Off the Edge

Insanity Note #4

"Wake up! Wake up! Please wake up!" I hear a voice from outside of my head.

No. Don't wake up. Never wake up. Protest the voices inside my head.

I hear crying and I my mother saying things to the doctors like, "This is all your fault! You should have protected her!" and things to either Kyle or to my not-father and her not-love like, "This is all my fault. I should have protected her."

I feel a shock and suddenly, my eyes open and I'm awake. I sit up and gasp as if I couldn't breathe in my sleep. But by the look of all the doctor's faces and by the tear stains on my mother's, I think I was dead. Like I said to Kyle, I would die of exhaustion. But the doctors saved me. No. Not the doctors. The demons. They wanted me awake! I should have stayed dead because now the demons can do whatever they want to me because I am awake! But the voices told me to stay asleep. They told me to stay dead. Did he need me dead? He who controls my life?

"Oh god! Honey, Trisha! Are you alright? Ohmigod. Oh, oh. Trish? Trish? Trish?" Mother touches my face and holds my hands and then goes back to touching my face. "I thought I'd lost you." She starts to cry and to stead her shaking hands, I gently take her wrists from my face and hold them in my hands.

"Mom, was I dead? Or just sleeping?"

"You were..." She looks to the demons, the doctors, and then back at me. "Trisha, you were sleeping and then your heart stopped. The doctors can't figure out why. They think it was because you were... Too tired? But... That doesn't sound right. So..." She trails off.

"Mother? Please tell Kyle that this wasn't his fault. And it wasn't my fault. It was his." I say and slump on my perch. I sigh and feel as if I should go back to sleep. But sleep takes more energy than when I'm not asleep. So I just slump and open my eyes as wide as possible.

"Whose? Whose fault? What do you mean? Help me understand." Mother looks at Kyle, who is right behind her, and signals him not to talk.

"He. The voices. He drains me in my sleep and makes me tired in the day so I want to sleep even more and then I fall asleep and..." But I don't know that rest of it so I can't tell her why he needs my energy drained.

"Who is he?" Matthew, mother's love but not my dad, says.

"He is the voices. The voices that haunt my dreams. And my consciousness." I smile because although this isn't the least bit funny, I made Matthew scared. The smile only makes Matthew more frightened and he backs away a few steps.

"How're you feeling?" Kyle asks as he scoots his chair up closer to me.p

"I'm fine. Just really tired. Tired as the popcorn that pops gets tired of jumping, so it just lays in the bowl. Helpless. Ready to be eaten." Then I think about what I said and remember that it was the voices who told me that one. "It was the voices. The voices told me all about it. And the crows and elephants too."

Kyle asks to be excused and then walks out. I don't see his eyes, but he is shaking. Why is everyone afraid of me? I'm just like them. I'm normal. As normal as you can get when you have voices in your head telling you what to do, draining all of your strength when you sleep.

**********

Daddy sat at his computer, typing away. Probably friendly emails to friends or paying the bills to the shop. Mother waits patiently downstairs for Kyle to arrive so they can go across town to get his drivers test. The nice man who lives next door, Matthew, walks past our shop in a hurry. And Kyle is in the room next to mine, putting on his shoes and reviewing things about the turn signal and yellow lights.

There was a knock on my closed door as I pulled of shirt over my head. The butterfly curtains that hung over my windows didn't block out the pools of sunlight flooding my room. My bed with new bed sheets from grandma on Christmas are all made up in smooth wrinkles like waves on a sea of mattress. My desk filled with time focused homework and books with dragons and princesses. My cup full of pencils and pens that's ink is long gone but not forgotten. My rug with swirls and flowers underneath my blue bean bag chair, overflowing with stuffed animals reaching out to cuddle, all arranged in a certain way. And my walls filled with calendars and posters and pictures of my and my friends. Life in my room seems like nothing could ever be better.

I reached out to open it and a hand fell over my mouth. Not my hand. Someone else's hand. I tried to scream but I was suddenly asleep. When I woke up, I was on my bed, as if I had been sleeping. But I hadn't. Or at least I didn't think I had. Then I hear d something. At first it was a sort of whisper, then it was a voice. "Miss?" it said. I looked all around but no one was there. When I opened the door of my room, no one was standing outside, waiting to be let in. I wondered who was talking, then I wondered who had been knocking. Then I thought of the hand that put my to sleep and the white fur it carried with it. No, it wasn't a hand. It was a paw. Who's, or what's, arm had the paw been attached to? I sat back down on my bed after closing the door and heard a scream. I ran down the hall and looked all around. I asked mother if she had heard it. "Heard what?" She asked.

"The scream. Someone was screaming." I said as if it were obvious. Which it was. It had to have been. I had heard it.

Mother looked at me with creased eyebrows. Are you feeling well? She would say. And then I would nod my head and start to run. I had to find the screamer.

Fourteen. That's how old I was when the screaming as plain and loud as the worried looks on my family and friend's faces, the whispers that call to me at night, the voices that everyone says are inside my head but I was convinced were really people telling my right from wrong. Fourteen.

I whip my head awake. "Just a dream. JUST A DREAM." I whisper to myself. But it wasn't a dream. It was real. That's what happened to me before I went crazy. Home is never home when you have voices stuck up in all of your business all the damn time! HOME IS NEVER HOME. HOME SWEET HOME. "HOME SWEET HOME!!!" I scream and start to cry.

My room is padded for my protection. I don't understand what I need protection from. Until now.

I scream and pound the walls. I thrust my body onto the soft padding and scream and cry. "This is all your fault! All your fault! Bunny! Bunny! Bunny rabbit! BUNNY RABBIT! Damn it!" I screech and roll on the floor.

They put me in a strait jacket until I feel like my arms don't work and my fingers have fallen off. Do you know why a strait jacket is spelled strait? It's spelled that way because that particular spelling means tight. Tight enough that blood pools in the elbows and the hands become numb. Tight enough that there is no escape, no matter how loud the patient screams. Tight enough that it strangles and suffocated the hearts of the wearer's loved ones. And the heart of the wearer. I want to cry, so I do. I cry and cry and cry and cry until there are no tears left in me. I scream and scream until all the screams have been screamed out of me and I cannot scream anymore screams. I screech and cry and then fall silent as something rushed down my spine. It feels like a static shock only much, much worse. I feel as if my lungs are being ripped out of me and my skin is being torn off. I have barely enough time to look at the floor and see the brochure for this horrid mental demon castle. Shock treatments. That's what it says. That's what it says. I want to scream for them to stop but then everything goes black and I can't see anymore. I can only hear the shocking pains that crawl all over me until I feel brainwashed and fall into an unconscious into a painful sleep.