Lights and Shadows

Sometimes I get weird experiences. Astral experiences and hallucinations that I'm not quite sure are hallucinations anymore. I've had voices in my head tell me things. Like, I was talking to an old friend and she starts telling me about some crap with a couple of her classmates; just the usual teen drama. She asks me for my input and I start giving it. Then she starts disregarding me and my opinion, going out on me. So the voices tell me things about her, how she's lying.

"No, you started it by cheating with him, she's got every right to be upset with you, and she does know." What are- How... Sometimes it's not like that. Sometimes it's a driving force, telling me to do things. It overwhelms, and when I don't listen it insults. It knows what to say. ''Failure. Worthless. Waste. Shit.'' It builds up inside in my own world, and I'll flash back to the real world at some party I don't remember going to and...

'"STOP IT!" ' Then everybody looked at me like I've got two heads. I looked at them, spinning, keeping my distance. I saw the hands slither on everyone's shoulders. Then the arms reached out towards me. Stay away... What are you? Then they jumped and they clawed at me. They stood over me with their wide, hollow-eyed faces that bleed out of the sockets, and the voices told me... "You'll be okay. We'll show you wonderful things."

We have so many beautiful things to show you...

Then they touched me and lifted me up. I was in a hospital and a doctor was leading me. Her eyes were swallowed back and it looked as if she had a lack of sleep, her eyes tanned, even bruised. An orderly followed behind her, with a similar complexion on his face. We walked down the hallway, and more and more rooms started to empty. The floor got rustier and dirt started to appear. Rooms to my sides were burned, covered in ash, grime and rust. Two more orderlies appeared, following us behind me. The floor and hall got longer, the end of the hall no longer in sight. If I had paid attention, I might've seen it even move. I didn't think anything of it, until the hall got bloody. The orderlies behind me grabbed my arms and dragged me onto a stretcher, strapping me into it. I struggled, but they simply placed more restraints until I couldn't move. They pushed the stretcher down the hall and into a small living room.

It was full of what appeared to be mental patients. They were on the floor, or banging their heads against the wall, some screaming a chant: "Deus meus, ut quid dereliquisti nos?" Some screamed to the ground and sky, like they asked a question. Others asked as if it were rhetorical. They were oblivious of the orderlies, doctor and I. We rolled through the next hallway and I saw arms and legs, people crawling on the glass ceiling above me, looking down, whispering through the glass "forsaken, forsaken, forsaken, forsake-" and more, looking directly at me, "Join us... join-"

I looked to the left and there people restrained on spires, spikes being thrust into them, and they puked blood and acid onto people restrained below them. The latter screeched at the agony of their flesh melting away. On the other side, peoples' genitals were mutilated with saws and they bled green blood into people's mouths. To my right, I saw people, alive, but skinned and hung by their feet, awaiting dissection at a table where similarly skinned and crippled people cut them up into slabs of meat. The heads were simply tossed on a rack and thrown in an oven, still conscious, and screaming at anguish somehow still registered.

We stopped at a hallway, and I looked to my right at a room. Inside, there were three people, kneeling down, comatose and motionless. large insects, like ants, crawled out of holes in the walls and covered them head to toe. I saw blood, the ants leaving their body with bits of flesh. I kept watching, as more and more ants left and I saw the result of their "feeding". The trio's bones, save eyes, were picked clean. We kept moving, into a room on the left, and I looked back and saw their bodies, reformed, with another swarm of insects coming in after them.

I woke up in a hospital bed after that.

Last night, I was at a meeting and I saw somebody dart up the stairs on my way out. It was a community building, and some people would always sneak in to spend the night, so I wandered up to follow them. The lights were off and I was one of the last people in the building, but I asked if anyone was there. I turned to go up the stairs, the door shut, a dark leg moving down the hall as the door closed. I walked upstairs and followed it to the door. I opened it, and the room was empty, so I wandered back downstairs. My friend Ed had found me, and asked what I was doing. I informed him of what I noticed, and he told me: "I'll go up the other stairwell. We'll meet in the middle." He told me, when he strolled up the opposite stairwell. So I walked up the stairs again, except this time, the lights were on. I quietly snuck up, listening for any noises, but nothing at the top. ''Get out of here... ''

Behind me at the bottom of the stairs...but there was nothing there. I looked back up and saw a pant leg dart around the corner. The lights then shut off. I stepped up further, and the hall was empty, but a door at the middle had clicked shut. I wandered towards it, and turned the knob. It was locked. I tried to bang my way in, but it was stuck. I looked in the window of the door and its crimson red eyes stared right back it me. The door flung open, and its slender legs walked towards me. Its armed reached out, and its cloak encompassed me. Its face, pale and white, with its crimson, star-like eyes began to fall onto me, when I covered my eyes. It was gone upon opening them, and Ed asked me where I was. I stood up, and met him at the end of the hall, searching the rooms. He checked the first bathroom and the storage closets (the other doors were generally locked), and I checked the second bathroom. It was dark, but there was nothing.

He walked back down the stairs and told me to just keep an eye out. I wandered down the other side, switched the light, and turned back. It darted across the hallway. I didn't wait to leave that building. I got into a friend's car for a ride back home. On my way back, I saw it out of the corner of my eyes, its shadows disappearing as I look. I looked out my window, and it stood on the sidewalk, among others. We pulled into my driveway, and I thanked my friend. Then I saw it in the rear view mirror, looking back at us. I looked back towards the car, and its red eyes peered right in from the front. I got out of the car and ran towards the house. I'm hiding in my room now, late at night, not able to tell what's just a shadow, what's the light of its eyes, and what is really the phantom. The voice in my head mocks me for not being able to figure it out.