Equitable Souls

William Parker

There it was again...the pain. I'd felt it before. No matter what I did the pain always came back. Always. I couldn't get away from it. Every time it came back it was worse than before. It started out as a dull pain on the top of my head, but as it kept returning, it seemed to cascade down my head and onto my back. It claimed more and more of my body as it's own territory until it could inflict it's showers of unceasingly agonizing pain on every inch of me. The pain took a toll on my body and in no time at all I was looking like I hadn't eaten in weeks (which was true) and hadn't slept in days (which was also true). I guess life doesn't have a way of physically concealing the suffering. I took time off of school and received many "get well" wishes and gifts. None of them really cared, though. Nobody ever means it when they say things like that. They just never do. It's just the way things are...everywhere. But I didn't care. All I cared about was getting rid of the pain. It came back every other day and every time, as I mentioned before, it was worse than the last time. We went to the hospital after I noticed it spreading, but after multiple tests and examinations, even the really fancy scientists we hired to figure it  out had no clue as to what was going on. The doctors said to just let it pass, its probably intense growing pains or something. But I know better. This kind of pain couldn't be growing pains. It was something more. But I waited anyway. What was I supposed to do? The only medical education Iv'e had was in P.E. when some kid scraped his knee and my P.E. coach decided to turn the incident into a "how to care for a bleeding limb" session. It was, in fact, not very educational and I learned nothing that I already knew. Oh well, I guess that did help later.

Anyway, The fucking pain made me go crazy. I was seeing things and could hear voices of people calling for help. I would try to find them, but I was always surrounded by forest and I could see no sign of other people. And the dreams! The dreams that came as well were torturous. It was more than hearing voices. It was more like having words screamed into my ears as my surroundings seem to throb around me as i struggled to keep my feet underneath myself. The voices became louder as the dream get's longer. It became harder to stand, but I was still heading in the direction from which the voices emanated. Then I saw them: three boys and four girls. They were all wearing clothes that looked terribly antiquated and they were all chained to a tree. Screaming, the littlest girl managed to wriggle out from the ropes and started to run toward me. She looked like she was burning and when she get's close to me, the pain that she felt seemed to transfer to me and I felt the crippling pain that I felt every other day. I was not as good as the little girl was at controlling myself as the pain ripped through my body. It felt like it was alive in my dreams; that it was alive and wanted me to feel every ounce of what it had to offer...but since the human mind is fragile, I couldn't take anymore, so I woke up. In my bed there lay a smallish ball of sweat and leftover pain. My parents always heard me scream when I had dreams, but after two weeks or so, they stopped coming in to check on me. In the mornings, I would go to therapy and inform the therapist if anything was different in the dreams or hallucinations, but everything was always the same until one night.