By Reason of Insanity

By Reason of Insanity: Introduction

   My eyes fly open and my heart races and sweat trickles down my back and down my face. I brace myself for a ghostly apparition to appear or for a demonic voice to fill my ears and paralyze me with fear, but after a tense minute I realize I'm still wrapped in my cozy purple sheets. I'm still in my room.

   I feel all tension leave my body and I slowly feel myself ease back into the land of dreaming when I feel a hand, light as a feather, drop onto my hip and snake its way under my shirt to rest finally on my warm belly. A soft moan escapes my lips and I settle into his touch. His touch is one I always remember.

  He saved me from myself when this all began. At first, he would watch me from afar and only come to me when I really needed it. I trusted him and began to tell him all my secrets. But the more I told him, the closer he wanted to be to me.

  When he first started to appear to me during the nights in my bed, I was scared and he always left me feeling a little violated, but soon I learned that he wasn't there to scare me or torture me. He was there to comfort me. He would hold me close to him when I would wake up shaking. He always dried my tears when a hideous creature would stand at the foot of my bed. He made sure to whisper sweet things in my ear when the voices got to be too much.

   I've been seeing things for two years.  It started on my fifteenth birthday. My friends had made me a cake and thought it would be funny to shove my face in it after I blew out the candles. After a quick food fight, I made my way upstairs to the bathroom to scrub off all the cake. When I opened the door a lady was looking into the mirror. She was obviously not  human because her edges were all blurry and she had this sort of transparency about her. She turned to me and her face was dark and foggy. All I could make out was that she had marble pale skin, blood red lips, and hair black as night pulled into a tight bun.

   I didn't know what to do. I just stood there and watched  as she floated towards me. As she got closer, a ringing had started in my ear and the closer she got the louder the ringing got. It got so loud that I had fallen to my knees and prayed for my ear drums to just burst. The ringing seemed to have gotten into my skull and started to drill into my brain. Finally, I screamed and everything just... stopped.

   When my friends ran to check on me, I saw the lady coming toward them. I shouted for them to look at her.  I begged them to do something while the lady gave a shrieking laugh. At this point, rivulets of blood seemed to cascade down her blurry face and onto the floor. I kept screaming and eventually just told everyone to save themselves and run.

   They did. I haven't heard from them since.

   Things had gotten worse. Ghosts, demons, monsters, fairies, witches, purple dogs, you name it, I saw it. They followed me constantly. I was so afraid but something was keeping me from telling anyone. My parents never really listened to me, so why would they listen if I told them I saw fairies watching me sleep?

   Everyone had noticed that I had gone completely insane. They all stared as I whispered furiously at the demons to go away and leave me alone during an algebra test. And that day in P.E. when I saw the old farmer behead the pretty little girl with pigtails and he threw her head at me... everyone noticed that incident. It turned out the girl's head was really a red dodge ball.

   In a week I had gone from sort-of-popular-but-not-really to crazy girl who screams at dodge balls.

   I was depressed. No one even bothered to ask what was wrong with me. No one cared. Now,  I realize I wasn't making it easy for people -especially high school peers- to want to help me, but at least one person could have just asked me what was wrong. The closest thing I ever got to that was some senior boys call, "What the fuck is wrong with that psycho bitch?" when I walked past. I had never felt so alone.

   Two weeks after my first incident with the blurry lady, I decided that I was tired of being haunted by the monsters. I had enough of being the crazy girl. I wanted so desperately for it all to end. I had a large knife that I stole while cleaning the dishes earlier that night. A little girl with big round blue eyes and plump round cheeks told me to pick it up. I was in the bathtub (I thought cleanup would have been easier for my parents when they would eventually find me) clutching on to the knife and aiming it where my heart was. My hands shook as I tried to force the knife down to plunge the knife into me. Voices in my head chanted for me to hurry up and get it over with.

  Just as I was finally ready to do it, another voice,a deep gentle voice I had never heard before but always thought all boys should have voices like, stopped me.

   "Don't." he whispered. I looked up through teary eyes and gasped at the beautiful boy before me. I instantly knew he was one of the phantoms, but he didn't seem like the rest. He seemed...nice. He looked older, like eighteen or nineteen. He had golden eyes that seemed to pierce through me  and soft brown hair that skirted his full set of lashes.  "I won't hurt you," he murmured and I believed him, so when he offered me his hand, I quickly took it.

  He plucked the knife from my grasp and put it in the sink. Then he took me by my elbow and led me to my bed. Once I was lying down, he pulled the covers over up to my chin. He bent down to my ear and said, "Sleep well." Then he walked out.

   I was sure that he was my guardian angel.

   Two years later, and I sometimes still think he is an angel sent down from heaven to watch over me.

   I hear a child's laugh float through my room and see a shadow dash across my room. I shudder and recoil from the edge of my bed. I hear foots steps run around and around my room. They get closer and closer to my bed. I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand and a nervous quake begins in the pit of my stomach and my whole body quickly becomes a ball of horrified tension. I thought we would be alone tonight. I thought for once the phantoms would just leave me alone.

   They will never leave me alone. I know this. He even told me this long ago. But I still wish...

   A cold hand ruffles with my hair and a child shouts "I want to play!"

  I'm so frustrated and tired and scared. Frustrated because I want to be left alone and after two years it never gets any easier. Tired because these horrific hallucinations keep me awake at night. Scared because I am having hallucinations in the first place. I sob once and that is enough for him to gather me into his arms and hold me close.

   The child shouts over and over again "I want to play, I want to play!" The child is so loud it seems like the whole neighborhood should hear him.

   Finally I plead, "Make it stop, please."

   "Shh," he responds softly. He smooths back my hair. "Shh, shh, they're gone now. All the monsters are gone now."

   The room is quiet again. I relax again and close my eyes, focusing on his arms wrapped protectively around my waist. I can tell I am nearing a deep sleep, but I don't want to fall asleep yet. Not until I ask him a question.

   "What is your name?"

   I've depended on him for this long and he still hasn't shared his name with me. He is the only friend I have and I don't even know his name.

   I know he won't give me an answer. I ask him every night and he never does. But I know one day he will.

   Everything around me dulls, even the feel of him holding me. I'm afraid that he is vanishing like all the other hallucinations do at a certain point, but I  remember his promise. He promised to always be with me while I sleep.

   He rests his chin on top of my head. "Sleep well." he whispers. He pulls one strand of hair behind my ear. He kisses the top of my head.

   I'm enveloped into a blissfully dreamless sleep.

   When I wake in the morning, I'm all alone.