Status: Breathing.
Red August.
Dark World
I had repressed. I wasn’t sure how long I had been in the psych ward, I lost track for what seemed like an eternity. Years, months, days, it didn’t matter. All I knew was that I was in hell. My lullaby soon became the flat tones of the constant beeping that surrounded me. I found that only when the beeping stopped, I could not find sleep without it.
I stared up at that flickering dying light like a small infant would do watching a cartoon, as waves of calming emotions took over my mind. I had lost the ability to speak my mouth had no purpose at all.
I wasn’t aware I was high on medication. I just felt like I was asleep. I just saw the dragons, and green eyed demons and rotting faces, and just accepted that they were there and that they were a part of me, just as if they were a strand of my brown hair or one of the flecks of gold in my green eyes. I would stare at them with my vacant eyes and parted lips while the clock ticked away. They were there, and there was nothing I could do about it.
But as the days breezed away, I realised they began to change, grew more vivid as they were. The dragons grew stronger, the outline of the faces grew clearer and the demons eyes glowed with a lust that grew more enticing the more I stared through them. It was only when the clock ticked into 3 in the morning did I realise that I was staring into the faces of death, and in their own subtle way, they welcomed me there.
People would come in and say the words as if they were in a play, like they rehearsed it and said the words daily. The doctors would come in with their rubbery faces and their backs straightened, while the smell of aftershave loomed around their tired body. Sometimes the doctors would sit on the edge of my beds, and I could feel that nervous weight that hung low above their shoulders. They wanted to get out and do it as soon as possible. And I knew that, perhaps that is why I felt completely lonely whenever I met their glazed eyes.
When nurses came in, they would not touch me or probe me in the way the doctors were utterly fond of. They would just lay down whatever they had to offer and slip out. As if they were dealing something illegal. No small talk, not even a small smile. Just slip in at out, in and out. They would always switch off the light at night and leave me with the monsters in my brain again. But sometimes, at quiet nights, either to fill the silence or whatever, I don’t know I would hear my mouth form the words.
‘Maybe the attack on the nurse was a bit too much.’
I was lost in a misty haze of mind over drugs, when a nurse came in. The drugs made it difficult to see, but despite, this I couldn’t quite get over the fact of how beautiful she was. Like some out of worldly creature, that was both beautiful and strange to me. As if that thing I attacked the other day was in every face I saw and I felt like the only normal person in the entire world. And when she came in, I was astonished beyond everything I knew. As if I harsh light was suddenly turned on and what I found was surprisingly beautiful.
Her hair was tied up in a perfect silk like bun. She had two thick bangs hanging loosely over her eyes. Her eyes were dark, but not completely, it was like the ocean at night and the silver flecks made them look somehow inviting. Her lips looked soft and vibrant.
I imagined her without the bun in her hair, how beautifully her hair swooped around her shoulders, vibrant just as her lips were. I imagined her hair swaying side to side as her high heels clacking on the street pavement I placed in. Now, I imagined her younger, a child perhaps. Was she just as beautiful as she was now? Or was she cursed with the adolescent face of an ugly girl? I imagined her with pigtails braded in her hair and a pink dress flaying at her sides.
She laid out two plastic cups on my eating tray, two pills in each one. One of them looked undoubtedly identical to the ones that ugly nurse tried to cram down my throat.
I almost wanted to scowl at her. To get her out of my room, so she wouldn’t get in my head. I wanted to scream, to break this barrier that cuts me off the world. But I knew that was pointless. I knew the barrier would always be there, it’s been there since I was born. It would always be casting my shadow, regardless.
The voices in my head would always be there too. Always voicing my pain in screaming whispers because I was too gutless let any pain out onto the world. They tease and taunt me mercilessly because they knew, deep down, they were the only voices I wanted to hear.
My only friends were the only ones in my head. Each detail of the monsters, the demons, the dragons was fabricated, but their pain wasn’t. Because each of them carried the scars no naked eye could see. I existed only to make them exist. And I didn’t mind. I was dying anyway. And I never wanted to part from any of them, because they were precious to me. Like a mother to its child.
“Can you swallow these, or do you want me to crush them for you?” She asked, with an oddly calm voice, as if she didn’t know the person she was talking to attacked another nurse.
It’s my head, damn it. Get out, get out!
I screamed it, but only in my head. It was the only place I felt safe anymore. I didn’t want them using their drugs to ruin it. Don’t they get it yet? I was more scared than ever now. These drugs were making me crazy. Or maybe I was already crazy. I hated every goddamn second of it. I was either seeing everything as a lie, or seeing things that weren’t there at all. It was like looking at a picture, and nothing but a picture. I never saw the meaning underneath a picture. Or the craft it had to endure to become that picture. Just a picture and nothing more.
