The Dark

What's there to be afraid of?

“Are you afraid of the dark?”

I ignored the question. It was a reminder that I hadn’t been taking my pills. They numb me out. I hear voices all the time. Usually they don’t ask questions. Mostly they tell me to do something. Bad things.

What helps, is to talk back out loud to the voices in my head. It is such a habit, I found myself doing it now. “Everybody is scared of the dark. You can’t see where you’re going. You could fall.”

Meanwhile, while talking to myself, my hands were fumbling to find the flashlight usually kept in my bedside drawer. “Nothing there.”

The lights were out. I’d have to get up and fumble my way downstairs where the candles and matches are. “All right. Here I go.”

“Want me to go with you?”

It shook me, this new voice did. It was flat, no feeling, neither male nor female. The voice floated into my mind and stayed there, waiting for an answer. My voice I call Slimeball answered, “Shut your F’ng trap. You woke me up.”

There was a gurgling noise, like Slimeball was being throttled. “Why don’t you pick voices with better manners?” The flat voice asked. “I had to silence him.”

There was an empty hollow space in my mind where Slimeball had been. “How did you do that? Can you do it with my other voices?” I wouldn’t have to take my meds that made me feel half alive.

“Do you want me to get rid of all your voices?”

I nodded my head, “Yes.”

One by one I feel them plucked away, and a headache begins. “No!” The voice I call myself feels weak, squeezed out towards the blackness of the night.

“Not me!”
“I'm afraid of the dark."


WC 300