My body

I’m free in my dreams.

Free to act, breath and exist how I want to. She can’t get to me. The barrier of my subconscious holds her back. She’s tried to take me when I was here before though.

It had been a peaceful dream. I was in my room, sprawled across my bed, watching the shadows dance across my ceiling. I’d been relaxed and happy.
But then she tried to get to me.

I’d heard knocking on my door and pleas to be let inside. She wanted me to willingly let her in, a change from her usual hostile takeover of my mind and body. I was smart enough not to open the door. As time passed she began to scream and howl, the wood of the door groaning under the force of her blows.

Then I woke up.

At first I think I’d dreamt a memory but I realize quickly she was trying to get to me again. But I was stronger than her, stronger then she would have liked.

Once the thought crossed my mind, I felt her anger sweep through me and before I could react she was in control. I cursed myself for thinking I was in any way stronger then her.

My punishment flooded into my mind, with more clarity then I was used to when she was awake. Memories I’d long since buried resurfaced at her hand and she smothered me with them, shoving them down my metaphoric throat.

Water, choking, possessive blackness, screams not all belonging to me, aching lungs. I was hit violently with these recalls and if I was the one in charge of my body I would have been screaming and crying.

She forced more upon me, putting me in my place.

More water, always so much water. A limp drenched body, hair strewn across a pale dead face. Accusations and panicked screaming.

Enough! I shouted, the words actually leaving my lips and I shoved her violently back into the depths of my mind, along with the dreadful memories.

Recovery came quickly, but the nausea lasted longer.

I sit down on my bed, running a hand through my hair and holding it at the back of my head so none falls in my eyes while I think.

She’d never seized control to quickly before. It usually took almost a minute, and she’d never acknowledged me before. A shiver runs through my body at the thought of her gaining strength.

She only showed up every few weeks, and I usually got her to leave within a few minutes. I’d never had to deal with her around other people.

But now she’d attacked twice within less then twelve hours. Could she do it again? Around friends? Family? Would I even be able to stop her from hurting someone?

I walk into the room, the bell ringing just as I sit down. I’m in calculus, my least favorite subject. Math and I don’t mix. In fact we have quite a dysfunctional relationship. I’m really good at it, but I wish it would die.

The class was about five minutes in when Travis Westbrook sauntered in, slouching into the chair next to me. He was always tardy and smelled like alcohol and occasionally some kind of drug. We only spoke when necessary.

Like usual he started texting under the desk beside his leg.

I don’t get why people bother doing that. From the front of the room, from a teachers point of view, it looked like students doing it had an obsession with their own thighs, cause that’s where the phone was positioned. And if the teacher wasn’t smart enough to figure out that none of the student body had leg fetishes, and were really communicating with each other through text, then maybe the teachers shouldn’t be teaching at all.

I ignore Travis’s idiocy and continue to take notes.

And that’s when it happens.

I feel myself suddenly get light headed, and it’s like I’m being dragged violently back. But I’m not. The only movements my body makes are the small, seizure like tremors. My eyes are half closed, probably making me look as stoned as Travis is.

My surroundings blur my senses dull and then she has me.

You can’t be here! I warn her, as if she cares.

But I know she doesn’t cares. Because this is what she’s wanted all along. To be close enough to people where she can hurt them before I have time to stop her.

My eyes give a sidelong glance at Travis and a small smirk pulls at my lips.

Please just go, I beg, and she grips my pencil tightly. Like when she held the knife, gruesome images forced their ways into my mind. Instead of acting on her vicious impulses, to wreak as much bloody havoc as she can, she sits in my seat, in my body, quietly. Unless someone had been paying attention to my minor spasm attack I’d had while she took over, no one could have guessed a lunatic sat amongst them.
Go! I insist, her lack of action not easing the panic that should be rising in my body.