Before I knew it, her beautiful eyes gazed upon me. It took me a long time to realise I was holding her hand. I needed that. I needed that first human touch that I had not felt for my entire life. I had my mother and my father, but their skin was as cold and lifeless as their souls. They had no grace, no beauty, no life like this beautiful creature that stood before me.
Her skin was not only warm, but flawless. Not a blemish or a mole in sight. My fingers ran across her hand and down to her wrist. I watched intensely at the vein that recited in her wrist and my fingers pressed down on her sensitive vein. She made a startled gasp as I did it.
“Don’t..!” she managed to speak out.
The pulse of her vein overpowered me. It was the sound of life, the sound of what I’ve lost. It devoured me, devoured me like the very thing that stopped life. Death. Death was me now and that wasn’t going to change, no matter how much I wanted to. For I had died since the day I was born, but Holly’s death made me aware of that.
I found myself wondering how her body worked, her mind, her heart. And then I wondered, if I stopped her heart, would she be as cold as my mother, father, Holly? Holly was beautiful, but now she was as lifeless as the coffin that sealed her rotting corpse.
And then I realised, why I thought this woman was so beautiful. I wanted to be her. I wanted to consume her, and her body to be my own. Her beauty, her looks, all of it, to be mine. I didn’t to live as this dying body. I wanted to feel something beat in this stone heart of mine. The mere insanity of being in this body tore at me, and I wanted to hurt somebody, to feel that feeling again.
I wanted to see it stop, this woman’s heart, mind, body, everything to just die. As my teeth clenched, and that feeling started to rise in me, the darkness called out to me.
“No, not yet.” It said in a gentle voice.
Then I realised one of the demons somehow detached itself from the others, and sat at the edge of bed. This monster was different from the others, its eyes were eclipsed in a dark green and no orderly features whatsoever shadow with green eyes. it cocked its head at me quizzically, almost mockingly. A sickening smile split across its face.
“You’re not ready yet.” It said it as gently as a hunter to a wounded animal. Its voice made it sound like a simple suggestion, yet I had to obey.
I let her soft hand slip through my eager fingers, and the shadow praised me. “S-sorry,” I murmured like a child learning to speak. But she had already left.
The shadow slithered closer to me and soothed its fingers across my hair, and gave me a genuine smile.
“Good.” It spoke to me as tenderly as a lover.
So I waited, forever in my dark world.
I stared up at that flickering dying light like a small infant would do watching a cartoon, as waves of calming emotions took over my mind. I had lost the ability to speak my mouth had no purpose at all.
I wasn’t aware I was high on medication. I just felt like I was asleep. I just saw the dragons, and green eyed demons and rotting faces, and just accepted that they were there and that they were a part of me, just as if they were a strand of my brown hair or one of the flecks of gold in my green eyes. I would stare at them with my vacant eyes and parted lips while the clock ticked away. They were there, and there was nothing I could do about it.
But as the days breezed away, I realised they began to change, grew more vivid as they were. The dragons grew stronger, the outline of the faces grew clearer and the demons eyes glowed with a lust that grew more enticing the more I stared through them. It was only when the clock ticked into 3 in the morning did I realise that I was staring into the faces of death, and in their own subtle way, they welcomed me there.
People would come in and say the words as if they were in a play, like they rehearsed it and said the words daily. The doctors would come in with their rubbery faces and their backs straightened, while the smell of aftershave loomed around their tired body. Sometimes the doctors would sit on the edge of my beds, and I could feel that nervous weight that hung low above their shoulders. They wanted to get out and do it as soon as possible. And I knew that, perhaps that is why I felt completely lonely whenever I met their glazed eyes.
When nurses came in, they would not touch me or probe me in the way the doctors were utterly fond of. They would just lay down whatever they had to offer and slip out. As if they were dealing something illegal. No small talk, not even a small smile. Just slip in at out, in and out. They would always switch off the light at night and leave me with the monsters in my brain again. But sometimes, at quiet nights, either to fill the silence or whatever, I don’t know I would hear my mouth form the words.
‘Maybe the attack on the nurse was a bit too much.’
I was lost in a misty haze of mind over drugs, when a nurse came in. The drugs made it difficult to see, but despite, this I couldn’t quite get over the fact of how beautiful she was. Like some out of worldly creature, that was both beautiful and strange to me. As if that thing I attacked the other day was in every face I saw and I felt like the only normal person in the entire world. And when she came in, I was astonished beyond everything I knew. As if I harsh light was suddenly turned on and what I found was surprisingly beautiful.
