He's Inside

2:26PM 8/27/2014 The sun glows bright outside but the dark rests in my mind. Sitting back in my corner of my messy room, I can hear the obnoxious whirring of my window fan. I reach for a tin of dark chocolate Pirouline and gnaw on the end of my sweet cookie. My cat rests on the edge of my bed, staring off into space. I wish I could let my guard down once in a while like that...

I feel a touch to my shoulder and jump from the hard embrace of the wall. I had forgotten where I was for a moment and settled back into my panic. I'm sure by now that many of you are possibly confused by my frantic and unsteady state. It's because He's here; He's inside me.

Who is He? He is my nightmare come true; a rotting husk of a dream. I asked for Him. I did. But He was never what I wanted.

He sits in the corner and admires me from afar. He watches me as I change my clothes; tickling my thoughts with tainted evils. "Darling, come back with me," he whispers in a rich and full voice, "Remember how it was when you were young? Don't you want that?"

But I don't want that.

When I was young, I had not a friend to my name. I was born a blue child without a single cry to give. My mother was afraid of that, so she kept me out of harm’s way by keeping me close to her constantly. After a while of only seeing my mother, I learned how to communicate at a rapid pace. I was able to say "Hi" to people at 8 months old and eventually kept a good conversation as a sideshow freak for the guests. Mother was proud of me and I loved the attention of all her socialite adult friends. But in reality, I had not a friend to my name.

One day, out of boredom came a peculiar thought. If I couldn't make friends with real people, why not make a friend? It was then that I created Moosey, my unoriginal moose best friend. She was everything I wanted and needed, someone who would talk to me and would listen to me. When I grew frustrated of something, she comforted me. When I was scared of the thunder and lightning, she held my hand and hid with me through the storm. She was my best and only friend for almost years: then came my baby sister. I was two when she happened. At first I was jealous of not getting to see my mother quite as often, but in the end I made friends with my new sibling (and we're even still friends today). I read books to her when I was younger and acted out the scenes; (often rooting for characters I could relate to) and as our friendship grew, I saw Moosey less and less.

It was a sunny day in our backyard when I saw her again. She pointed at a hole in the fence and told me that she'd show me where she lives if I followed her. I remembered that Mom told me to never go through that hole or else I'd get stuck and cut my arm open. Knowing that I should never leave the yard when Mom wasn't there; I sat in my sandbox and told Moosey she should come play instead. So she sat and dug a hole with me. We planned on making a hole, deep enough to reach China, so that we could travel the entire world underground. My mother walked outside shortly after my red plastic shovel could dig no further. She put my sister onto the ground and asked me to watch her. I said okay and then went back to digging.

My sister was my buddy, so I brought her to the sand to show her what I was doing. I told her about Moosey and I going to China and she gurgled happily as I showed her the hole. Moosey however sat in grim silence. When I turned my back to my sister for a second, I approached Moosey about what was wrong. She replied in a snarky tone, "She's what's wrong." When I asked for deliberation (obviously not using that word exactly) she told me that I needed to get rid of her or else we couldn't still be friends. Horrified at the thought of losing my first friend, I told her to tell me what she meant by "get rid of" and was comforted to know she just meant to exclude her from the game.

When I returned to tell my sister to leave, she had picked up a pail and had it placed over her head. When I walked to her, she giggled and smiled at me. I tapped the pail with my shovel and told her to leave me alone. She didn't seem to understand. Then did I proceed to slap the pail with my shovel until she cried for Mom. I had forgotten though that mother didn't like it when I did bad things so I tried to make her quiet down by giving her the shovel and leaving her alone by going back to my hole to dig. Mother walked outside and asked me what I did to make my sister bawl and I refused to tell her by running into the house. I ran straight to my room in hopes that upon closing the door, I could hide from my mistake and cry the black thought out of my eyes.

A few minutes later, Moosey came to my room. "Thank you," she said, "Now we can leave that lil snot-nose back in the dirt where she belongs." I sniffled and told Moosey about how it wasn't right to call people that, but she snickered saying, "Ya know, it looks like you're a lil snot-nosed yourself." She lay on my bed and said, "Sounds like you're in for a whooping now." My mother stormed into my room and slapped my behind for what I had done. My buttocks screamed in a pain as loud as my voice did and Moosey looked on sighing. "You know who brought you that much pain? Your sister. She was the one who wouldn't leave you alone when you told her to leave. It's all her fault." I sat thinking about that and realized what she had said was true. So I alienated myself from my sister for months until kindergarten came.

When I went to school I made one friend who I sat with on the bus. I didn't talk to anyone else and I certainly had no other friends. At recess I sat under a yellow begonia bush; hiding from the sun that burned my skin red and hiding from the kids who often called me a vampire and chased me around the playground with sticks held high. It may seem cruel now but back then, they thought it was a fun little game. Moosey waited for me at home because she was my only friend there and we would spend the day in the backyard playing games that only we could understand.

