Rose speaking. "Simkaye" is out for a while and won't be returning in a while as well. Maybe a few of you know why she is absent, I don't really know, but I'm not going to post why she is gone throughout this site.
Yup. That's it for alerting news.
Anyways, I just felt like I would post this out of pure boredom. Just something I wrote that's sort of a mini-biography explaining how They have affected me over the years. It was going to be the introduction to "They Come at Night", but it's been put on hiatus.
(If you aren't sure what "They Come at Night" is, you might want to check the other story in Simkaye's profile. I changed the character as well. Since it is based on me, I think that the character that represents me more is Simon. IDK.)
Sometimes, not long after retiring for the evening and going to bed, something strange happens to us all now and then. Just after you doze off, you suddenly feel as though you are falling. Falling so fast, and then it abruptly ends, and you awake with a start, often jumping a bit in the bed, wondering what on earth just happened.
This is an actual medical occurrence called a hypnic jerk, that occurs in between the phases of being awake and falling asleep. It is your brain's reaction to your heartrate and breathing suddenly slowing - your brain thinks you are dying. So it jerks you awake.
What most people don't know, is your brain is right. You're not falling at all. You're being pulled down. And your brain won't always be able to wake you up. And when it can't...They will have you.
Simon was never much of a talker when out and about in the world. Although as booksmart as most kids come, he was, how do you say, socially retarded. He was often bullied, teased, and tortured by his classmates, who had little to no empathy for the odd child. But even those who tried to sympathize with him could not. And how could they ever possibly hope to?
In Simon's mind lurked horrors unlike anything anybody could possibly imagine. Graphic nightmares, terrifying visions, and sinister voices...all these and more haunted Simon, a perpetual curse that he carried in silence for years before around his fourteenth year on earth, when he finally confessed to his caretaker, Dave, why the he was always so... troubled.
Not that there had never been signs. As a toddler, he often spoke of imaginary friends, and sometimes cried when he claimed he saw a monster lurking about the piles of junk that his brothers horded. As he grew older, these peculiarities did not cease. Simon often declared to other students he wasn't entirely human, and had invisible tentacles and wings nobody else could feel or see. Of course, this only drove them to tease him further, and even the kinder ones avoided him like a pariah.
Then there was the "Faze" as he called it... years of bullying and battling his then unknown demons had driven him to a state of emotional deadness and physical illness. At every opportunity he claimed he was ill, and begged Dave he could stay home. This usually worked, but when it did not, the results were the same.
A pallid lurker, he'd slip silently through the halls of the school, avoiding contact with anything with a face. He would often stop to talk to thin air, and once he fell into a fit-like seizure after screaming upon opening his locker.
In class, he would speak only when called upon, and spent little time doing work assigned as much as drawing. As time went on, the drawings became darker and more twisted. He was nearly suspended when drawings of his bullies being disemboweled and torn apart surfaced.
Then, when he was about 14, he confessed the reasons for his strange behaviors to Dave while in the car. Simon gingerly handed a yellow sheet of paper with horrific creatures drawn in delicate detail to his caretaker.
"These are some of the things I see...They follow me everywhere...and they talk to me...and they tell me to do bad things...I just never told anybody because...They would think I'm crazy."
From then on, his encounters with the monsters, which Simon had called "They," got sharply worse, and he said they were angered by him and Dave seeking treatment to get rid of Them. Simon often disclosed as very little information about Them as possible, aside from the continual artistic depictions he created.
"Drawing them out helps," he often said, "It usually makes them go away for awhile...being on the paper..."
Eventually, around his 17th birthday, a prescription medication and a calm, pleasant summer, as well as emotional maturation, helped Simon overcome Them...mostly.
All seemed well, until school started again. Then They came back, just like They always did. It got worse and worse, slowly crippling and killing Simon from the inside out. Physical ailments and psychotic symptoms plagued him, and soon severe depression led to suicidal thoughts. Slowly, They were killing him. His soul was rotting away.
Yeah, it's kind of emo, but you know... sometimes people who complain have valid reasons for doing so. Please keep any rude or derogatory remarks to yourself, thanks.
-Rose