Grayscale

Chapter Eighteen

         Without warning, my field of vision turned into a battlefield, brutal and bloody. Right in front of my eyes, shadow soldiers crawled out from the cracks in the concrete. They appeared from the darkness, slithered in from underneath doorways, dropped down from the tops of buildings . . . this was unlike any hallucination I had ever had before. They began to circle me, and it was like I had no control over my body anymore. Whimpers like a dog who’s been beaten too many times escaped my lips while I backed myself against the wall, oblivious to the man who was about to yank my arm off he was so terrified of whatever was going on in my head. I almost felt bad for him, but with what I was enduring, it was slightly difficult to really muster up the pity.

        “Calypso,” a one of the faceless soldiers hissed. “You’ve been running for far too long. You think you can escape this life, sweetheart? Your daddy tried to, and look where that got him. He’s in deeper than he ever was before.”

        “He’s right,” a deep voice boomed, all of the solemnity in the world in those two syllables. “You can’t run from us. This is your fate – not that boy! Happiness just isn’t in the cards for you, my dear.”

        They all started laughing, and I just shook my head, over and over again whimpering, “No, please, no.” I slid to the ground, clutching my ears, clawing at my face. They were lying. They had to be lying. This was in my head. They weren’t real. This wasn’t real.

        “Calypso, Calypso,” the first one tittered, sauntering up close to me. He leaned down, getting up in my face so close, I had to turn my head to avoid kissing the faceless shadow. But even though he didn’t have eyes, didn’t have lips or even lungs, when he spoke again, I felt hot breath in my ear. “We’re as real as it gets.” The hair on every inch of my body stood on end as he spoke, and the feeling didn’t leave when he stood back up, rejoining the rest of the soldiers, merging back with the crowd, back into being just another faceless nightmare.

        “We’re your reality,” the one with the deep voice laughed. “No amount of medication will ever be able to chase us off. You think Reed helped you get better? You think it was the pills? Sweetheart, we’re like a cancer. We made lie dormant for a little while, but we’ll come back, every time just a little bit stronger. We are never going away.”

        There was a single gunshot fired into the air, and I couldn’t help it – a few hot tears slid down my cheeks. “Fuck you,” I spat. “You are lying!” They had to be, because I’d gone years without hearing the boots, the gunshots, without seeing the soldiers. Years. The only reason they were back again was because of that trigger, because I fell in front of the door with my dad there. They just kept coming back because they were like an addiction that was hard to kick, though perhaps a little less voluntary. That was all it was. In six months, in a year, I’d be clean again, so to speak. This would all be a part of my past.

        The deep voiced one was in my face without warning. One second he was standing just apart from the rest of the crowd, the next, there was less than a millimeter between where his nose should be and where my face should be. The fucked up part was, though, that it wasn’t even the facelessness that terrified me. It was the fact that I couldn’t make them go away. I couldn’t ignore the things they were saying, and I knew I was in for a whole lot more not just tonight, but in the coming months to come. A bad night like this would haunt me for a long time. Much of what they said was a lie – I hoped – but they were definitely right about one thing. No amount of medication would be able to wipe away the psychological stains this night would leave on my mind.

        “We are not a product of PTSD,” he screamed, and I felt his spit hit my face. I felt it, hot and warm, all over my cheeks. But he wasn’t real. “You aren’t a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder. There wasn’t a single traumatic thing that happened in your life until way after your issues started to appear. Honey, we’re something the doctors have never even seen before.” Though he still had no features, I could feel the malicious smile creeping across his face. “You want to know why we keep coming back?” He whispered. “Why even your precious Reed couldn’t keep us away, why his eyes always seemed a little sad, a little guarded? It wasn’t because his girlfriend was dead. It had nothing to do with that. It was you. He was scared of you, and he was sad that he couldn’t do a damn thing to help. It’s the same reason Gabriel is just standing there staring at you, trying to mask how petrified he is. You’re a fucking freak, and even your doctors don’t understand why all this is happening. They never will. We are here to stay.”