12. Chapter 12
Chapter twelve
Sunshine
It’s been two days. No three. Maybe four, I don’t know.
I doubled up on all of my medication except the sleep aid, because I can’t let the demon come for me in the middle of the night. Once my brain found the correct train track, I finally felt relief. That was until my brain hit the clouds and I became weightless.
I like it this way—don’t tell anyone. There are no words to describe how foggy the thoughts become.
They weave in and out of focus, blurring with the surroundings as if I’m looking through someone else's damaged eyes; losing what little sight they have left.
Half the time they barely exist—random words and fleeting thoughts thrown out into the swirling bowl of brain soup.
Yeah, having control over your own mind is nice and all, but so is the solace that comes from giving up.
That’s exactly where I’m at now. My Risperdal is gone; two days of double doses has left the container dryer than the Sahara.
There’s plenty of Lithium though—a ninety-day supply is quite handy in instances like these.
There’s no need to rush to the shrink and spill my emulsified guts over the cheap upholstery of his lounges and fake crystal glassware retaining stale water.
Serves him right, switching my doses and breaking what dominion I had. Now he gets to deal with the haggard version of me. The one that stares into oblivion, lost in the mirage of churning colors and phantom sounds.
Whatever he gave me was not strong enough—hell, nothing is anymore.
I could swallow bottle after bottle of pills and the insanity would still tickle the edges of my mind.
They don’t do any good, not when the entities are much older, much stronger than I'll ever be. Doesn’t matter what Mr. Kensington, or any other therapist thinks, they’re real—everything’s real.
I’ll never escape the parasites; might as well give them what they want instead of fighting.
What harm would it do? They’ll eat me alive either way.
When you’re hiding from yourself for days on end, you have time to think of every possibility—of every choice that will either make or break you.
My family and I have been going around and around with this for years and fail, especially after introducing medication.
The chemicals have got to be the catalyst—pissing off the demons instead of subduing them.
Maybe we have to experiment with the doses.
I don’t know anymore.
We can dabble with different blends to find the perfect mix strong enough to regain control without killing what’s left—because if my demons don’t, the drugs will.
Ding.
Even if it's temporary, they make me feel soooo good. They make it easy to shut Kate away in a cage, drape a mental blanket over the bars, and just breathe. She can’t sit on my chest and wrap her rotten fleshed fingers around my throat to demand obedience.
Liz gets thrown into a coffin where she belongs—I wish the medication would go so far as to drown her, snuff out her life in the same way she did to her servant girls forever ago.
Naamah, though, she’s eternal. I can beg and plead, grovel for release, damage my mind, body, and soul, and she will linger.
She’s the shadow’s stapled to the bottom of my feet refusing to release, even in the darkest of night where shadows shouldn’t exist.
Ding.
Hang on—that’s all I can do. Move with the gut ripping punches. Take everything the demons run me through: scorching coals, vats of acid, pools of piranha that shred me into a cloud of blood and white meat.
Ding.
What the fuck is that?
Ding.
Knock-knock-knock.
“Sadie?”
Oh no, no no no. Where—where am I?
Open your eyes, girl.
“They are open!”
I jerk at the sound of the voices. One I know, the other’s gravely, raw, unused.
Ding.
“Sadie, open the door!”
“No!”
This is a trap. If I move, the spiked collar coiled around my neck will pierce me—drain me of my blood and spew all over the floor. Or worse, I’ll be shoved in the maiden, or contorted to fit a Scavenger’s Daughter.
“Sadie, if you don’t open this door, I’ll call your dad and he’ll break it down!”
What? M…mom? Oh God, not her. Not now. There’s no way she found me in the—did she come to save me again?
Open your eyes, child!
"They’re not closed!” I scream.
Shhhh, you’re doing so well. I’m proud of you, sweet girl. Try to breathe for me, okay? In through your nose, out through your mouth. I promise it will get easier with time.
“Sadie?” Her voice moves closer.
