Nightmares

Chapter 1

I can't scream. I can't breathe can't break myself out of this bubble that I've trapped myself in I can't feel anything can't do anything as the fear wraps itself around me, determined to suffocate me and it works. I am completely numb, have gotten used to this fear. This fear that consumes all my strength, determined to break me, determined to kill me. Kill me.

Kill me.

This fear is all I have.

It's my only friend.

And yet I still freeze up. I still can do nothing but wait and wait and wait and wait and wait for my nightmares to turn the corner, for my nightmares to show their faces, their oh-so beautiful faces. I can still only stand in the middle of the room that traps me and expose myself to them, expose myself so that they can strip away everything, strip away the last shreds of my sanity, strip away everything that still holds me together.

I have no choice but to fall. To break and to give up to the shadows that eat away at me. My hair is in my face and I can't see anything but the faces of the people who have left me who have ran away from me and I can't hear anything but my own screams and I just want to hear the silence that comes between every word sentence paragraph I have every said but it's not there and I need it to be there because I will go deaf listening to my cries for help for forgiveness because I need it to hold on to but. It is never there.

There is a corner in this room. I have never seen it before never realized how much I need corners in my existence. How much I need them to curl away and to hide from this cruel, cruel world. For that is my solution to everything. In my sixteen years, that has been the only thing I have ever been taught ever learned. I curl into the wall now, sinking into the familiar not-so-familiar edges of two walls meeting and creating a space for me to give up and to fall back into the cage that is my mind.

My skin burns where the blackness grips me. It hurts like nothing I've never felt before and yet, I don't feel it at all. I don't feel it as it melts my skin down, turning it black, turning it into shadows. I don't feel the shadows nipping at my body, determined to leave their mark, determined to make me remember every single moment. But I won't remember what it feels like later. I'll only remember what my shadows say to me what they whisper to me and it haunts me every second in a way the burns all over my arms legs face hands have never reached. I still hear them speaking to me, I still hear their slithering voices, their harsh breathing. I will never forget never escape never let go of what they say to me.

Because it's what everyone has already said to me. It's what I hear in my mind what I hear in every creak every breath.

Because my shadows are the echoes of everyone else. They are what have been conjured up to make myself feel worse. Because this is what I'm supposed to do. Because feeling sad angry depressed is better than going insane. It's better than absorbing the shadows that swirl around me, not able to control what I do. It's better than falling into myself, like a crumbling house, releasing the final bursts of energy I have left and becoming one of my shadows, one of my ghosts.

I imagine dying as an enhancement and a numbing of my senses. Curled into this convenient corner, I can't help but think that I would hate to die, despite everything that I've ever thought about sparing myself from pain and terror.

I would hate to just have to sit or lay or sprawl there, waiting. Waiting for someone to take pity for someone to relieve my soul from its job waiting for my pain and suffering to end. I would hate to have to experience everything in the last minutes of my life. Have to smell my blood my sweat my scent mix through the air. Have to see every spore in the grim, cool air. Have to hear everything and nothing, but never at one time. Have to feel my limbs growing cold, freezing up, leaving me helpless. Have to taste my saliva drying up, blood coming up my throat.

But that's exactly what I'm doing, exactly what I have been doing for the minutes hours days weeks I've been here. I've been forced to curl up into this goddamned corner and watch as I slowly give up. Give up on the hope that anything will ever change. I have to watch as my worst nightmares swirl around me and burn me and whisper into my ear. I have to listen to nothing. Nobody whispering through the silence that they love me, nobody crying my name. And at the same time, I hear my heart thump thump thumping, my shadows hissing around me, my tears dripping down my face onto the floor, my sobs growing softer and softer and softer and softer as I feel my life leaving me, one memory at a time. I have to sit here, frozen, as vomit travels up my throat as blood stops flowing to my heart as my throat dries and I can't do anything. Because that's my life. That's my nightmare.

My shadows suffocate me, wrapping themselves tightly around me, as if they were the ones dying. As if they were the ones counting the seconds until their ultimate demise.