Ponder

Monsters

They tormented me. I can hear them each and every night under my bed scratching. As if they're digging a hole, so that they can escape. I don't want them to escape. I find them soothing some nights lying in bed listening to them. It's as if their scratching is a lullaby to my ears. Sometimes I wander if they scratch because they're lonely like me. Maybe they have no friends like me. Or maybe that's why they're digging because they're searching, searching for their parents. Maybe they're orphans like me. Perhaps my existence bothers them as much as theirs me. Perhaps they're running from the monster that I am. Sometimes I look down there though never at night, and never during the scratching just to see if they've made an imprint beneath my bed. What's interesting is sometimes I see it a crimson hole beneath the very vessel in which I sleep in. Other times I see a brown box sort of resembling a coffin. Then one night the scratching turned into knocking, the knocking turned into whispers, and the whispers turned into loud thuds that happened every hour on the dot. The thudding pulsated louder and louder every hour. There was no ignoring the unpleasant thumping or the jump of my bed every time the monster hit it. I realized they weren't digging, they weren't trying to find their family, no it wasn't any of that. The monsters they were trying to escape from me. And the monsters were more than just monsters they were my parents. My parents had never left me behind in the woods on a winter night because they never got the chance. I stabbed them. I murdered them. They were dead because of me. But no. No! NO!!! That thud the thud that tormented me every hour on the hour had to be because of them. The scratching, the knocking, the bloody thudding that made my bed fly off the ground it was all because of them. Which meant my plan had failed! They were alive doing anything they could to get help because they were breathing. They were trying to escape the coffin I had thrown them in. I screamed as loud as I possibly could. My hands pulled my hair, tears flowed down my cheeks, then I noticed blood dripping down from my fingertips. It was my own blood. I had been chewing on my nails. I had chewed past the nail though. Now my fingers ended in stubs. There was no pain though, and I could no longer hear the monsters over my morbid screaming. Yes the scream. SCCCREEEEAAAM!!!!!!!! It was so delightful. My room was bubbling to the brim with pain. Women and men rushed into the room in their uniforms, so they could contain me. Remember one thing though they may be able to contain my body, but they can not contain my thoughts. They can't stop the me from finding my monsters. After all all they've given me is time to think, time to plan, time to wait for the day when I can see the demise of my monsters.
~Hawthorn Psychiatric Ward, Missouri, May 3, 1945