"To The Brink"
Chapter One: "Madness Takes All"
Dear Diary,
I remember the first time I ever heard the voice. I was five years old, just starting Kindergarten. It was Autumn, and the leaves had all turned. Halloween was right around the corner, and all the school was decorated with pumpkins carved into all kinds of faces. Paper bats hung from the ceiling, and fake cobwebs ruled most of the corners, with glowing spiders in the darkest ones. Even the lunches had become rather interesting - Spaghetti worms with brain sausages in it. Eyeball candies. Monster salad. Vampire juice. See, in this neighborhood, Halloween was one big joke! And you learned very fast that a joke was a very serious thing 'round those parts. Not that I'm complaining. To this day, Halloween is still one of my favorite holidays.
Anyway, you know how you always have bullies and party poopers in school? You know the ones! People who think they're too good to have fun in everyone else's celebrations. Too cool to be kind. All that jazz. Well, this elementary school had a collection of them - most of them older than I - and they were very good at making the younger kids feel inferior on the playground. Now, I was never raised a pushover. I spoke my mind and I made myself heard! That was the way of my family. And in school was no different. I found, however, that the louder I talked, the more often I would get punished during recess. Tricks and name-callings. Shoves. The normal bully stereotypes. And boy, were there a lot of them.
I remember on Halloween, it was a Friday, and during class everyone was allowed to dress up. We shared candy, and trick-or-treated to every classroom in turn. The whole school was in on it, and everywhere you turned, there'd be a mummy peering around a corner, or a zombie waging war on a door. Talk about screams! Giggle fests could be heard all down every hallway, the high-pitched screamings in short succession, too. Well, little did I know, that once school was out, and everyone was leaving, that the real horrors would come out to play. See, I had a routine. I would walk from my class room, through the playground, past the corner of the football field, and into the back gate of my home. It was a short walk, and always fun to take in the afternoons.
This afternoon happened to be cloudy. Rainy. Cold. And I didn't think anything of it, because that's the kind of weather I love! It didn't register at the time, that I was being followed. Nothing struck me as odd, in fact, until a large, lumbering figure stepped out of the shadows of one of the big metal slides. The person wore a mask, and carried a knife, covered to the hilt in blood spatter. My first instinct? Run like a bitch.
However, to my horror, behind me were three more. I was so paralyzed that even screaming was out of order. So, I panicked, and backed up, turning to what I thought was a safe corner of the school ground. I had forgotten about the trees - oh, the trees I loved to lie under - the trees that now barred my way from any hope of safety. Unfortunately for me, I backed right on into one, whose trunk was very much larger than me. No way up, no easy way around. So, I stood there, prayed to my God, and asked 'why me'? I could feel tears running down my cheeks, but hadn't even registered that I'd begun to cry in the first place. My knees ached, and my spine wobbled.
Closer, and closer they came, weapons lifted to the dreary sky! And just when I thought I was becoming claustrophobic and would die from the sheer intensity of the moment - They began to laugh. All in unison. All of a different pitch. And suddenly the masks cane off, and the fingers pointed. All at me. And they laughed so hard, that even as they turned to walk away, leaving me the only child in the playground, crying at the base of a tree, I could hear them long after they were out of my sights. I was so miserable, returning home with a tear-soaked face and dirty knees, that I didn't even have the heart to go out trick-or-treating that night.
Needless to say, my family took the matter into their adult hands and I never, ever saw those four bullies again. But, that didn't stop the other bullies from harassing me. See, before they conveniently disappeared from school, the four who'd had a fantastic laugh at my expense deemed it necessary to share their wonderful story with everyone. And I do mean everyone... It became almost ritual, after that, for some group to corner me at a tree and point fingers and laugh, just for kicks and giggles. And though it didn't scare me, it made me sad. For what five year old is truly so competent and strong that they can take on a hoard of rude children and not come out unscathed?
Lucky for me, I knew how to hold my own and make a shell. I could just quirk a brow and continue on with my reading and pretend they weren't really there. But that didn't stop the pain I felt every time a finger was pointed at me. Every time someone laughed in my face and called me a name. Every time my hair was yanked, every time I was pushed, or every time I was the butt of some silent joke. It just became commonplace for me to hide that pain, and feed off the strength that my pretend bravery gave the few friends I surrounded myself with.
The point to this, as stated earlier, was that it wasn't long after this terrifying incident that I began to hear the voice...
It came to me, for the first time, in my dreams. I would relive every frightening moment of that Halloween afternoon, but this time there was no laughter. No one took off the masks, and the weapons that had been plastic in real life were suddenly very real in my dreams. And as they crept closer, I could feel the tree-bark against my back. Leaves cracked under their feet, and I could hear myself whimpering like a wounded kitten. A voice, raspy and hoarse, called out to me from somewhere above. If I tipped my head, I could always see a figure, black and hidden amongst the dying leaves. That figure, too, frightened me. Sometimes moreso than the deadly group of people moving slowly toward me.
The first time I had this dream, I did nothing. I would simply sit in the dirt and cry. And just as I could feel them closing in, just as the voice above my head called out one last time, sounding very much like a disappointed parent, I would wake up, crying into my pillow and shaking like a leaf. Occasionally, I would waken to the sound of screaming tearing itself from my throat. And as I got older, the dreams became worse. More vivid, more deadly. And always, that figure followed me and would hold itself somewhere just above my head, offering me a hand that I would never take.
As a matter of fact, I didn't take that hand until I was thirteen years old, and was about ready to kill myself. And I do not mean metaphorically...
Soon, I began nightmaring again. The same old plot, with a brand new twist.
This time, I took the hand offered to me...
I could feel scratchy material on the palm of the shadow, and it pulled with all its might to help me scramble up that tree!
I remember that this time I didn't wake up crying.
This time, I woke up laughing at the absurdity of it all, happy to finally have gotten a hold of what I thought was a dream and nothing more. Imagine my terror to realize that the laughter wasn't even coming from me. It was somewhere deep in the back of my head, gravelly and ever-so-slightly demented. I remember trying for days to ignore the words it spoke to me, to ignore the laughter, the rages, the accusations and then the promises. One night in particular, it said something to me that has stuck with me for almost ten years.
"You're welcome to believe that the world is a nice, logical, rational, safe place... You'll be wrong, but that hasn't stopped anyone else who thinks the same way."
I wasn't everyone else. I didn't think like everyone else! I wouldn't be everyone else, so help me! It was that night that my denial of my inner demon turned into curiosity. Curiosity turned to acceptance. And finally, all this time later, I find myself saddened by the idea of not having this second half...
All because he's left me.
Just like I hoped he never would...