The Inside

Lying in my bed, I think of things that shouldn't be and it is in these times that I hope against hope that these thoughts will cease to plague me. I do not ask them to my head yet they evermore are in my bed; waiting, waiting to shape my thoughts to their own liking.

You wouldn't and couldn't believe me if you tried that these atrocities chose my head to hide. It is due to these I cannot slumber, it is due these frightful thoughts I am kept awake. My head is full of ghosts, dear friend, of those I have seen yet won't see again.

I see their dying breaths again and again and again once more in my head until, in fitful slumber, I can only see their side of the Plutonian Shore. I see my dear mother, on her deathbed lying, with my pillow over her face. She had just ceased to struggle, still living, when my thoughts originally started going askew.

I am ever so scared of the thoughts my sleepless mind creates. I feel my head becoming the Devil's playground as my thoughts take shape, as they wait, wait for me to unwillingly drift into my nightmares. I surely cannot go on this way, with my head full of thoughts with which the Serpent does play. I am all alone now, alone in my room, alone with the ghosts of those dear to me drifting from the gloom.

They always come towards me and I always fight back, it is true when they say, you don't change after death. My important big sisters try to slash me with their knives, just as they did before I ended their lives. My doting father advances towards me, gun raised, gushing red wound on his chest, and eyes ablaze. My darling baby brother, still a smile on his face, toddles towards me with disease still on his face as he reaches for me with a bottle that could render me as dead as he. As these ashen specters make their advance, my mind decides to throw them back to the past. I feel no relief in their disappearance because I can always feel them here with us.

The next spectral crew to emerge from my head was that of those who were dear to me before even my family was dead; my good little friends, dead at age five, with blood and gore dripping down their sides. There is divine tiny Tommy with his head not on quite straight, and here is sweet, peculiar Priscilla with a ribbon made of blood around her neck. Those two pallid creatures did not advance towards me as my kind kin had, but, rather, began to kill each other instead, for though they were small, they were mighty indeed for after good little Pris had killed Tom she almost bested me. But that was back then and we are in the now, you see, and now Pris had Tom to help her in her dirty deed. Once again it seems that my head is on my side for after the first step forward my little friends no more did in my room abide.

My chamber was quiet for a moment or two before the thoughts filled my head as they had been waiting, waiting, always waiting to do. My head filled to the brim with their vaporous faces. Each told me a new way to try to kill those who had passed me by; my sisters said strangulation was the way to go, while mother dear said, "Cut off his head. Put on a good show!" My father and brother disagreed with both, you see, and stated rather resolutely, "Poison is the fashionable way to go, darling, don't you agree?" Goodhearted Priscilla and Tommy both thought that their idea was best. One said to just slice them in half across the middle and the other wanted me to start between the legs and work my way up through the chest. They argued and clashed inside my head all thinking that the idea they had was best, and I sat waiting, waiting it out by sitting quietly in the corner while they fought it out.

It is always this way once the sun goes down. They appear in my Head, each wearing a frown. My lesser friends then join the fight, only strong enough now because it is deep in the night. They all bear their scars and all have their wounds, the ones I, myself, inflicted on them in the pale light of the moon. While the brawl of the dead continues on, He steps in on the scene. The one for whom, in life, the light in my eye did gleam.

This lovely young man showed no wounds of a fight, but rather had a rope round his neck, tied tight. This was the savior of the night, the one who would release me from the nightly fright. But it seemed he was not here to do so tonight. He turned and looked toward me, a forced and thin smile on his lips. "Do you see what you cause? Do you see what you do? We all are in anguish waiting, waiting for you." It seems that I spoke too soon before, for then my night continued as it had before and as it shall evermore. It continued on with the phantom brawls and fantastical fights, and me in the corner waiting, waiting for first light.

You see, when the light first hits I can touch and feel them as before and can force them back through Death's open door. So when sunrise came, my killing spree began and the souls of my bloody past went back to the fields of torment again. My tale here neither ends nor rests, you see, because They are ghosts just like me. I may still walk the earth, but I know which hell my afterlife will unearth. For I am but an empty shell with blood on my hands, and I merely go where the mirror commands. I am just a girl whose hands are tied for the deeds I have done I had no thought to hide. So they of authority put me in here, in this padded room, hoping they could hold back whatever came with the moon.

They do not seem to realize that my dear friends inside me are simply waiting; waiting for the sun to set so they can continue their debating. Their debating on whether killing the warden or the cook would be a better pastime, or whose blood on my hands would feel more sublime. As I look into the little piece of glass I keep hidden on the floor, it is decided that the warden shall be dead when he comes to my door for so the mirror commands. So now I am waiting, waiting for a sign so I can unleash my hands and take his life. As I wait, I choose to inform the others of who shall now join their nightly debate. I am sat there waiting, waiting for quite some time when finally, it seems, that darling man's life shall now be mine. I pick up my little sliver of glass as I hear the warden begin to open the door clasps. As he entered my quarters, he seemed quite surprised that my little sliver had gouged out both his eyes. A quite neat little red ribbon of blood appeared on his throat, just as it did on lovely little Pris, and as his red livelihood spread onto the floor, I simply took off my criss-crossed coat and went out the door.

As night fell later that day, the cycle began with a new face in the fray. Lying in my bed, I think of things that shouldn't be and it is in these times that I hope against hope that these thoughts will cease to plague me. I do not ask them to my head yet they evermore are in my bed; waiting, waiting, simply waiting to shape my thoughts to their own liking, and most nights, it seems, they succeed. Don't you agree?