#psychological

CONTENT WARNING This story contains implicit and explicit descriptions of suicide, depression, and mental health illnesses. Reader discretion is strongly advised. You have been warned. “Why?” That question has always stuck with me. Out of all the questions of mortals, reasoning appeals to me most. Why do the flowers sing as the breeze passes by? Why does the moon borrow and illuminate? Why is the agony of not knowing harsher than the truth? Why can a heart break without touch?

There is a fresh, blank page sitting in front of me, and as I stare at it it seems to stare back.

My therapist told me that writing about things could help. She kind of looked away when she said it, so I’m not sure she believes that. If I’m honest, I think she just doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. It doesn’t matter though. I’m gonna write about it anyway. I’m gonna write about it because it DID happen, and it doesn’t matter what she thinks. At least if I post it here, someone might actually read it. If I post it here, maybe it can help. I should probably start with the move.

We bought the house in March, which my mother always said was the worst month to make decisions. Too late for winter clarity, too early for spring hope. The month where you mistake exhaustion for certainty.

I was five when the man in the wolfman mask scared the shit out of me. No, he didn’t eat me. No, he didn’t kill me. He just gave me one good Halloween scare.

Between December 2041 and February 2042, twelve isolated incidents of extreme violence were recorded across six states. Each case involved a first-time offender with no prior criminal record, no psychological instability, and no identifiable motive. The victims varied: spouses, colleagues, children, strangers. Yet the offenders’ demeanour during the acts remained disturbingly alike: calm, focused, deliberate.

The ball streaked towards little Jimmy Hanson, covering the distance uncomfortably fast. The scrawny boy two sizes too small with the aviator glasses, cringed out of the way. It landed directly where he had been standing, and like that the game ended. “Damnit Jimmy, you're supposed to catch the ball not hide from it!” a fat kid with a glove on one hand cried.

“HELP!” I yell, at least I believe I’m yelling, the feeling of my skin bubbling, is it bubbling… I don’t know. I can feel it, but I don’t know if it is what I think it is. I am or at least what I believe I am… I don’t know. It’s cold wait what does cold feel like again sigh I think I sighed. My body grows old and decayed, my flesh turning a colour I cannot perceive, my hair falling out of my grotesque scalp or what’s left of it. He… no, IT did this. My senses have been stripped away from me, I…

“DRINK MOTHER FUCKERS, DRINK MOTHER FUCKERS, DRINK!” The noxiously artificial taste of blue raspberry slid down my throat with sickening sweetness. This was only my third drink of the evening, but I was already feeling pretty lit. “Alright you, stupid pledges now it’s time for the main event.”

I never saw the faces of the men who kidnapped me. I'd been too busy working when the gang of them burst through the front door. Like smoke from an explosion, the kidnappers spread through the entire building. They demanded victims and turned our world upside down searching for them. They didn't speak outside of grunted demands and language so blue that if you could see the words spilling from their mouths, it'd be a dam breaking.

​THERE EXIST such places where every fragment, every corner is pierced by pain, suffering, darkness, and oppression. It is so dense and stifling there that in some places it makes you want to vomit. The mind is drilled through as if by an auger, and every second of drilling feels like an eternity. It is as if someone has sat on a chair full of spikes in a dark, merciless torture chamber full of cruelty, blood, and pain. Time is not measured here because time does not exist here at all.…

Part I

‘Tom went mad,’ Gilbert said. ‘Schizophrenia or something, I think. He stopped leaving the place completely. After a month of being pent up inside he died of starvation.’ ‘He was a hoarder. A serious one. It took weeks to get the home cleaned up, and even then there’s still some junk in the basement the cleaners left there. I’d be curious to have a look and see if there’s anything valuable.’ He snorted. ‘I doubt it though.’

Call me tasteless but I enjoyed running Southern Fried Murder. Growing up, I loved horror movies, especially slashers, but as I got older I became more drawn to true crime… To the real life monsters walking among us. Like most people, I was initially drawn to the sensationalized Bundys and Dahmers of the world but the local cases scared me more. I became more intrigued by the murders and vicious crimes that happened in my neck of the woods here in the American South. These were also the crimes…

Her head felt hazy. Something was wrong—she could feel it, the way you feel a storm before it breaks. Something bad was coming. She tried to open her eyes. Her body felt heavy, weighted down, as if invisible hands were pressing her into the floor. And somewhere close, someone was crying. Her eyelids fluttered open. A girl was lying on top of her, weeping into her chest. Panic surged through Jasmine—she shoved the girl away before her mind could catch up with her body.

After they came to our door, my sibling stopped being a “problem.” That’s what my parents wanted, at least. But all I can remember is them being a normal kid. Yeah, they caused trouble sometimes–but they were young. That’s it. That’s all it was. Nothing that wouldn’t have passed on its own. And that’s exactly what those two people promised when they showed up. They didn’t look strange at first. Just calm. Polite. Like they’d done this a hundred times before. Five minutes, they said.

It took me longer than it should have to realize one simple truth: humanity has a blind spot, and hiding in it are living nightmares.

The widow, Laura, walked into the garden. Cracked Stone walls surrounded her, their green vines slithering toward bushes plump with blood-red berries. At the center of the garden stood a rectangular stone basin shaped like an angel. It knelt before the pool as if to deliver water from its mouth. Yet what flowed was bleak black water, filled with sticks and the smal bodies of dying insects. When she was younger, she remembered tossing coins and watching them sink into the water's darkness.…

They all think it is wrong to be greedy but in my eyes it is not. So what if someone else goes without just for me to gain? THEY SHOULD HAVE WORKED HARDER DAMNIT! Everyone knows those who don't work end up poor and why should I care if someone was too lazy to work for what they wanted? But you can see it my way too cant you? the glorious gleam of coins jingling in your pocket? the crisp snap of a dollar wasted to satisfy your ever growing needs? the lavish means of living and the…

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.” — Matthew 7:13