Are You Scared of Yourself?

Hallucinations are a rare side effect of most of the psychiatric drugs I’ve taken. I’m by no means experienced in the field of pharmaceuticals, but after taking a whole range of serotonin reuptake inhibitors (fluoxetine, escitalopram, sertraline, etc.) I have collected my fair share of symptoms. In my opinion, hearing a skittering crawl outside my door or seeing a tall man looming in the corner is preferable to suicidal thoughts. Sure, the uncertainty of being unable to trust my eyes and ears took some getting used to, but at least I am capable of joy. Without my medication, relaxation and happiness are as elusive as a sunrise to a blind man. My hands may shake so badly that I struggle to get food to my mouth, but at least I want to eat. One symptom I’ve never gotten used to is the footsteps pounding on the ceiling every night. I live on the top floor.

As part of my top floor privilege, I get full access to the roof. As I gazed out upon the twinkling lights of suburbia below me, a familiar chill settled into my bones. Lounging outside my bedroom window, smoking a joint, I took in my final peaceful moments of the night. Checking my phone, I saw it was 11:00 PM. The stars, dimmed from city pollution, winked cruelly at me. They faded in and out of focus, perhaps due to the cloud cover or how dry and bloodshot my eyes were. Nothing about my perception after dusk was certain anymore.

For as long as I could remember, I hadn’t been what my few friends would call “mentally well.” It started in elementary school. I had suffered through a particularly gruesome bout of rotavirus in fourth grade, resulting in PTSD. After my body was rid of the virus, I couldn’t free myself from feelings of nausea and panic. I still can’t. Turns out small, fifth-grade me had a particularly severe case of OCD. Then mono. GAD. MDD. Mono again. Scarlet fever. (Who even gets scarlet fever anymore?) I could go on, but the point has been made. I have always been an alphabet soup of disease.

Being put under COVID house arrest didn’t help any of these mental maladies. I began dealing with stress by thudding my head against my bathroom wall until I felt better. At the time, I was about 14 or 15. At around 16 or 17, I found control in pulling out strands of my hair. My insides would get so hot that I felt as though I needed a release. The pressure and snap of forcibly removing my own hair eased the hot poker in my intestines. Sometimes I wished that I could transfer that feeling to someone else, really anyone or anything else. The footsteps started around then. I can’t pinpoint an exact day, but I remember my head aching from the consequences of an argument I had with my mother. It was that day that I realized how quickly bald spots could develop and pivoted to a different outlet. Not to mention, I started a more rigorous medication schedule, which certainly soothed the itch to pull. Now, at my ripe age of 19, I boxed. I broke skin on canvas until I felt better. Much healthier!

Tired of pondering my steady mental decline, I sucked in one last lungful of delicious cancerous strawberry-tinged smoke and put out my joint on the tin roof. I exhaled, allowing the fumes to curl up and away into the brisk autumn night. I wished I could do the same. I clambered gracelessly back inside my window, hoping that the acrid scent of my nighttime recreation didn’t reach my parents’ room. Luckily, their room was at the exact opposite side of the house.

It’s been years since I started hearing things that (I’ve been told) aren’t there. If only my parents were around to witness the cacophony of stomping directly above my face, maybe they would understand. The few times my mother slept in my room there were no disturbances, save for a few creakings of the house. I knew it wasn’t a ghost or ghoul because one, ghosts aren’t real, and two, we personally built this house a decade ago. Despite assurances that I was merely imagining my nighttime visitor, I kept a switchblade, a small metal bat, and a hammer on my bedside table.

Since moving in, only one person had been in the attic: the contractor who installed my 100-pound punching bag. For obvious reasons, it was necessary that he travel up through my closet to ensure that my newest toy was attached to a support beam. On his way up, he had left some black fingerprints on the trap door. These same smudges have multiplied in number and changed in size since he left. I’ve brought this up with my family and friends several times, but to no avail. They “were the same” and “nothing had changed.”

As I brushed my teeth and got ready for the night, I sang my little diddy in my head: (to the tune of Ain’t No Mountain High Enough) ain’t no man tall enough, ain’t nobody athletic enough, to live in the ceiling with you, baby. I knew it was stupid, but the familiar reminder soothed me as I spat out my toothpaste and turned on the faucet. I closed my eyes to rinse my face. I was tired: tired of being haunted, not being believed, living like this, just tired of living. My bathroom door was closed, but I could hear it starting…

Thump. Thump. Thump.

There isn’t anyone else. I am alone. It is just me.

I glared up at the ceiling, wishing that whoever or whatever wasn’t up there could just shut up. The familiar feeling of being perceived itched my skin. Goosebumps raised on the back of my neck, signaling to me that I wasn’t alone. I decided that one night without my skincare routine wouldn’t age me too badly.

Despite how badly I wanted to throw myself up and into the attic and chop off the feet of whoever wasn’t up there, I reserved myself to go to bed. It would be another familiar night of interrupted peace. I threw on an episode of Weird Wonderful World to soothe my frayed nerves, slapping on my noise-canceling headphones in hopes of drowning out the pounding on the ceiling.

