Healed

2:00 AM (+40 Hours)

Grace and Audrie have fallen asleep but I lie awake for the second night in a row, these thoughts biting into my flesh. I had a good day I had fun I took care of myself I did everything I was supposed to do but it's not going away, the screaming and the shouting and the biting, nagging, pulling at my brain just wont fucking stop.

I take my sleeping pills, but they won't shut me up, they aren't working nothing is working and my skin itches like tiny little termites are crawling through my muscles looking for a meal. I want them out I need them out I have to get them out.

I know how to get them out but it's not with a rubber band or a cube of ice or a fine-tipped red sharpie it's with something else it's something I'm not allowed to have. As the hours pass my head feels lighter and spinny and slowly there are things in my ears that aren't here and they're talking to me telling me secrets like you're an adult, and you can do it if you want to.

It's very rare that I hallucinate and they're usually a result of me not getting enough sleep or skipping my medications, but these ones are louder than usual. I should be scared, concerned, maybe I should even be doing something about it. Instead I'm filled with apathy.

Things Inside me have been getting worse and worse without end and this Is just another thing I guess I should have expected. You know how to shut us up, they implore me, you know what you need to do.

I know I know I know. But I can't and I won't. I reach across the bed for Grace's hand, just the warmth of her body will pull me out of this. I reach and reach but I can't find her, I look over in confusion and she's gone.

Anxiety rushes through my nervous system and I rip the covers off the bed looking for her. Nowhere the voices say gone somewhere else. But I know they're wrong they have to be. I get out of bed and go to the bathroom but she's not there, I stumble down the stairs into the kitchen praying she's shoveling shredded cheese In her mouth or eating Oreos and chugging milk directly from the gallon.

What? She'll ask defensively, and I'll tell her I'm so in love with you and we'll laugh and kiss and maybe take it back to the bedroom and everything will be okay. Not there either they tell me, gone somewhere else.

I locate her car keys and mine with them, so she hasn't left the house where is she I demand, and I'm told again gone gone gone until it echoes endlessly. Gone where? I plead; somewhere else I'm told.

A sound faint and distant trickles through my ears, drip drop drip drop I follow it up the stairs back into the bathroom where something is different. Water overflows from the bathtub but it's not water it's red and it's everywhere and it's hers.

I rip back the curtain and there she stands covered like me in red red red and in the water drowns Audrie a victim of my disease and Grace tells me your fault and I scream and scream and it hurts and all at once it stops and I wake up the sound still tearing through my throat.

"Baby what's wrong?" Grace grips my shoulder and I pull her in hard and she says ouch, "it's okay I'm here"

But it's not okay because I'm still watching them bleed and I feel their damage on my skin and I want them to leave and never come back because I am contagious and my fault my fault my fault.