Phobia

Dementophobia

‘Dementophobia. The fear of insanity.’

        “Hahaha, what sort of thing is that,” I asked myself, after another pointless internet search, trying to learn new words. “That wouldn’t even, make sense. I mean, I....”

        And at that thought I shut the door to my room, closed the blinds on the window, shut off my laptop, and started pacing.

        I like to pace and rant, when I don’t understand something. And this, was certainly something I didn’t understand.

        Because, the thought seemed all too familiar. Waking up in a cold sweat, thinking, “Oh god, have I gone mad?” Thinking that, perhaps, I was in an asylum that very moment, and all of this was simply my insanity-induced hallucination. And then I laughed.

        A dry sound. It was probably true. Those moments were probably the only times I was truly lucid, and the daydreams I would have, the fantasies, well, they only proved to further the point. I was probably insane. And then, there was the fact, that I didn’t even care. I didn’t have a second thought the time I had a wet dream where I bit off my crush’s tongue and watched him bleed to death. I didn’t give a second thought to all the times the muscles in my arms twitched, and, had I been a lesser person, my hand would’ve driven a knife straight through someone’s heart. Just from a little twitch, a little, voice, in the back of my mind.

        I didn’t really care, though. If this was my illusion, best to make the most out of it.

        So, there I went along. I scooped up the three knives laying about my room, and settled on the medium sized one, a blade around three and a half inches long. This knife had been with me the shortest time, but, the other one was too small to effectively bleed someone out, and the other was too big to conceal.

        So, off I went. A smile painted on my face, the knife twirling in my hand. I ran along the seemingly endless halls (“of a school?”, I remember vaguely wondering) twirling this way and that, trying to get my knife in at just the right angle to get the blood to spray in just the direction I wanted it to go in. I wasn’t afraid of being locked in jail. No real punishment there. Food, shelter, protection. I didn’t feel pain anymore, or emotions. I had no sense of how “killing is wrong.” I wasn’t worried about what anyone else would think, either. I was perfectly content, wiping a spray of blood off of my smiling face.

        I became aware, albeit slowly, that some great darkness was looming behind me. I wasn’t afraid of it, or anything. I hadn’t felt that one in a long, long time. It was just wonder, “What sort of darkness feels like this?”

        Though, I never slowed, never stopped. I just kept on through the endless hall, the bodies lining the walls, and painting the previously white floor various shades of crimson.

        “This is quite nice,” I remember thinking, before....

        I shot up in bed. Another nightmare.

        I really was afraid.

        Really and truly.

        Afraid, I just might, be slowly losing myself to the dully shining luster of insanity.