TiME - a brian kesinger entry | ✓

TiME

I'd say that time was never on my side.

Everything was always on repeat.

Repeat. Repeat.

Shutting the blinds, letting the darkness sweep through, I hide in the corner of my room by my art-cluttered desk. I am haunted by every moment, taunted by my very thoughts.

That's what autism does to you. You're in a swamp of your own mess. The demons reach into the deepest corner of your mind and try to take over. I try to control it by drawing, but, but, but, sometimes they take over.

-+-

"Okay, remember, drive, stop, eat, drive, onwards to our cabin!" Mother told me as she gleefully pumped her fist into the air while driving.

"Drive! Stop! Eat! Drive! Cabinnn!" I yelped my list. Mother was relying on me to not forget it.

We were on our way to our annual cabin trip up north. Our cabin stood small amongst the tallest evergreen trees. The ones that were a deep green and looked beautiful when it snowed. It was just mother and I, because daddy left us a long time ago. Mother says that we never needed him anyway because we were strong, just the two of us.

"Why don't you pull out your sketchbook and start drawing something?" Mother told me.

I mumbled my list. I had to remember it. Drive, stop, eat, drive, cabin. Repeat.

"Zena?" She looked at me using the rearview mirror. Sighing, she grabbed the sketchbook that sat in the front seat and handed it back to me.

I stared at the sketchbook in my hands. It read, 'Imagination has no limits. Even Autism can't stop it.' Mother had written that in. I could read her handwriting; it was effortlessly beautiful. Opening the book, I found myself looking at the darkly shaded beasts. What a mess my mind was. There were many pictures of raggedly shaped, mindfully expressed, hairy beasts with frightening glares. These were my demons.

As a six year old, things seemed to revolve around me. My mind of beasts and demons. I let my fingers run over the the mess I had drawn. Mother tells me to think of happier things than beasts and demons, but they were what made me happy.

I took a hold of my pencil and I set it against my paper. Prepared to draw something successfully, I took a deep breath. Mother wanted happy. Wanted happy. Happy.

I furiously let my mind take control, but something didn't feel right. Happy.

"Mommy, mommy, the beast is trying to scratch me. It's pinching my head. Ow!"

"Did you take your medicine Zena?"

Seconds pass.

"Zena? Did you?"

"The bottle was empty. There was no pill mommy."

"You're supposed to tell me if the bottle is empty! Shiz Zena." Mother was not happy. I'm not happy either.

I screamed. I screamed an ear piercing scream. A scream that caused mother to swerve.

"Zena, honey, stop. Take this and think of happy." I took a hold of the dragon ring mother always wore. She said it made her happy because she could keep the beasts away from herself with the ring. The staff the dragon held had a fiery red end to it which burned the demons. Mother always gave it to me to make me happy. A short vision swept across my mind of a dragon battling my demons. Unfortunately, it didn't last long.

"Happy. Happy. Happy. But it means no more beasts." I screamed again.

All the trees zipped by and time seemed to never slow down. The car screeched to a halt at the side of the road and my mother turned around to console me.