Page 6

Indigo blues meld into the fading inky black depths of night as the dawn of another day draws closer, the perpetual battle between night and day as unending as the thoughts that churn in the chaos of my mind. Pain slithers through tissue, sinew, and atrophying muscles without care as I relinquish my fragile grasp on unconsciousness.

Sleep eludes me, something many seek as a way to escape the horror and torment of their pain infused lives, but for me, it offers no comfort. Whether I’m awake or asleep, it makes no difference. Monsters whisper in my ears from the shadows, taunting me, waiting. The devil stalks my every thought, leaving me with no form of escape. Unconsciousness offers no solitude or safety. Serendipity was just a beautiful word fabricated from lies of those that have never experienced the cruelty the world has to offer.

Since waking up in that hospital bed, my body purged of drugs and their lingering effects; I’m as fragile as a cobweb being battered by a storm. The erratic beeping of a monitor whirred, echoing in the silence of the room that encased me like a tomb. Needles bit into my flesh attached to cables that pulled at my ravaged skin as I tried to move. Muscles spasmed in sharp jolting movements that ricocheted through my bones, making my teeth chatter and jaw clench.

I lifted my left arm—unable to lift my right as it was weighed down by a full arm cast—turning it slowly like I was pulling it through quick drying cement. My fingers vibrated as pain radiated through every cell as I swallowed down the anguished howl of agony that wanted to tear up my dry throat. How many times have I screamed in silence only to go unheard? My eyelids fluttered, trying to clear the dust and grit off the surface of my eyeballs, but all it did was score the grit across the sclera, making them flood. The water welled like acid, burning the damaged surface, but as the tears poured down my gaunt cheeks, my vision cleared and I was able to focus on my skeletal looking arm. My flesh was mottled with deep blacks and blues, fading to a sickly yellow green around my swollen fingers. Flexing them sent me to the ninth circle of hell as bone ground against bone the pain resonated through every cell in my body.

My gaze zeroed in on the white band around my wrist. I screwed my eyes shut as a violent wave of nausea crashed through me, making me sink my teeth into my tongue until I tasted copper to hold back the bile scouring a path up my oesophagus. Blinking through the fresh burn of tears in my eyes, I read the broken letters on the band that contained a faded hospital number and the words John Smith.

They didn’t know who I was, which meant no one was looking for me. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that but it was something I could work with and until they questioned me, I was just some John Doe, some unknown person. I could be or become anyone I wanted. They knew nothing about my history and that was something I planned on using to my advantage.

Swipingmy hand over my face, I push back the wet locks clinging to my forehead, perspiration drenching every inch of my skin. I suck in a shaky breath as memories of that day rattle around the inside of my skull. Months might have passed but it feels like all I’ve done is trade one prison for another, although this is the first one I’ve entered voluntarily, it was that or be sectioned and that would have meant them digging into my past more than I was willing to allow. But a prison is still a prison, whether it be the house of horrors, a hospital bed or an institution for those with mental health issues.

Raising my head off the now soaked pillow, I tuck my arms behind my head and allow my mind to wander as disconnected thoughts pillage my mind. I flick my eyes towards the small cell-like window of the room I’m locked in, training my eyes on the twenty-two gaps between the metal slats that sit encased in glass as the indigo blues take on a warmer violet tones as the unrelenting dawn pushes on.

“Don’t forget me, little devil,” the whispered words tear through my dry lips as Rhys’ face hovers in front of me. My salvation and damnation as insubstantial as the wind, his image flickers before I crush it by closing my eyes. My heart thunders against my rib cage with enough force to crack the bone of my sternum and rip my chest cavity wide open but before I can get lost down that rabbit hole of despair. I flip myself off the hospital style cot onto the floor, a sharp pain shooting up my leg as it hits the cold floor, the ache from my fracture ever present and crawl under it rolling onto my back. My fingers trace the pattern across the base of the mattress searching for the frayed fibres from the rip I’d made in the material, nothing in this place is yours unless you make it so and this item is something I covet more than anything, it’s not for prying eyes and inquisitive deluded minds. It’s mine and only mine. If I can have nothing else of him, this will be my way to keep him alive. Finding the frayed edges, I pull them apart, sink my hand inside and pull out my journal. I sigh heavily now it’s back in my arms and safe. He’s safe and with me once more.

Dr Jenna doesn’t know that Michelle stole one for me from her office when she was running late for her therapy session and gifted it to me with a blinding white smile on her face before she skipped away down the corridor back to the room to wait for Jenna. I shuffle myself into a sitting position and paw through the pages I’ve spilled words and emotions on that held no true meaning other than meandering thoughts and feelings that poured through the crevices of my fractured mind. I’ve always found an idle sort of comfort in allowing my demons to run free to purge them and the darkness that rose inside me like a building tsunami through words no one else would ever read. My secret, my pain, my eternal isolation.

