all the natural resources.
Instead of successfully grabbing hold of a leaf, I grab a branch—unnaturally smooth as polished metal—and pull on it in hopes of getting a leaf actually in reach.
To which I hear a faint click. Creak…
But it’s not the kind of snap you get when you actually break a twig in half. It’s mechanical. Then came a loud clatter and rumble. I could almost hear gears turning and appliances moving against each other. It sounds like an apparatus, an entire framework of machinery and engineering melded together to create something that felt like it was straight out of a movie.
Out of instinct, I glance toward where I think the sound is coming from—which just so happened to be the yellow-brown ground of dying bermuda grass. It’s a sharp contrast from the bright green leaves on the tree that I hadn’t even got to investigate yet, but the whir of numerous automatic instruments buzzed loudly as if there was an entire generation of engineering buried underneath.
The grass parts a little. The seamless separation of grass from grass resembles the parting of Pangaea: slow, inconspicuous, almost invisible as the gap continues to widen.
My stomach feels like a whirlpool of unsure emotions. Maybe I really did go insane. Maybe I was seeing things and that’s not okay. None of this is okay.
The opening reveals an entrance down to a long, tedious-looking stone staircase that probably goes all the way down to the depths of Hell itself. There’s no form of light like there usually is in the movies. No somehow-blazing torches, no ominous crusty lanterns, no convenient bundle of matches sitting on a stone ledge. It’s pure darkness in there and I can only see as far as the sunlight from above lets me.
The staircase literally leads into an abyss of nothingness that’s terrifying yet strangely captivating. I know, I know… Number one rule in horror movie situations like this—run away and, at best, move across the country to California because this is clearly something that was supposed to stay hidden. But I can’t help the pull of the mystery and the desire coursing inside me that yearned for something eventful.
From the moment I started hiking up this hill to the second this entrance began to open up, Seuss had still not shown.
So I take a tentative step down onto the stone, feeling an unnerving sense of dread punch me in the face.
“You only live once,” I mutter under my breath, descending the stairs a bit faster with my unsure nerves.
Creak… Buzz…
And then the light is gone before I can even turn around.

Chapter Four
Baltimore, Maryland; 02:26pm
Somewhere Under The Anomalous Tree

Concerning. That’s what it is. Really hecking concerning.
But I had no choice. So what else is there to do when there’s a staircase leading down and no way back to sunlight? You go down. Dur-duh.
Kinda difficult when it’s pitch black and all the rigid excuses for stairs are varying in steepness, but I made do. The walls were narrow, preventing my arms from spreading out to either side fully and making it slightly harder to focus on the next step.
The descent was tedious, twisting and turning in sickening angles for what felt like hours—and it very well could have been. By the time I found the stone opening up into a large cave, both my legs in their entirety were trying to throw me off my own balance, wobbling in protest at the rigorous abuse.
It’s interesting, though. There’s a few stones that stick out with a single neon green hieroglyphic symbol engraved on its surface, all varying in structure and design. It’s glowing, almost radiating an enigmatic sense of clarity and dread at the same time. The clarity wins over, and, impulsively—just like how I got here in the first place—I press one, pushing the rough surface gently. An electrical buzz commences and shattered screens flicker on in their broken glory.
It looks like some kind of run-down laboratory.
I press another, and this time, lights blink on, emitting from crevasses and cracks in the cavern walls and floors. Useful.
“Jason!” The sound of the voice nearly scares me off my feet and I whip around to see Seuss grinning wildly without a care in the world at the setting we’re in. “I got curious.”
I blink. Seuss’ lack of reaction is… Strange... But not enough to stick out too much. Everything is strange. “What is this place?” I ask, knowing full well that Seuss knows only as much as I do.
The latter shrugged, green-blue eyes searching my face with interest. “I’ve been trying to find a way out for the past hour or something.” He presses another one of the stones. Nothing seems to happen so he presses another.
A creak, a buzz, but no magical door opening up.
I press two more and this time, a loud whirr echoes through the cave. A door opens up into several tunnels that probably branch off into an endless labyrinth.