But one day, I grew feverishly sick. I remember losing half of the school year staying in my mother's bed being fed hot soup that made my fever burn brighter and being forced to learn "Pig Latin" in order to keep my mind sharp. Moosey wasn't there anymore for me. In those hours of hot sweat pouring down my back and nothing but a picture of the Virgin Mary watching over me, I wanted her the most. She faded though and I learned to grow up.

Many years later, it's the 4th grade. I have two younger sisters now and we're moving to a new town. I said good-bye to the old hellish school I had known and said hello to my first public school. There I made many friends but realized I had a new problem. What's a boyfriend and how do I get one? Most of my friends had been guys all along but I never actually thought of them in that way. So one night, I spent a couple hours trying to think up what a perfect guy would be like and through my avid imagination, he became real. "Hello there," he said in a thick and luscious accent, "my name is Lucien." He was perfection. Dark hair, pale face, vivid green eyes that lit up his face when he smiled. He was It. I fell in love with Him; but he was only a dream. Every night I dreamed of Him and the beautiful things we would do together and every morning I would write them down before I left for school. He was perfection. He was It. He was only just a dream. At least I thought so...

One day, when I was alone in a field to the side of the snowy playground, I found a trail of footprints beside mine. Looking around, I saw nobody except the hustle and bustle of the normal playground, and in that moment I smelled the air. The chill bit my nose but a scent tainted the pure white; a deep musk. Afraid of what it could be, I ran back to the playground but was stopped by a sensation in my hand. I felt warm fingers wrap around it for a brief second before I heard the crunching of snow ahead of me. "Hey! You! It's time to line up!" I turned and saw a boy on the edge of the snow bank. Turning back to where I had felt the grasp of an invisible hand, I saw snowflakes cluster on the breeze then scatter as fast as they collected.

That was my first encounter with Him and I never forgot it.

When I got into my last year of middle school, I finally found a boyfriend. He was nothing like the man in my dreams but he was the first guy to ever ask me out. In those six months, I had few encounters with Lucien besides a chuckle in my ear or a whisper about how to kiss correctly. Then, in the moment I reached high school, I found that I had to leave my boyfriend.

That cold night was ruined by the call I had to make and by the boy's stifled sobs through the phone. I felt cruel and harsh and I cried myself to sleep for the next few days but in my head the words "It's okay; everything’s going to be okay," repeated endlessly in the same voice that spoke through my dreams.

I knew it was not something I should have partaken in during high school, but I held Lucien's hand as I walked through hallways constantly immersed in couples. We spoke gentle phrases under our breaths to each other and He wrote notes through my hand on the papers I had on my desk. It all seemed so romantic to me that I never really realized how much control He had over my life. I wrote poems about Him and songs and played my trumpet solos for Him all until it all seemed pointless to me.

He helped me through the biggest depression stage of my life, even keeping me from suicide in sophomore year; but as time went on He began to snicker and sneer at how I lived my life, making brief comments about how He could live it better. After I had at least 12 boyfriends in my junior year, He spoke to me briefly at Prom about how I should compile a list again about what kind of a guy I'm really looking for.

That night, I was swept off my feet by a gentle giant who cared about what I said and who loved my laugh and said he could look into my eyes and felt truly loved. But that morning, I wrote the list anyways. Lucien looked it over and chuckled, "That boy from last night isn't anything like what you want." "Not really," I said to him, "But he's what I need." "Needs, wants, wishes, desires; it's all the same to me," Lucien said stroking a finger through my hair. It felt wrong this time though. Wrong that He existed in my sub consciousness while I had a love in real life. So I told him that we should just be friends. He laughed so hard that He choked on His own air and He glared at me, green eyes going cold, "You wished for me. You begged for me. You wanted me. You MADE me. I'm not going anywhere, sister!" Soaking in the cold reality, I then tried to block Him from my mind. I used wards and charms and white quartz from my psychic books and folklore of all kinds but none kept Him away. Everything I tried was in vain as I'd stay up all night hoping to not see His face before I passed out under the covers only to hear a static whisper, "Sleep tight my darling."

Today, I write this during the day because I know that if I write it at night, he'll surely approach me. He'll rip the chord from my laptop and I'll sit in the silence watching Him come over me as I feel His breath upon my face and taste the flavor of His words spat into my face about what He does to naughty little girls who misbehave and I'll wake up at 2:15 AM and His presence lurking about the shadows will keep me awake as I sit on the edge of my bed waiting for the sun to rise so that I may not see His face before me. But, oh, I see Him, everywhere I turn. His face gleams in the corner, takes the form of anything in my room. I try to forget He exists but He's there! He's not just there though... He's inside.

I'll post later what happens to me in the next couple days; for the record, I don't have schizophrenia.