I hear the teachers muffled voice, ordering us to work on an assignment I hadn’t noticed be handed out. I grip the pencil tighter again, and get to work on my assignment. She seemed to hesitate before the first problem. As if she didn’t understand it. Apparently Math wasn’t important to psychopaths, because as she did finally start to figure out the problem, I noticed immediately she was wrong.
You’re going to make me fail! Leave!

She continues to do the assignment incorrectly.

In my peripheral vision she and I both notice Travis reach over to me, only my vision is much more hazy.

His fingers brush my arm, to get my attention. And she reacts like only someone with her kind of mental stability would.

I turn abruptly, my fist slamming into his hand that touched me. He lets out a sharp, shocked cry as the pencil penetrates his hand. He flings himself off of his seat, and she lets me release my hand on the pencil so not to tear it out.

“What the hell?!” I barely hear him shout.

Then the class is in chaos. Students yell and gasp as blood start dripping to the floor, the teacher runs to the back of the room to investigate. Travis lets out a loud string of profanities that he wouldn’t have gotten away with if there wasn’t a pencil lodged all the way through his hand.

And she just makes my body sit quietly and calmly, a small smile on my lips.
What’s wrong with you?! You’re crazy! Get out!

“Ally what did you do?!” Mr. Tate yells, as my head begins to pound.

Get out now!!!

She obeys, disappearing into the crevices of my mind, and thankfully, I pass out.

My eyes flutter open and a blinding light hits me. I squint, shield my eyes, and hope it goes away.

“She’s awake,” A grave voice mutters, the light disappearing. My eyes slowly come into focus and I realize I’m in a hospital. I haven’t been in a hospital since the accident, two years ago. I haven’t been in a hospital since she started showing up.

“What’s going on?” I croak, sitting up, my head spinning. The doctor urges me to lie back down, insisting I shouldn’t rush myself. “But what’s going on?”

“You had a seizure,” He informs me.
I almost argue, because I know all that happened is she left my body to abruptly after having power over it for almost an hour. But I can’t tell him. What was I supposed to say? Oh no, you see doc, a crazy girl took control of my body and when she leaves my body does weird shit. For some reason that just didn’t seem like the right thing to tell someone.

“Oh…” Is all I manage.

“Ally!” My sister’s familiar voice cries. She runs over, wrapping her arms around me.

“Hey Mindy,” I mumble and she releases me. The doctor immediately pulls her aside to talk to her, their voices hushed. I know they’re talking about what she did. What she was making people think I did. What was going to happen to me? I don’t know the punishment for students who stab other kids with writing utensils.

Maybe I could pass it off as an accident. It wouldn’t be a lie. I didn’t technically do it. She did.
The rest of the hour I have to stay in hospital passes in a mess of questions I can’t seem to answer. The doctor decides I stabbed Travis because of stress. Apparently the stress was caused from being home alone while my parents are on their cruise. Teenagers don’t get stressed when their parents leave them the house to themselves for a week. Teenagers get crazy in the partying and breaking all the rules way.

But I nod as if he’s right.

Mindy takes me home.

Mindy is my eighteen year old sister. She moved to college this year and now I only see her on weekends. I’m sixteen and in my junior year at Eagle ridge High. She tells me that she drove down as soon as the principal called her to tell her what happened to me.

“I’m really sorry about this,” I say, giving her an apologetic look. She smiles, patting my head as if I’m her pet before she quickly puts her hand pack on the wheel.

“It’s alright Allenalisa,” She says, watching the road. Allenalisa. That’s a new one. My full name was Allete Rose Peterson, Ally for short. My sister liked to make up random names that started with ‘All’ and call me them. It’s kind of her way of giving me a nickname.
We traveled silently after that and it wasn’t until we were getting into the house that she spoke again.
“So why did you stab that kid in the hand?”
She asked it so bluntly It felt like I’d been slapped.

“I don’t- I didn’t- It wasn’t- I… I don’t know. I didn’t mean to. I just… the doctor said it was because of stress,” I stutter, attempting to make it to my room before she tries to pry more answers from me.

“You’ll tell me eventually!” She cries as I slam the door to my room.