The past

I've always had trouble sleeping at night. Noises have disturbed me my whole life. I found out years ago that I have hypersensitive hearing, picking up all sorts of background noises. They couldn't fix it; only recommend the obvious techniques to mask the problem. Not that I hadn't tried these already. Ear muffs, listening to music and even things like meditation. None of it worked. In fact it seemed to make it worse. It made her more desperate.

I hear her most nights. No one else can. Why does she only come to me? There's always the dread of lying there each night in the dark silence, anticipating when she will come, and when I will hear her again. She usually likes to wait until I'm drifting to sleep, so that I jump back to my senses in fright to the sound of her there.

Most of the time it begins with a faint crying. She tells me that she "wants to make it end." I know she's getting closer to getting me and some nights I can even feel her cold breath in my ear. I can sense when she is lying close beside me in the darkness staring at me, and sometimes she whispers things like "It's only me," right into my ear. She's toying with me, like a cat does to a helpless insect before killing it. The thing is, I could never see her, but it slowly felt like she was becoming more real.

The doctor later informed me that I suffer from schizophrenia. I have been taking medication for a long time but it wasn't really working. It just made me feel more helpless. It was difficult for a girl as young as me to deal with this. At least now I could accept that she wasn't real. It was all in my head and there was nothing real to be afraid of. That was until last night...