Considered Insane: How They Saved My Life (NO LONGER UPDATING)

Chapter 4

I jolt upright, head spinning from the long, heart-stopping fall into blackness, and I can't see. Blackness folds around me like a cloud of cloud of smoke, whirling still as the parade had done only moments before. The parade! I rub my eyes to clear away the fog; I need to see my parade again, and the man whose eyes killed a part of me, and his melodic, childish voice that sang my life into pieces. Before I open them, I realize how deathly cold I am and rub my arms to warm myself up, but something is different. . . My scars and cuts are gone! I flash my eyes open, disappointed to see the old, beat-up basement that I so shamefully call my room. A-a dream. . . But wait!

My arms were in fact, clean of mutilation, even though I had only just laid them open again. If everything that just happened was real, then why am I home, and where is my parade? I snoop around the dark basement and search for the parade for hours, hoping to find those mysterious eyes or even just the float. Something to tell me I am in fact, not insane. I listen for the thumping of their march, anything to tell me that they are here. Nothing moves, nothing makes a sound, nothing looks my square in the eye and heals my scars. Nothing, the only thing I am ever greeted with. I decide against searching any longer, as the parade may be lost wherever my "dream" might have taken place.

Anger surges within my dark core. Why are they so suddenly gone, when they are here every day of my sorry existence? Why heal me if they are just going to disappear? I am fed up with looking any longer for the parade, my mind taking over of my body, leaving me helplessly pacing the cold oak floor. I slip in a pool of blood, slamming my rear painfully into the shiny red puddle. Insane? I'll give them something insane. I slam my palm into my blood, swishing it around and tracing random figures on the floor. Actually, I am beginning to find blood a playful substance; maybe I should do this more often! I flick my hands at the nearest wall, enjoying the splattered pattern it leaves there, soiling the paint. I lift my hands above the pool, letting the scarlet drops fall into it tick, tick, tick.

Eventually, I had tried to move some hair out of my face after flipping out and head banging for absolutely no reason, and a smear of blood crossed my forehead. Instead of trying to clean it up, I take a newly soaked hand and plaster my pale face with the scarlet substance.

I can't just have fun on my own, I need some friends to accompany me on this journey of blood and insanity, and their names are Pills and Alcohol. I usually only treat myself to these delicacies on the weekends, but hell, If the parade can just treat me like a princess then disappear, then I can do a hell of a lot more than them. No longer in my right mind, I scramble to the metal door to flee from my safety and up the stairs. Once I'm in the kitchen, I am blinded by darkness and begin to search for a light switch. The windows are eerily dark, and the clock on the microwave reads three-thirty in the morning. I stumble away from the wall and leave the lights off, then begin to rummage through the freezer. That's it, in the back is a stash of at least five unopened bottles of vodka that lay buried under pounds of peas and corn.

Not giving a shit about a mess, I toss aside the bags of freezer burned food and grip the bottles by their necks. In the corner of the kitchen are stacks of boxes and bags, so I set the liquids upon the counter and search for a bag to carry my new delight with me. As I begin placing the bottles in the bag, a crash sounds from the floor above me. Shit! Joseph woke up, and was coming for round two, I just knew it. Loud, pounding footsteps sounded from the stairs to my right, and I bolted for the front door. I hear a drunken "hey" close behind me as I fumble over the handle and lock on the front door, hands still soaked in blood, slipping with every movement. As I finally fling the door open, a heavy fist crashes into the side of my head, throwing me sideways, my body slamming into the door frame and toppling into the nearest pile of snow.