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"So you have imaginary friends?"
"It's not like that. They're not my friends, and they're not imaginary to me."
"If they're in your head, they're imaginary. It is like that. And how are they not your friends? You talk to them 24/7."
"Children have imaginary friends. Children who have imaginary friends can turn it off whenever they want, and are essentially in charge of the situation. It IS NOT like that."
She kept staring at me across the small desk in my bedroom, her murky black eyes assessing my protective body language. The eyes had been getting to me since she suddenly appeared in my room when the small hand of the clock on my wall was two places before it is now. If I looked away and back at them quick enough, the whites of her eyes suddenly weren't white anymore. They were as black as the shadows that lurked in the corners of my room the silver fingers of moonlight crawling through my window couldn't quite reach.
"You didn't answer my question. Why aren't they your friends?"
I didn't have to look away and back now to see that her eyes were fully black. I was suddenly filled with staggering, all consuming fear. Why did her thin, cracked lips curve into a smirk when she said that? Why did her inkwell eyes sparkle with sin?
"Calm down, and answer the question."
I looked up, shocked. Petrified, I began to speak.
"Schizophrenia is not my friend. It's my enemy."
I choked over my words, dreading an event that was unknown to me, but seemed to be looming just over my shoulder. Something was going to happen. I was sure of it.
"Elaborate." Her voice was nails on a blackboard.
"They're not nice. They tell me I'm worthless, that I'll always be a... an outcast, because I'm crazy. That I have nothing to offer to anyone. I know they're not real but, how can I ignore what's constantly in my head?"
She raised a sparse eyebrow, her translucent skin stretching over her emaciated face. She looked as if she would shatter any second now.
"Well, they're kind of right, aren't they?"
The frigid winter air constricted in my lungs.
"What?" I gasped.
"You ARE worthless. You're too god damn crazy to hold down a job, a relationship, anything."
She was backing me against a wall now.
"You're too stupid to get grades that could even be considered as passable, and you have no redeeming talents whatsoever. None at all. Mentally unstable hasn't got a smidge on you."
I was on my uncarpeted floor, curled in a ball, my hair falling onto my wet cheeks.
"Stop! Stop! Stop!"
I was hysterical, screaming for her to stop.
"Why should I? You know it's true, you worthless piece of-"
"Honey! Who are you yelling at?"
My mother had burst into the room, with a panicked expression painted on her face.
"I couldn't respond, because a cold, breathy laugh found its way into my ear.
"No one, right? Just your imaginary enemy."
I was staring into her sludgy eyes, but my mother was staring at her daughter, curled up in an empty room, gazing into nothingness.
