"She's wrong," they say.

"She's weird," they say.

"She's a witch," they say.

"She's arrogant."

"She's defective."

"She's a freak."

"She's a bitch."

Their words follow me around the school, floating behind me, withering in the air and flicking my ears, my neck, my cheeks as I thread my way through the hallway.

I go to a school of less than two hundred; I go to a school of a hundred and ninety two people.

I go to a school of cliques and gangs and groups.

I go to a school of monsters.

All of them, all of them, dull and black and evil, twisting around each other, feeding off the bile that rises out of one another's throats, feeding off of the dripping threats, the frozen names, the brittle lies. Passing them from mouth to mouth like kisses at a party, until the whole school is fed, until the whole school is bloated on what they think is power. They disgust me, they make me sick to my stomach, sick to my mind, if they were worth it bile would rise in my throat at the thought of them. They are the ants and I am the spider, and they are too stupid to realize this.

"Her lipstick is made out of crushed bugs," they say.

"Her hair is rinsed with the juices squeezed from children's hearts," they say.

"Her skin is washed with piss," they say.

"Her teeth are white from sucking bone marrow."

"Her eyes are colored from the blood of babies."

"Her voice was stolen by the devil in third grade."

"Her thoughts are woven in the screams of her parents."

I am outside of them, I am on my own. I find my way through the halls without assistance, I force my way through their bodies, their stench, their clogging thoughts by myself, the only one at the school without a friend, the only one at school without fellow monsters.

I'm too wrong for them.

I'm too different.

Too dark.

They don't realize the extent of my power, they don't realize the extent of my disgust. They are ignorant to the fact of how far above them I am, they are ignorant to the fact that the blacker than black place in the back of my mind hates them: the arrogant, those that think they are the blackest, those that think they are the worst, those that are wrong.

That's the difference between us- they are black, but I am blacker, I am void of any and all color, and they are stupid, wondering how, despite being as dark as they are, I am still darker, the buzz of competition rushes through their minds, fuzzing their thoughts, blinding them to the fact that, while they drip the black; I am the black, I am beyond the black.

And this hurts them.

That's how it has been for seven years. I am surrounded by black snow, frozen in time by the cold, by the dark, and they wish they could reach my level, but they cannot. I understand, they cannot comprehend, I allow, they fight, I am fearless, they are scared. Their arrogance, their pride, their whole being is a façade, is as fragile as glass, and I want so badly to watch it shatter.

They are the kindergarteners who have won trophies they know they don't deserve but accept anyway, they are the children who look upon the real winner and try to bring them down to their level, but I am too high, too far above them, and they will never, never reach me.

It took a long time to accept how dark I was. To accept the squirming mass of void in my mind, in my chest, where my heart and lungs should be. When I was younger, I didn't want to be this way. I wanted to be light, I wanted to be yellow or pink, anything but this color, this color that is darker than black. I wanted it out, out, out of my mind, out of my body, it was sitting in such a way where I thought that maybe by twisting something, tilting my mind a certain way, I could be rid of it.

I never managed to do that. So I accepted it. I embraced it. At sixteen, I gave in.

Good girl.

I think my mother used to be like me- darker than black, worse than those few who were simply black. I think my mother used to be as dark as I was, I think she used to be void of any light at all, I think we would have gotten along much better had she chosen not to drown her black in a rush of white, depriving it of air and slowly liquefying it in alcoholic beverage after alcoholic beverage.

I almost followed her, once, when I was fifteen and desperate to be rid of this curse- but the void saw what my mother had done, the void knew what was coming, and all the alcohol did was make it angry because it was prepared, it was not caught off guard like my mother's void had been, and I didn't touch a single bottle after that, because it was useless if I couldn't drown something.

When I was sixteen I named the void that was darker than black- I named the mass of withering stuff the horrorterrors.

From there it seemed to grow, and that's when everything really slipped.

It had always been there, and I had thought it was a part of me, something that, while I couldn't control, was definitely not an outside force. But, the moment I gave it a name, the moment the word 'Horrorterror' had popped into my mind, it seemed… different. 'Happy,' is not the right word, nor does 'pleased,' fit comfortably. But there was a change, a positive one in the way that the horrorterrors settled in the back of my mind, in the middle of my chest, like it was at last able to settle in comfortably, like I actually had had the power to have kicked it out prior to this naming, a power I didn't know I had. But the naming of it- it stripped me of this power, it settled the horrorterrors into my mind permanently. For a moment I considered crying; my throat closed up and I looked to the ceiling, blinking back the sting in my eyes, but the realization dawned that I could do nothing now, the fact that I had not only accepted it, but had given it power…

I went back to staring at the chalkboard, listening to the teacher drone on and feeling the horrorterrors tickle the back of my mind, the disgust slowly building, blocking any other feeling in, like it always does, as those around me fidget and twiddle and take satisfaction in the pathetic amount of dark that they are. They sicken me, they sicken the horrorterrors, they make my stomach churn and my mouth go dry with hate. They became more persistent after that, and, everyday, it seemed more and more like they were something that wasn't meant to be a part of me, like they were something invading my mind, and I cherished the rare flashes of blue calm when they were silent for a moment, when they were still, not because I didn't want them, but because the blue meant my mind could relax, a release that I felt immediately, a release that I relished in.

I suppose that's why I did what I did, I suppose that's why I went all the way. The horrorterrors became too strong after I named them, they became something other than what they had been before, when there was just a simple desire for blood, a simple call of hate. After a year, I realized there now seemed to be a need for blood, a push for hate that differed from before; before, I acknowledged the hate, bathed in the hate, but now I was forced to take in hate, too, the feeling so strong my entire body would go hot, lasting for hours and hours and hours. There was no escaping it now, it was embedded in me, and I could do nothing. It wasn't the hate transferring from me through exposure, it was the hate becoming a part of me, easing its way in from a place that I had no control over, that I had no way to stop the flow, snaking through my mind, embedding itself in my heart.

So why not submit to it? The whispers were growing stronger, growing too loud- yes, there has been excess volume before, but now it was too much to even think about ignoring. Now, nearly all of my thoughts were drowned in those of the horrorterrors; eventually, I couldn't tell if it was their shouting for blood or my shouting for blood that drove me to kill.

So it was at one in the morning when I snuck out of my room, padding across the roof in my bare feet, the horrorterrors helping to direct my mind, my body, towards the bus station, towards the homeless man that always slept there at night. The knife was clutched tightly in my hand, the horrorterrors laughing in my mind, pleased- or was it I that was pleased, at the prospect of what I was about to do?

Either way, happiness drifted through the black.

And, then, after the fifth or sixth withdraw of the knife, now red, blue flashed through my mind, the black lightening in color until it, too, hinted at blue.

I returned home an hour later, my hands, my mind, and my soul bloody, but my clothes clean. I washed off in the bathroom and slipped under my covers, my mind, I realized, was infuriatingly calm- I knew I should be upset, I knew I should be crying, screaming, rushing to tell someone, anyone, what I had just done, but the horrorterrors were quieter than usual, and it was almost peaceful in my mind, and it had been so long since I had felt this way that I just wanted to lay there, surrounded by warmth, stillness, and think my own thoughts, my mind silent other than that, no hate or disgust bubbling underneath.

It didn't help forever, obviously, but the sight of the bloody body below me seemed to please the horrorterrors, and they relaxed for a little bit. And I really, really liked that.

I didn't realize how much I missed the blue.