Blackout

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I've been narrating creepy stories online for almost a year now. I've even written a few of my own. The thing about recording these readings is that I always have to slip myself into that mindset. I have to become the character that I'm reading for. Their fear, their rage, their desire... I make myself feel those things too. It used to be difficult but it's gotten easier and easier now.

On one hand, that's a good thing for doing these readings.

On the other hand... it's scaring me.

I'm scaring me.

I've always had these really dark thoughts. It's just how my mind works. I've suffered from bouts of depression since I was about eight or nine –combine that with the fact that I can only really express myself creatively, you can guess that my imagination can get a little... fucked up.

The things that make people snap –the thing that's in someone mind that makes them lust for a kill... it's always fascinated me. I try to empathize more than a normal person should. I try to understand and put myself in their position –what would I do? How would I do it? Would I be able to go through with it?

Sometimes I wish I wasn't like this. But I find this weird comfort in dark things. I like things that make you uncomfortable. I love that feeling. Because not everything is rainbows and sunshine and pretty pretty pictures.

I'm okay with that.

I noticed something was changing about me when I had trouble getting out of character, after recording a reading. It felt like that persona I had to slip into was taking over. I felt... unhinged. But then, I lost an hour. I don't know what I was doing during that time. I just remember that one minute I was finishing up editing a recording in my office and the next... I was standing in my bedroom.

Later that night, I found one of my kitchen knives stuck between the couch cushions while I was looking for the TV remote. It sliced my thumb pretty bad and I got blood all over my couch.

Knowing what I know about these stories that I read, I didn't just write it off. I didn't ignore it, thinking that I'd had some kind of metal lapse while cooking dinner. I didn't lie to myself –something was wrong. I lost an hour –and in that time, for whatever reason, I put a knife in my fucking couch.

It's been going on for five months now. I'm too scared to go get help. But I know I need to.

I keep having these blackouts and losing hours more and more often. My clothes in my closet will be completely organized in a manic-OCD order. Same with my kitchen. My bathroom. My laundry room. I'm not obsessive compulsive like that. It's not typical behavior for me.

I mean, let's be honest, all of a sudden having an organized house isn't really something to be bitching about, I know. But it's not just the organizing. There's things that evidently I'm doing during these blackouts that are... concerning.

I don't smoke. I found a carton of Marlboro Lights in my car.

My nails are bitten down to where my fingertips hurt all the time. I never bite my fingernails –but now the tips of my fingers are all red and scabbed and just... a mess.

Sometimes I snap out of it for just a few moments and I'm just standing in the middle of this open field a few miles away from my house. I'm alone –just standing there, staring at this tree about a hundred yards away. Then I have another blackout and the next thing I know, I'm in the shower.

Two weeks ago, I woke up with arms draped around me. I didn't know who they were, but they definitely knew me and said they'd call me later. If they did, it wasn't me that answered. I can't even begin to tell you how violated that makes me feel. But it's not like I can go to the cops about it. They don't know it's not me, when it is me and I know if I try to explain that to anyone, I'm liable to end up locked away in an institution or be called a liar.

And then to top it off, the journal. Handwriting so small, I'm surprised a human actually wrote it. It looked like my handwriting, but different. Wrong.

There were insane ramblings about being impure and wrong and having to rectify the situation –then it turned into shadows and demons and voices and other bat-shit crazy paranoid sections mushed together that I couldn't keep up with. None of it made any sense.

Between the insane ramblings were drawings of screaming men and women, bound and bloody. I've been drawing all my life. I know my style of what I create. These drawings were done by my hand. There is no question in my mind.

In the past couple of weeks, I've been seeing things –little flickers of something in the corner of my vision. I think I'm getting sick –I feel weak and my balance is off. My stomach is always queasy; it reminds me of that one time I got food poisoning when I was fifteen.

I tried not thinking of what that sounded like.

I couldn't face that.

But I knew something was seriously wrong with me.

That field was always in the back of my mind –the one that I keep waking up in. There was always something off about that field.

So I went there last night. I drove out, took a flashlight and walked all the way to the tree. You know when you get that I have to do this feeling? You don't know the reason, but you just have to do that one thing, otherwise it'll bother you for who knows how long?

As soon as I reached the tree, I had that feeling.

There was this big rock resting about two feet away from the tree. It was almost too heavy to move but I managed to roll it to the side. I started digging, having to use my hands, right where the rock had been lying. I got about a foot down into the dirt, maneuvering around roots and scooping handfuls of soil out of my way. There was a moment when I thought what the fuck am I doing? but I shoved it out of my mind. There had to be something there. There had to be.

I was right.

It looked like it was covered in foil or mylar or something. It looked like the top of a box. There was a handle so... at that point I just said fuck it and pulled it out. It probably weighed ten, maybe fifteen pounds. I think I sat there and stared at the large silver box for maybe five minutes, trying to decide if I really wanted to see what was inside.

I took a deep breath, and then I opened it. Inside the silver insulated box, was a cooler. I knew how this looked; knew how this story would end, but I was still trying to tell myself whatever I could, to not think about what was really happening.

Inside the cooler, were jars. My entire body shook as I took them out one by one.

Inside the jars were, what I can only assume, bloody pieces of organs and flesh and muscle.

Like I said... I'm too scared to go get help. I can't be locked away. I just can't.

Anyway, the next thing I knew, I was in the middle of my living room, covered in dirt with blood all over my hands. I had blacked out again.

There was this taste in my mouth. It was familiar, but nothing I had really acknowledged before.

I ran to my bathroom and frantically started washing the blood off my hands. It was hard to breathe or process what I didn't want to process. But then I looked into the mirror. Reality was like a white hot knife being plunged into my gut.

That same thick dark blood that coated my palms and fingers was smeared across my mouth and cheeks like some bastardized war paint.

I screamed. But I didn't scream because I knew what I had done. I didn't scream because I finally had to face my reality – because there was no way I couldn't deny it anymore.

I screamed because when I imagined myself doing those things I was doing during my blackouts... my mouth watered and I licked the blood from my lips.

I wanted more.

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