Her hair was tied up in a perfect silk like bun. She had two thick bangs hanging loosely over her eyes. Her eyes were dark, but not completely, it was like the ocean at night and the silver flecks made them look somehow inviting. Her lips looked soft and vibrant.
I imagined her without the bun in her hair, how beautifully her hair swooped around her shoulders, vibrant just as her lips were. I imagined her hair swaying side to side as her high heels clacking on the street pavement I placed in. Now, I imagined her younger, a child perhaps. Was she just as beautiful as she was now? Or was she cursed with the adolescent face of an ugly girl? I imagined her with pigtails braded in her hair and a pink dress flaying at her sides.
She laid out two plastic cups on my eating tray, two pills in each one. One of them looked undoubtedly identical to the ones that ugly nurse tried to cram down my throat.
I almost wanted to scowl at her. To get her out of my room, so she wouldn’t get in my head. I wanted to scream, to break this barrier that cuts me off the world. But I knew that was pointless. I knew the barrier would always be there, it’s been there since I was born. It would always be casting my shadow, regardless.
The voices in my head would always be there too. Always voicing my pain in screaming whispers because I was too gutless let any pain out onto the world. They tease and taunt me mercilessly because they knew, deep down, they were the only voices I wanted to hear.
My only friends were the only ones in my head. Each detail of the monsters, the demons, the dragons was fabricated, but their pain wasn’t. Because each of them carried the scars no naked eye could see. I existed only to make them exist. And I didn’t mind. I was dying anyway. And I never wanted to part from any of them, because they were precious to me. Like a mother to its child.
“Can you swallow these, or do you want me to crush them for you?” She asked, with an oddly calm voice, as if she didn’t know the person she was talking to attacked another nurse.
It’s my head, damn it. Get out, get out!
I screamed it, but only in my head. It was the only place I felt safe anymore. I didn’t want them using their drugs to ruin it. Don’t they get it yet? I was more scared than ever now. These drugs were making me crazy. Or maybe I was already crazy. I hated every goddamn second of it. I was either seeing everything as a lie, or seeing things that weren’t there at all. It was like looking at a picture, and nothing but a picture. I never saw the meaning underneath a picture. Or the craft it had to endure to become that picture. Just a picture and nothing more.
Before I knew it, her beautiful eyes gazed upon me. It took me a long time to realise I was holding her hand. I needed that. I needed that first human touch that I had not felt for my entire life. I had my mother and my father, but their skin was as cold and lifeless as their souls. They had no grace, no beauty, no life like this beautiful creature that stood before me.
Her skin was not only warm, but flawless. Not a blemish or a mole in sight. My fingers ran across her hand and down to her wrist. I watched intensely at the vein that recited in her wrist and my fingers pressed down on her sensitive vein. She made a startled gasp as I did it.
“Don’t..!” she managed to speak out.
The pulse of her vein overpowered me. It was the sound of life, the sound of what I’ve lost. It devoured me, devoured me like the very thing that stopped life. Death. Death was me now and that wasn’t going to change, no matter how much I wanted to. For I had died since the day I was born, but Holly’s death made me aware of that.
I found myself wondering how her body worked, her mind, her heart. And then I wondered, if I stopped her heart, would she be as cold as my mother, father, Holly? Holly was beautiful, but now she was as lifeless as the coffin that sealed her rotting corpse.
And then I realised, why I thought this woman was so beautiful. I wanted to be her. I wanted to consume her, and her body to be my own. Her beauty, her looks, all of it, to be mine. I didn’t to live as this dying body. I wanted to feel something beat in this stone heart of mine. The mere insanity of being in this body tore at me, and I wanted to hurt somebody, to feel that feeling again.
I wanted to see it stop, this woman’s heart, mind, body, everything to just die. As my teeth clenched, and that feeling started to rise in me, the darkness called out to me.
“No, not yet.” It said in a gentle voice.
Then I realised one of the demons somehow detached itself from the others, and sat at the edge of bed. This monster was different from the others, its eyes were eclipsed in a dark green and no orderly features whatsoever shadow with green eyes. it cocked its head at me quizzically, almost mockingly. A sickening smile split across its face.
“You’re not ready yet.” It said it as gently as a hunter to a wounded animal. Its voice made it sound like a simple suggestion, yet I had to obey.
I let her soft hand slip through my eager fingers, and the shadow praised me. “S-sorry,” I murmured like a child learning to speak. But she had already left.
The shadow slithered closer to me and soothed its fingers across my hair, and gave me a genuine smile.
“Good.” It spoke to me as tenderly as a lover.
So I waited, forever in my dark world.
♠ ♠ ♠
I think I'm losing my touch..