Prince Of Mind Hallucinations

Chapter 14

The pungent aroma of instant noodle seasoning stung the nose, clashing with the oppressive heat radiating from the corrugated iron roof of the Merdeka High School canteen. The three o'clock sun was still powerful enough to roast anyone brave enough to sit in the open area. Raditya wiped his brow, trying hard to dampen the buzzing in his ears.

That buzzing wasn't a physical sound. It was an internal frequency—a radio transmission of human thought that seemed to have found the perfect antenna in his new "mature" nerves, a byproduct of yesterday's lightning strike.

In front of him, the only two people who had bothered to be his friends for the last two years—Beni and Joni—sat stirring their plastic bags of iced tea.

"Crazy, Rad. I still can't wrap my head around it. Did you seriously get a makeover from an angel or something?" Beni opened the conversation, his eyes scanning Raditya's jawline, which was now sharp and clean, no longer home to a colony of cystic acne. "You're way too handsome now, man. Standing next to you, I feel like a soggy cracker that's been sitting in oil for too long."

Beni laughed loudly, slapping Raditya's shoulder familiarly. Verbally, it was a sincere, friendly joke. However, inside Raditya's head, Beni's radio signal crackled violently with a bitter, foul-smelling frequency.

Dammit. Why did this loser have to get the miracle? Why not me? Now when we walk together, the girls only look at him. I'm just his bag carrier. Lucky bastard, I want to see him get in another accident so his face gets wrecked again.

Raditya choked on his iced tea. The sting wasn't from the liquid entering his nose, but from the fact that his own best friend had just "prayed" for his ruin internally.

"Are... are you okay, Ben? Your hand is all wet from the ice," Raditya stammered, trying to find the most normal response amidst the piercing mental noise.

"Huh? I'm fine, chill out!" Beni replied, but his mind continued to curse: Look at you, getting all cocky now. Asking about my wet hand like that. Just because your hands are clean and vascular now, you want to show off? Asshole.

Meanwhile, Joni, who was more preoccupied with his phone, looked up. "Yo, Rad! Mobile Legends this afternoon? We need a Jungler as fast as your new walking style."

Joni's mouth offered a gaming invite, but his mind was a far wilder entertainment channel. Joni's eyes were fixed on the back of a student named Tania, who had just passed them toward the parking lot. Tania, with her short skirt swaying to the rhythm of her hips, triggered a libido signal so powerful in Joni's brain that it invaded Raditya's neural centers without a filter.

Instantly, the reality of the stuffy canteen dissolved for Raditya. His world shifted into a 4K mental projection accidentally broadcast by Joni's perverted brain.

In that telegraphic view, Raditya was no longer on the hard wooden canteen bench. He was dragged into Joni's fantasy: a dark, soundproof music room. Raditya was forced to "watch" from Joni's perspective as he cornered Tania in the corner of the room. 

The raw scent of lust triggered by the fantasy—a sickening blend of Tania's vanilla perfume and heated skin, invaded Raditya's internal senses. He saw himself (or the hero figure in Joni's mind) greedily tearing through Tania's uniform fabric.

Raditya saw Joni's hands in that shadow—large and rough—squeezing Tania's firm breasts beneath a black lace bra. The visuals were so detailed; Tania's hardening nipples felt almost tangible, the texture of her skin vibrating as Joni's tongue sucked her neck, leaving a hot red mark.

"Ahh... right there, Jon... harder..." moaned Tania's internal voice created by Joni's fantasy, sounding incredibly erotic and real in Raditya's ears.

Raditya could feel the fictional arousal creeping from Joni's nervous system into his own. Raditya's blood surged violently toward his groin; his member beneath his uniform pants hardened so quickly it felt stiff and throbbed intensely.

He saw the vision continue even more extremely; Joni lifted both of Tania's thighs, exposing her wet core before slamming into her with savage, deep thrusts. The sound of skin hitting skin—smack, smack, smack—the internal rhythm of Joni's animalistic lust shattered all logic of decency in Raditya's head.

Tania in the fantasy groaned wildly, her nails clawing Joni's back until they bled as they reached a climax that flooded the space of telepathic consciousness.

"Rad! Hey! Are you deaf now?!" Joni's shout snapped Raditya back to the canteen chair.