And then come the bugs.

Chapter Five
Baltimore, Maryland; 03:25pm
The Tree’s Labyrinth

“Holy...” is all I can mutter as the disgusting, grimy critters start crawling in by the thousands.
Dark brown encrusted with flecks of gold cover the gray stone floor like clouds hide the glare of the sun. The weight of all the roaches press down on several other buttons, releasing even more of their ugly siblings from unknown crevasses of the earth.
“Where the hell are they even coming from?” Seuss jumps up on a rock panel to try and escape the flood of bugs, eyes blown open with panic and fear.
The overwhelming sound of vermin falling and climbing on top of each other fills the cave and bounces off the rugged walls. I could feel sour bile rising up my throat at the unbelievably repulsive sight, the retched rhythmic taps and scratches of their scrawny legs against one another uniting in a sickening ensemble.
My feet want to stay frozen in place but my brain screeches to run before we both end up drowning in roaches. Yet the only way out is through the swarm. And to think it could get any worse... Some of them were the size of an entire gallon-jug of milk.
I grab Seuss by the arm, fingers digging into the latter’s cold skin as if testing whether or not Seuss was made out of metal as well. “Run, you freakin’ idiot!” I yell over the increasingly loud crowd of mutant bugs.
Seuss jumps down and we both hesitate for a moment, reluctant to go swimming in a pool of exoskeleton and bug intestines.
But there’s no other way to go except forward.
The roaches are up to my calf, rubbing harshly against the denim of my jeans and, at this very moment, there’s nothing I want to do more than die.
A roach the size of my hand suddenly launched at me from a few feet away and for a moment my vision was completely concealed by dark brown. I let out a shriek of terror and slap it away roughly. “HOLY CRAP!”
“MOTHER OF CHRIST, WHAT THE—” Seuss ducked under another comically large roach that catapulted itself at him, swatting wildly as the growing pool slowed the movement of their legs.
Each step resonated a sickening crunch underneath our feet. The bile in my throat was threatening to disgorge now and I had to fight to swallow the burning acid back down.
Crossing the petrifying sea of vermin was anything but timely. The growing pile made it hard to push our legs forward and we clutched onto each other, fisting onto each other’s shirts desperately as we made our way to a clearing, finally able to collapse against the rough labyrinth walls with maybe ten or twenty roaches taking interest in us. The rest seemed to be attracted to the laboratory-like cavern.
We didn’t waste any more time dwelling on that though, racing through the twists and turns of this particular tunnel and stopping dead at a three-way fork.
“What the hell—which way are we—”
I didn’t let Seuss finish, pulling him along into the middle opening.
It was pitch black, all the light long gone and making us smash into some very painful stalagmites and occasionally even the walls. There’s no telling if the roaches would eventually flood the place. The faster we get out, the better.
My head crashes excruciatingly into a stalactite protruding from the ceiling and my eyesight—with what little outlines it can make out in the darkness—goes blurry for a moment. My mind spun with excessive dizziness. The thought of being submerged and suffocated to death by a swarm of roaches keeps me running, faint muffled curses from Seuss emanating from behind me.
Then it happens again, a nauseating bang echoing through the worm-like passage that makes me stop and stumble in my tracks.

But this time I don’t bounce back.

Chapter Six
Baltimore, Maryland; 05:12pm
?????