I laid down in bed, holding my teddy bear Bobert close to my chest. Just close your eyes. I squeezed my eyes shut, blindly reaching for my phone to turn up the volume. I could feel my heartbeat pulsing my body, slightly shaking the bed. I counted the beats, trying to take my BPM. 160? 170? Confused, I opened my eyes and took off my headphones. To my horror, the bed was shaking off time with the beat of my heart. The walls shook with the hammering on the ceiling. I watched in disbelief as my mirror, previously hung on the wall, crashed into my desk, sending a plume of papers and painting supplies spilling onto the floor. I looked on helplessly as my open paint pot tipped, pouring acrylic purple onto my carpet.

There is no way this is just in my head. This was the loudest the footsteps had ever been. Never had they shaken my room before. I tossed my headphones to the side, got up and turned the lights back on. I couldn’t live like this.

I needed to figure this out. Now. I needed to prove to myself that I really was just crazy. You’re gonna go up there, you’re gonna see nothing, and then you’re gonna call the doctor in the morning and change your meds. You’re fine.

I hurriedly grabbed my supplies: chair, hammer, flashlight, phone. I dragged the chair directly below the trapdoor and stood on it, shakily reaching up to the portal of my personal hell. I was ready to confront the enemy, whether it be a C-list attic demon, obese squirrel, or a remarkably agile squatter. I turned on voice memos on my phone. I tested the audio, preparing to catch any evidence of the footsteps necessary to convince my parents, just in case I hadn’t lost my last marble. The moment I started recording, the footsteps stopped.

I took one last shuddering deep breath, steadying myself on the chair with one hand planted on the movable trap door tile. You’re fine. Do it. In one liquid motion, I shoved upwards on the tile, moving it up and to the side of the threshold. There was about 6 inches of plaster, then the inky blackness of the stuffy room. Caught in the suction of the tile, dusty air blew into my eyes. I blinked hard. I couldn’t see anything but the low insulated ceiling about six feet up. I felt softly pulled up there, like iron slowly drawn to a weak magnet. I need to know.

Despite my trepidation of reaching into the unknown, I placed my phone and hammer on the ledge in the dark. With my flashlight clamped between my teeth, I was somehow able to pull myself (with great difficulty) up and over the threshold. The circle of light swung wildly from my mouth, revealing only a few square feet of the attic at a time. Perched at the edge of the hole, I hurriedly grabbed my flashlight from my mouth and shone it around. As I realized no boogeyman was jumping out at me, my heart sunk. What if I really am just imagining it?

Fluffy pink insulation tufted out from the floorboards, each placed a foot away from each other. The room as a whole was about ten by fifteen feet, just about as big as my own room. The first thing that hit me was the smell. It was sickly sweet, like the scent of decaying flowers mixed with rotten meat. I turned slowly, taking in the quiet, empty corners of the room. We had enough space downstairs to render the attic useless, leaving the dusty corners devoid of any items of interest.

Scraps from my favorite take out restaurants littered the floor. My heartrate picked up as I began to regret my decision to come up here. I wondered where the garbage had come from – surely the contractors who worked on the house wouldn’t leave such obvious evidence of sloppiness for their employers to find, right? I continued my slow, steady rotation, taking in the first corner, then second, then –

All of the anxiety in my body rushed upward, forcing my dinner up and onto my tongue, burning my esophagus. The thick veil of dust covering the planks was disturbed. The marks were irregular, as though steps had been taken in a feverish, erratic motion. Footprints, roughly the size of my feet, marched up and down and around and through the gloom of the attic. I tried to follow them with the flashlight’s beam, but it was impossible to tell where they stopped or started. The corrosive force of fear began to erode my sense of calm and rationality. My circle of light trembled pitifully as adrenaline began its course through my body and into my hands. I could hear my own heartbeat in my eardrums, thumping along with the same tenacity as the footsteps had minutes earlier. I checked behind me, the square of light beaming up from my closet reassuring me that familiarity was only a few feet away.

I strained to hear anything outside of my heartbeat. I cocked my head to the side, desperately hoping to hear the skittering crawl of a critter or anything to partially justify my experiences. The thudding of my own heartbeat grew more maddening with each passing moment, taunting my senses. What if I was only hearing me this whole time?

Just as I was about to turn and slip back down into my room, I heard a ragged, faint cough. The insulation of the attic muffled every sound, making it impossible to tell where the sound had come from, or if it even happened at all. My heartrate picked up, pounding against my ribcage as if trying to escape. My stomach clenched again, forcing more bile up and into my mouth. From my position by the hole, I combed each corner of the attic with my flashlight once again, my eyes squinted. The first corner was clear. The second, though littered with Indian and Chinese takeout, was similarly devoid of life. I peered into the third corner, seeing nothing, but –

Hunched over behind a support pillar, head tucked between their knees and arms wrapped around their head like a sad toddler, was a person. They looked so emaciated that it was revoltingly painful to perceive them as a live human being. From what I could make out, their hair was long and wispy with large clumps missing. In the scope of the flashlight, I saw bloody knots of brunette strands littering the floor around them.