Raditya gasped like a catfish out of water. His face was flushed crimson, his forehead drenched in cold sweat. His gaze accidentally fell to his own pants, which now showed an embarrassing bulge beneath the table. He quickly pressed his thighs together to hide it.

"I... I don't think I can play games this afternoon," Raditya said in a hoarse voice, his breath still racing from the residual effects of Joni's "broadcast."

"Why? Got a date with a popular girl already?" Beni sneered, but in his head, he said: Whatever, acting all busy, you dog. Probably going to corner one of the sluts from the other class. Pretending to be a saint when you're probably just as perverted. I hate your style.

Raditya felt a suffocating void in his chest. Before, even though he was a nerd and ugly, at least he believed that Beni and Joni were "brothers." But now, his thought-radio exposed it all as a sham.

They didn't love Raditya; they only used him as a yardstick for their own failures to feel better, and now that Raditya had succeeded, they only wanted his downfall or to exploit his libido.

"Jon, honestly... when Tania walked by just now, what were you thinking?" Raditya tried a "honesty interruption."

Joni was startled, his cheeks reddening slightly. "Huh? Thinking what? Just noticed... uh, her body's getting better since she joined dance. Why?"

Joni's mind: Shit, does he know my eyes were focused on Tania's underwear when her skirt blew up? Can he see that I'm a little wet down there from imagining soaking up Tania's sweat in the school warehouse earlier? Radit is getting creepy.

"Nothing. Just, you should probably pour some holy water on your brain so it doesn't swell up every time you see a girl," Raditya quipped sharply, losing all respect for the friend whose fantasy had just forced a fictional orgasm into his own head.

Joni scowled, while Beni's internal thoughts grew sharper: See? Now he's starting to get smart with his mouth. Getting cockier by the day. Just you wait, if he tries to steal my crush Dina, I'll poison his food.

Raditya stood up abruptly, making the wooden bench screech against the canteen's concrete floor. Attention from other tables was once again drawn to him.

Wow, the hottie is standing up. God, look at that broad chest when he breathes in... whispered the thoughts of the girls across the room.

"I'm leaving. Something urgent came up," Raditya said shortly. He grabbed his bag without looking back at Beni and Joni.

"Hey! You suck, Rad! You said we were ride-or-die!"

Joni shouted physically, but his mind only said: Whatever, I'd rather find a way to get Tania's number from her classmate.

Raditya walked away, out of the canteen toward the school gate, which was starting to quiet down. The further he got from those two friends, the noise in his head began to change frequency—from Joni's wild lust to the collective hum of all the remaining students on school grounds.

He leaned his back against a mahogany tree near the security post, closing his eyes tightly. Raditya felt an absolute sense of loneliness.

This popularity and good looks were a golden mask, but his ability to hear people's "guts" was a scalpel that cut through all trust in humanity.

It turns out the apocalypse wasn't the lightning strike that hit the crown of my head yesterday, Raditya thought bitterly. The apocalypse is when you realize your best friend wants you dead, and your good friends want to rape girls inside their heads.

He took a long breath, calming the lingering surge of libido from Joni's "mental invasion" earlier. He washed his face at the sink near the empty cafeteria, staring at his new face in the mirror. Physically perfect, but mentally tattered.

Suddenly, from the back of the school, he felt a wave of silence once more. A silence that belonged to only one person in this noisy world. Bianca.

Raditya turned around, but Bianca wasn't there. All that remained was a longing for Bianca's "dead zone", the only place where he could be himself without having to smell the stench of other people's mental filth.

"From now on, I'm not that dorky Raditya anymore," Raditya whispered to his reflection. "I am the observer of your madness. And you two, Ben, Jon... our friendship was buried alive this afternoon by your own secrets."

Raditya turned around and walked out the gate, letting the internal noise of pedestrians and motorcyclists outside welcome him with an endless, absurd dance. The "thought-radio" in his head wasn't going to shut off anytime soon, and Raditya knew he had to learn to be the coldest "radio operator" if he wanted to survive among these thousands of human mental hallucinations.

The footsteps of the prince of hallucinations echoed on the asphalt, cutting through the evening silence that was never truly quiet for him.

That noisy afternoon conversation had just given him the most expensive lesson of his life: the most honest secrets are often found not in what is spoken, but in the disgusting lust and envy kept behind the smiles of a sweet friendship.