Drowning In My Own Mind

12

-This part is inspired by the song "Augen Auf" (Eyes Open) from the band Oomph! Check it out on YouTube.

*Chris*

After my little episode, I went up to my room and flipped my radio on, popping in my favorite Cure album and turning it up loud enough that the silence wasn't crushing me. I thought that it had stopped, so had my therapist, but apparently not.

Just have to schedule a meeting for later in the week. I picked up my sketch book and started on a new design, a bloodied skull and cross bones with a strand of barbed wire wrapped around it. I didn't bother with adding any color or filling in the lines, as it would have detracted from the design, at least to me.

"Such a fragile little thing... I wonder how long it'll be before I shatter your precious, delicate mind into splinters." I jumped and stood up, sending my sketch book to the floor.

"Chris! Hey, you home?" Ricky's voice rang out through the apartment, and that cold feeling that had surrounded me since I got home shifted into the background, but didn't fade.

"U-uh, yeah. You need help?" I got up and walked out of my room,

"There's a couple of bags of groceries in my car; mind grabbing them?"

"Yeah, I'll get 'em!" I almost ran out of the door, going to his car, grabbing the couple of bags left in the back seat, and bringing them inside. I sat them on the table and helped him put the groceries away.

"Hey, R-Rick?" I tossed the last plastic bag into the bag holder in the pantry, biting my lip and thinking about how to ask.

"Yeah?"

"That, that thing, the one you saw in the living room... I-I think I saw it today..." He stood still for a moment, then turned and looked at me, his eyes hard as ice.

"Don't make fun of me like that. That thing isn't a fucking joke, it's a goddamn nightmare!"

"I'm not making fun of you! I saw it, but I thought it was just something I imagined but it came back and it just- it felt like the heater had died and it was talking to me, teasing me, telling me that it'd- that it'd hurt you, that it'd hurt me. I thought- I thought I just needed to refill my meds, but I have almost a month of doses left..." I took the pill bottle out of my pocket and showed it to him, pouring the pills into my hand.

"I swear to God, Rick, I'm not making fun of you." I put them back into the bottle and sat it on the counter.

"That's not- dammit, that's not possible! All my life, no one, no one, has ever seen it. They all told me- told me I was crazy. Now you see it, but that means either I'm not crazy or we both are, but if- if you're seeing it, what if-" he paused and clenched his eyes shut. "What if that means it actually real? I don't want it to be real, it can't be real. If it's real, everything it's said, everything it's shown me, it means it really does want to do those things. It wants to hurt everyone close to me." He closed his eyes again, but now he was shaking a little.

"Fuck!" He slammed his fist into the cabinet and made me jump.

"R-Ricky, just calm down, please. I'm gonna- I'm gonna go talk to Mike; he knows a lot about this kind if thing, he-he can find a way to get rid of it." He shook his head, beginning to pace the short area from the edge of the oven to the counter.

"It can't be fucking real! It can't, it's gotta just be something fake! Please tell me you just missed a dose? Please for the love of god, tell me you missed a dose?"

"R-Rick, you saw m-me take them this morning..." He hit the cabinet door again, leaving a deeper dent in it, and I jumped again.

"Chris, you don't get it. If it's real, if it's talking to you- oh god, oh fucking god, it-it really is going to-"

He abruptly stopped, looking at me with a hurricane brewing in his glassy, sky-colored eyes; rage, hate, fear, sadness, disgust, and a feral determination, all mixing together in blues, grays, and greens.

"Chris, all the things it's shown me, all the things it wants to do... It's horrible. I can't even begin to describe what it dreams of... The things it shares with me in my own..." He drew in a deep breath, his hands shaking. "It dreams of torture and death and chaos. It feeds on pain, lives for it, a-and if it- if it's real, if it can-" he shook his head violently. "It's already told and shown me what it wants to do to you, simply because I know you..."