Despite how skeletal their frame was, the clothes they were wearing looked uncomfortably tight and small on them. I took one step closer and away from the hole, careful to land between the wooden planks to ensure my steps were muffled by the insulation. They were wearing a child’s purple silk dress adorned with tiny butterflies. My fifth grade graduation dress.

A flicker of familiarity itched at my brain, urging me to take another step forward. Nausea surged up my esophagus, threatening to spill onto the attic floor. Did I know this person? I gripped my hammer more tightly as my hands became clammy and my breath hitched in my chest. I stepped, forgetting to aim my foot between the wood slats. Just as my foot landed on the wood, the person shot upward, craning to my full height and squaring up with me.

It was me. My stomach clenched at the initial recognition of myself in such a ghastly form. She mirrored my every feature with disturbing precision. As I took her in, battling deep currents of familiarity and unease crashed together in my body. This was the pinnacle of a violation of privacy: someone knew me intimately enough to be me. My eyes looked dead, like I wasn’t really processing what I was seeing. I wasn’t.

I couldn’t move, but she could. She jerked violently, snapping her head back to hit the wall a few times. It was then that I noticed the oddest details of her. As she twitched her head to the side, I saw that the back half of her skull was dented inward, as though she spent most of her time thudding her head against the wall. Her hands were limp at her sides, her knuckles bony and scabbed. Despite how objectively horrifying this situation was, pity overtook my panic and fear. She was so pathetic, so wretched that it was hard to feel threatened by her. I was worried that her movements would hurt herself, not me. She was misery incarnate.

“You shouldn’t be up here,” she murmured to me.

“What are you?” I couldn’t help but ask as I continued to take her in. As she clenched her fists, her flesh cracked and bled, just how my skin looked after a bad day.

“Don’t be afraid. We did this together,” her tone was light and airy, like she was trying to lure me into a false sense of calm. The look on her face was scarily incongruent with her speech: her eyebrows furrowed deeper than I thought possible, her teeth bared in anger, revealing that several were rotting or missing. She brushed wispy strands of dead-looking hair to cover her bald spots. She was as upset with me as I was wary of her.

“Okay, uh…” I quickly scanned the rest of the attic to make sure there wasn’t a second doppelganger or boogeyman. There wasn’t. I returned my light to her, only to find she had taken several silent steps forward, leaving only a foot between us. I couldn’t help but think: oh, so you can walk quietly.

I didn’t look any better closer up. Dark circles shrouded my eyes. Deep, gaunt shadows hollowed out my cheeks, letting me know I should never try ozempic. I looked yellow, like my liver had given up years ago. Scabs of raw flesh covered my scalp in the areas where hair was missing. As I took her in fully, I couldn’t help but feel guilty. I wasn’t sure why I felt this way, but just as I had been drawn to the attic, the feeling permeated the air with unwavering surety.

“I–I’m sorry,” I sputtered out, still not sure why. To my horror, her cheeks cracked into a humorless grin. She spat out an unfamiliar short bark-like laugh.

“Sorry?” she spat, “You inflict this on me and you’re sorry?!”

I backed up a few steps, not sure what she meant. I felt my heel painfully droop over the threshold of the trapdoor hole. I squinted at her, trying to figure out what I was missing. There had to be a reason why she was up here. The pieces slithered into place in my skull, squirming into the full picture of what my actions had created. It had been, what…five years? Five years of her up there, coping the only ways I knew how.

As my thoughts churned into place, she pounced. Without thinking, I swung my hammer, connecting with a sickening thud. The back half of her already-damaged skull splintered like a rotting pumpkin from the force, splattering on the floor and walls. The smell of the inside of my brain was almost too much for my stomach to handle. Inexplicably, she didn’t fall right away. Her face still intact, she glared back at me, a sea of distrust and pain. She finally collapsed forward, pushing me backward and into the hole. I fell, my head slamming against the threshold as I scrambled to find a handhold. The last thing I saw was the trapdoor sliding back into place before my head hit the chair. When I hit the ground, the only thing I felt was regret. I had gone up there out of desperation, but now I wished I had never witnessed the result of my actions. She was the testament to pain I inflict. She was me, and I am her.

POLICE REPORT

Case no. 3084724

Date: 10.05.2023

Reporting Officer: Thomas Guerrara

Incident: Distress call from _____________, mother, at 6:04 AM from address _________________________________. 19 female found face-down in closet, back of head bludgeoned by hammer. Self-inflicted. Mirror found askew and items spilled, suggests physical altercation.

Actions Taken: Victim taken via ambulance to ER, held for psychiatric treatment. Interview pending.

Updates: 

10.10.23 – Victim claims to have killed herself in the attic. Clearer statements pending psychiatric treatment.

03.10.24 – Victim has made next to no progress. Moved to long-term psychiatric facility.