What Lies Between ✔

Drowning in the Dark

35.

Ben

The Dark.

I wasn't really afraid of it anymore. I'd spent too much time in it, to the point where maybe it felt comfortable to me.

I used to be afraid of the dark, though, when I was younger. I'd find myself in it, most times after a fight with my parents. The most prominant time my parents and I fought that I can remember was when I was thirteen and my mom realized I wasn't taking my pills. My mother had confronted me and I ended up yelling at her, telling her to back off. Dad didn't like when I'd start to make mom cry, that's when things really got ugly.

"Ben, look, you need to take these pills," he said through his teeth, trying his very best not to yell at me. But I wanted him to yell at me. I wanted a little emotion from these people! To crack their smiling masks, expose their true feelings. I knew they hated me, I told them it was okay to say it, to just come out and say it already, but all I would get were reassurances through twitchy smiles. Twitchy because they were holding on to their last bit of control by a thread. What they didn't seem to understand was that I had already lost all my control.

"Don't lie to me!" I screamed at them, "You wish I were like Josh! You want me to pretend!"

And that was the point where my dad snapped. "You wouldn't be pretending, Benjamin, because you have a real problem! You need to take these pills, and if you won't do it I'll shove them down your throat! Is that what you want? Is it?"

"Greg, Stop it." Mom was on the brink of tears, looking from me to my father. She was probably scared he was going to throttle me across the room or something, because I kept on pushing him.

Mom was pretty once, I seen photos of her from before I was born, and when I was a toddler. But then I started to see Ghosts and Josh started hearing voices. That's when her blond hair had become stringy and flat, her cheeks sunken in, and lines formed around her mouth and eyes from worry.

Dad was wrinkled too now, his blond hair turning a bit more silvery over the years, and under his eyes were bruised from too much work and lack of sleep. I could see how tired he was when we were fighting, looking like he was going to cave in at any second. He had gotten more and more impatient each quarrel we had, the sympathy in his eyes growing dimmer until one day there only seemed to be ice left in them, the blue piercing into my black.

My eyes looked nothing like my parents or Josh's, or any of my family's for that matter. My parents could not hold my glance for more than a few seconds, I noticed some time a go. The look on their face, if they went just over the time they allowed themselves to look at me, would seem as though I had punched them in the stomach. I had looked in the mirror at my own eyes often, asking myself if I was just being paranoid, and then I would have to look away because the empty holes staring back at me frightened me. They came out of nowhere, different, a clear indication of my not belonging. I think my dad could see that, that I could never belong with them. Maybe that's why he hated me.

"I won't stop, Ellen! This has gone on far too long. I won't baby him anymore!"

"Baby me?!" I erupted at the top of my lungs, "When have you ever done anything for me? When have you ever stuck up for me? You ignore me hoping maybe I'll go away! You don't do a damn thing for me!"

Dad flew in front of me so fast I didn't even have time to process when he hit me across my face. My cheek tingled for a second, then pain burned out all over it. My mother gasped loudly, her hands flying up to cover her mouth.