I find myself laying on an uneven patch of dirt and fescue grass, the sharp edges biting at my skin. I coughed uncontrollably, sputtering and choking for unknown reasons. My mouth was painstakingly dry and every swallow felt like sandpaper swimming down my throat.
The sun is still up, but it’s concealed by dozens of trees directly above me which seem to sway and duplicate every time I blink.
It hurts to move and I struggle to sit up, glancing around in disoriented confusion.
I’m clutching something tightly in my left hand—the acorn.
My headache returns with an agonizing vengeance and I let out a low groan, discreetly aware in the back of my mind that Seuss is nowhere to be found once again.
And there’s no evidence that he ever was.
There were no bruises forming on my arm from where he had grabbed me like there should have been. There was no hemolymph or mutated roach legs coating my clothes or shoes.
But the headache was still there, so it had to have happened somehow, right?
Pushing myself up on my hands, I manage to stand with minimal stumbling and try to grasp the location of which I’d been in for God knows how long.
Royally screwed.
There’s no explaining how I even got here in the first place when the last thing I remember is ramming into a piece of stone. There are zero footsteps whatsoever.
In every direction, all there is is an endless abundance of oak trees spanning out for what seems like miles on end. It’s subliminal.

I walked until I saw buildings. It must’ve been hours before I did. The moon came up and it did me no good, hiding anything that I could have seen in my way.
The forest was strangely quiet though, even when the sun was still out—no chirping from birds, no squeaking from squirrels, no piercing howls of coyotes, no grunts of other identifiable animals, no bugs and certainly no roaches. It was somehow more unsettling than the idea of a metal tree being the cause of this in the first place.
I walked into the city and I must’ve looked horrible because people rushed to help, yelling something about a crazy man rambling on loudly about trees and exoskeletons.
Sirens blared in my ears and eventually the people took me in an ambulance, their frantic interrogations sending my mind spiraling into confusion. I thought it was pretty unnecessary. All I wanted was to go home and maybe find Seuss.

Next thing I know, I was hooked up to what looked like hundreds of wires and medical equipment, the sound of my heart rate being monitored beeping from a corner of the room.

And within six days, that beeping stopped—never to start again.

Author’s Note

Jason Mellen died of severe ARS (Acute Radiation Syndrome) six days after he was found and four days after I interviewed him. His poisoning was caused by unknown circumstances. Netizens speculate that it was the buttons in the cave that released mass GY (gray units) of radiation, but officials argue there is no such evidence that the cave even existed. The English oak was eventually removed from the hill for the investigation of Mellen’s claim, to no avail. The tree was real.
Jason was found November 26th—an entire day after his sister Anya reported he left the house—covered in his own blood, vomit, and burns. Passersby claimed he was screaming wildly about a man named Seuss and roaches and trees in a storm of ungodly curses.
We were never able to identify Seuss as a real person with the little description Jason gave us, and he was diagnosed with Catatonic Schizophrenia which Anya said must have been ongoing for at least a year.
Jason ultimately suffered from severe internal bleeding—which we see in his early stages during his vigorous coughing and nausea—which eventually caused intense infection alongside the radiation burns on his skin. He later accumulated Gastrointestinal Syndrome alongside ARS (known as GI-ARS) and experienced unimaginable damage to his biomolecules (found in his autopsy report). Some of the many biological responses he experienced were sphingomyelin hydrolysis and increased pro-inflammatory cytokines, eventually contributing to a substantial decrease in transepithelial resistance.

Readers and researchers of Jason Mellen’s case find key correlations between many different aspects repeatedly mentioned in his story. The most common symbols are found to be the relation of oak trees to the Greek God known as Zeus (in uncanny relation to the name Seuss), which also leads to the occasionally mentioned acorn—known to protect from lightning in Greek myths.
Jason’s body was donated by his family to forensic laboratories across the world for scientific research of radiation poisoning and neuroscience, working to synthesize treatment for certain infections and studying the effects of schizophrenia on the brain. Already, his body has given us great knowledge on GI-ARS, infectious radiation poisoning, catatonic schizophrenia, and other mental disorders thought to have been weighing down on Jason.

Again, Jason Mellen was a schizophrenic who suffered through this intense episode of hallucinations and delusions, but also experienced an unexplainable, possibly terroristic attack of lethal doses of ionizing radiation. Myself and my friend Drew Heathen collaborated on this project to turn his story into a short work of fiction portrayed from recorded interviews between Jason and I.