Fire burns through the rough cotton of my shirt—beginning at my shoulder, a blaze slides into my chest then through my arms. Abrasive hairs of pain cut to the bone as it gathers around my wrist and clenches.
Silently I weep through the hurt. When that’s not enough, the flames pull my arms, jerking them up above my head.
It’s a dream, it’s a dream, it’s a dream.
Wet earth, death, and scorched leaves swath into my nose eating through the oxygen; drying the mucus membranes as the invisible force wins and yanks me up. My toes, raw and caked with soot, scrape through dirt and debris where I hang. I’ve returned to where I broke the most: the forest.
Open your eyes.
A voice I’ve never heard before seeps into my ear canals, trying to bewitch me.
No, I can’t. I won’t survive the forest again.
Not the lake, not the cabin, the trees glowing with the reds and oranges of hell emerging from the ground's underbelly. If I keep them closed, I won’t wake up to blood-soaked hands and a man’s life fading under the sharp glide of a forgotten kitchen cleaver.
He won’t be at my back, warm and steady, forcing my hand through human joints to dismember an innocent.
My demons won’t be there winning—destroying me.
I know it’s scary, but you’re safe now.
The unfamiliar voice speaks again—cool and soothing, easing the singe of being crucified and burned alive.
“Sadie, sugar, open your eyes. It’s Mom, come on, just Mom!”
Marble weights lift from my clumpy eyelashes.
The delicate hairs fly open to a dull light spilling inside—the floor of my closet having swallowed hell once more.
My mom’s crouched a few feet away, mountains of concern written across her face as if she poured honey on it and stuck pages of the Bible directly to the gooey sweetness.
Verse after verse of Revelations following the contours while she looks at me with pity—and it makes my heart skip one too many beats.
There aren’t many emotions I fully understand, but pity is the worst. Looking at me like I’m broken…it makes me feel like a cast aside toy, no longer valuable enough to keep around.
I see the rifts splitting away from my brain and down to my body—my invisible illness manifesting in cracks along my porcelain skin.
She has it all: a husband, a baby on the way, and a broken daughter.
Every box checked off on the list of complaints you’d submit to your therapist at intake—and I’m the worst, there’s no fixing me.
Unless you lop the head off the snake, my poison will ruin her life.
“There you are,” she murmurs, reaching to brush a wild chunk of sweat-slicked hair behind my ear.
Embarrassed—she shouldn’t have to see me like this, no one should—I glance away.
Clothes and shoes are strung everywhere, most of them piled around me, broken hangers stabbed into the wall with red smudges smeared across the paint.
I fucked up, I’m fucked up.
“It’s okay, sugar. Come back to me. Whatever happened, it’s alright.”
No, it’s not. I’ve burrowed myself into a nest in the corner of my closet—cut myself away from the world for however many days and lost my fucking mind.
“I’m going to help you up, okay? You need to shower before you see yourself in the mirror.”
I weakly shove her hands away, but the years of being a CO and prisoner have given her strength I do not possess.
Her hands cuff mine, covering where my mind’s still sensing the rope of agony cinched around them, then she pulls me up.
I’m thankful when she doesn’t look anywhere but my face—she had plenty of time to check me over when I was lost.
Leading me out, her rounded stomach glares at me with the perfect little human inside of her—all of the damage he’d ever experience in life has been given to me.
I’ve sustained the torment and mental load for more than a handful of people through the worst parts of their lives and it’s suffocating.
I want it all to disappear; for the demons to suffer as they have made me, for silence to lift me away.
Supporting me, she opens the glass door to my shower with a distinct pop and spins the faucet knob inside for the water to spray.
Next, she’s pulling at my clothes, but this time I don’t fight.
My shirt’s up and tossed into a pile somewhere behind me, my shorts come next before she directs me inside.
“I’ll be right back with your clothes.”
Privacy washes over me, unlike the water that soaks my hair while I stand like the gargoyle statues at school.
