Phantom Chained

Chapter 37. The essence of madness. Ingrid

The bear trap in the familiar shape of Sophie's room snapped shut under me. In an attempt to become small and unnoticeable, I crammed myself in the narrow space between the wall and the sofa. I would've preferred to crawl under Sophie's bed instead, but it was way too low.

Speaking of problems, Cherry was holding onto me like I was a life float. She buried her head deep in my chest and was sobbing violently, her body spasming with each wet whimper. Even if she did partially cover me against Clara, it was still hard to breathe through the sickly sweet perfume; a deadly addition to the crippling nausea and muddiness of thoughts that always accompanied the Incubus' presence.

My hair clumped around my sweaty face, covering most of my vision. However, I could still clearly see Elm and Clara under the ceiling light, which gave them the appearance of actors of a low-budget play with hints of surrealism.

Elm pressed himself against the wall, nervously wrapping his body in a blue bathrobe that barely reached his knees. There was hardly any resemblance of Johan left, save for a few clumps of blonde hair hanging down from the blackened mess of a scalp.

His body was so thin and lanky that Clara looked more like a small, ugly dog barking at a streetlight.

What they talked about completely fell out of the scope of reason: Clara pleaded and demanded that Elm make love to Sophie and Elm irritably complained that he was feeling ill, disgusted and didn't even know how it's done. Clara then raised her hands and cursed fate for bringing her a useless virgin of an Incubus.

A stupid, fake and unsightly tragicomedy; more proof that I have completely lost it. It's not that bad if you think about it. I mean, it is awful to realise that everything that happened in the last day is bitter truth, but since it is just my personal lunacy then nobody but my own head got hurt.

It's one thing to suspect that you're going insane, and it's much more terrifying when you want to in order to escape the nightmarish reality. But the feeling... that feeling when you no longer have any doubt about your lack of sanity is on a completely different level. You just accept the fact as a fact, as Elm said. Not exactly like that, but close.

I wanted to just wake up like Alice in Wonderland, but it's a different situation here. In a way, dreaming is not that different from insi... insas... insanity, as in both cases you're just cooking in your own hallucinations. The only differences are that during sleep, your motor functions are disabled and it can be interrupted and I could just be running around the loony bin, shouting and scratching at the walls. Maybe it isn't even me; I could be an overweight middle-aged man imagining himself as a schoolgirl tormented by demons. Or not even running around, just sitting in a corner awaiting the next mind game.

Quite convincing, if I do say so myself. Although, the axe shining a few steps away from the couch also appeared quite convincing, not to mention tempting and reliable. Clara threw it aside once she realised she no longer needed it, but it was still hard to reach it without being seen. It was dangerous but I would've put my bet on it if it wasn't for Cherry. The only thing left to do was sit and watch.

Everything is coming together! The periods of calm existence were probably brought on when the kind nurses gave me my medicine. And now was clearly a period of invigoration! I hope the nurses will come back soon as it is definitely unusual for a mentally ill person to realise that their hallucinations are way too hallucinatey to be called that... I wonder, could a birth of my own brain kill me?

And if you think about it, who even is Clara? And Elm? And everyone else? Oh, I remember! Archetypes! That's it! They are the universal basic psys... psychi... psychological archeolo... archetypes. Elm was probably representing my repressed sexual urges, while Clara embodied a not-so-repressed urge to destroy everything, myself included. But what archetype was Cherry? Femininity? Then I'd have to admit that it irritates me to my core; Cherry completely soaked me In tears and snot and left scratches all over with her long nails.