If I scrub hard enough, I wonder if I’ll reach Kate as if she’s a layer I can dig to—hurt her as she has done me.
Or maybe boil Liz out of my heart. An exorcism for Naamah, since her claws are so deep it requires spiritual help.
“Here you go, sugar. Where are your pills?”
I jump with a start, forgetting she was here, unsure of how long I’ve been in the water. Peeking at my fingers and toes, they’re pruny which tells me somewhere between stepping in, and now, I’ve lost ten minutes.
“I…I need to refill them.”
“How long have you been out?”
“Don’t know.”
“I thought you told me you had everything you needed before we went on our trip?”
Fuck. That was over a week ago. Grabbing a washcloth and shower gel, I go through the motions of showering—hoping the noise drowns out her questioning.
“Right. Well, it’s seven in the morning, your graduation’s in three hours. Do you want to go? I know you can’t get an early refill, so the best we can do is stay on track with your milestones.”
Not bothering to rinse off, I move into scrubbing my hair then face.
She’s right, I’ve been off the rails for days. Her and Dad won’t let anything happen to me, and yeah, maybe going to graduation and trying to act normal will help. Because hiding out in my apartment definitely isn’t doing me any good.
“Yeah, I’ll go.”
“Good.” Her response comes quickly. “Your cap and gown are in my SUV. Kace will meet us there, he has work.” Her eyes roll.
Great, I need their fighting to pressure me, too.
“Are you sure though? You stopped messaging a few days ago and I haven’t been able to get a hold of you. That’s why I came over.”
“Yeah, Mom. I’ll be okay. Can I have the bathroom to myself now?”
Tersely I dismiss her; she lingers for a beat too long then goes—the absence of her body alters how the humid bathroom air settles on me. For what feels like the first time in weeks, I draw in air that doesn’t choke me.
Once the water runs cold, I step out and change into something appropriate for a graduation ceremony and dinner—I think.
It’s a sun dress that stops at my knees and hugs my upper body.
The halter top reaches my neck and showcases my arms, chic and uncomplicated.
Not stopping, ticking off each of my ‘get ready’ tasks until they’re complete, I finish up and look more like a co-ed than a schizophrenic.
Mom must have put my phone on the charger while I was showering too, because when I walk into my bedroom the damn thing lights up then goes dark—over and over again.
As if it’s sitting on a gold mine of notifications that I’ll forever silence, there’s just too much noise in the world.
Afraid it might bite me, I’m reluctant to approach.
Within ten feet, I stop, watching it cycle a few more times before finally going dark.
“Sadie, you ready?” Mom calls from the kitchen.
Physically, yes. Mentally, no. Emotionally, what’s that?
“Yeah, putting on my shoes.”
Sure my phone isn’t going to launch across the room and attack me, I settle on the end of my bed and pull on a pair of school-appropriate sandals—occasionally looking over at the plastic brick to make sure it hasn’t sprouted legs to chase after me.
Finished, I reluctantly grab it and against my better judgment I look through it.
There are forty-five messages, eight calls, and one billion notifications from socials.
I check them, seeing one after the other of Mom panicking after not answering.
Dad chimes in here and there to ask if I’m alright and what happened.
There’s a few regarding my bank account transactions, utilities coming due, and fucking Elias.
I avoided all of them for nearly a week.
They were worried about me. I want to smile, to feel joy for scaring people enough to check in, but it doesn’t come.
I’m so numb; the Lithium’s doing its job and I find myself content with not caring.
Let them worry, they’re doing it from the safety of their own lives where I’m routinely forgotten.
Gliding my thumb along the flat screen, I open the messages with Elias. Finally, I smile at his concern—he didn’t smother me, because he doesn’t see me as damaged.
Klingon
Found an attorney for your little stunt. I’ll see you when I get into town.
Ignoring me today?
I bet you’ve turned your damn phone off, these are all left on delivered.
See you soon. Be good.
Good, yeah. In your fucking dreams.