I’ve let go of the small amount of self-restraint I possess and allow them to flow freely, emptying myself until I’m nothing more than a conduit. Occasionally, I go over the words and crazed ramblings of my broken soul. I’m filled with hate; it festers inside me, poisoning me until I am nothing more than rotten flesh. Bound to become nothing but dust that scatters in the wind, and in time only to be forgotten completely, never to be remembered.

Flicking to the last full page, a pencil rolls down the white paper onto my lap. My fingers twitch with the desire to hold it and free myself from my internal torment. Turning to look over my shoulder, the violet skies were now stained with sanguine reds that bleed into fiery oranges shimmering as dawn is on its final approach. Time stops for no man, not even me when I tried to break fate’s fickle hold on me by ending my life, but even that had failed.

I had failed.

So, with nothing else left in me, I give myself over to the despair that rolls through my veins, picking up the pencil and surrendering my thoughts to those I refuse to look too closely at these days. I’d bleed myself dry if only I had my blade, but today my pencil will be my sword.

There is a beauty in death—in its serenity. One you can’t find amongst the chaos of the living.

It’s no longer self-serving or obsessive. It’s freedom that threads through every fibre of your being. Releasing each atom into the great expanse of the cosmos, the one we all come from as minuscule fragments of what came before.

Being released from this earthly plane, from this mortal coil, it realigns everything I thought I knew. It wipes the slate clean, like the tumultuous storm wrecks and ravages a cove, obliterating everything that once was, leaving behind innocent perfection, purity in its most natural form.

I always thought I wanted to die. To break free of the toxic torment that he unleashed on me that ravaged and destroyed everything I could have been and pushed me to the brink. Shredding my sanity, my nerves; ravaging my body until it didn’t belong to me. He did more than split my flesh and make me bleed, spilling myself in an outpouring I could never stem. He poisoned me. Infected every cell right down to the marrow in my bones. His malevolent nature, as oppressive and malicious as it was or is, tarnished my soul and left me a lifeless husk. An empty shell that the wind rattled through, flaking away the last remnants of humanity within its walls.

Until I was left, not living or dying. I was nothing. Air didn’t sustain me. Water didn’t replenish my organs. Blood doesn’t flow through my veins and arteries, giving my body life.

It was mechanical, forced, and endured.

Each blink was like glass scoring across my eyeballs, puncturing the surface and letting his putrid essence smother me.

Lost.

So fucking lost inside the abyss of my mind. I turned inwards, and I shut down, no matter what people thought of my outbursts. The drugs, my promiscuity, seeking connection and release through flesh, desperately sinking my blunt, split fingers into some form of connection, but it slipped through my fingers like water.

It was never there.

It wasn’t real.

It was an illusion created through my fractured mind as insubstantial as the wind but wholly destructive in ways I couldn’t even comprehend.

All it took were well-timed words, a slight that cut so deep it carved my flesh up into a macabre cavern, a haunting tribute to those who sought my ruin.

They won. The devil. His sycophants, his followers, and worshippers.

I never truly understood the power of a well-timed word, but its effects ran deeper than acid in my veins. It dissolved my brain, breaking the connections between synapses, and threw my last lingering hope away.

The devil didn’t need to lift a finger. The finality he delivered was like a grain of sand blowing in the wind, inconsequential to him but annihilation to me.

I am no longer who I was. That night brought about my metamorphosis. I was once drowning in the dark, in his obsidian depths, but now I am more.

He is less.

No longer the devil, but vermin at my feet. I am one with the darkness. I feel it thrumming through my body. It’s a symbiotic relationship. It sustains me, gives me purpose, redemption, and I nurture it.

Conceal it, sustaining it through purpose.

He thought he had ended me. Eviscerated me off the face of the earth, removing every infinitesimal trace of me from his life. Purging it from his life, but all he did was to bring about my rebirth.

You underestimated me, Neil. You think you hold all the power, but men like you are as weak as a house of cards. You live behind this vision of yourself that’s untouchable because of the fear you force down people’s throats and believe it permeates them, drowning them so they won’t challenge you.

Well, tell me, what happens when you’ve lost everything?

When you’re no longer afraid of the dark because you’re one with it?

When retribution is the air you breathe and revenge is the blood in your veins?

Do you feel the change in the wind?

Do your once placid dreams turn to nightmares of all the atrocities you’ve committed being reaped on your flesh, tunnelling inside you until you implode?

Are you afraid?

No...?

Well, you should be.

I am Kayden Huxley. I lived in hell; I died in the nothing, and I was reincarnated into something more. Only monsters can kill monsters. Sometimes, we need to become our worst, to save ourselves.

I’m doing this for myself. My mother, who was ground down to dust under your ministrations. And for him. I can’t even think of his name because if I do, I’ll crumple like a house of cards. If he saw me like this, he wouldn’t recognise me, not that he truly knew me back then, but he wanted to. His pure, pure heart fought against the vice that tried to leech the life from him. I want to set him free. I fucking vow to and then... then I can love him like he deserves.

I just hope after all of this, after every stone has been unturned, and every thread unravelled, he’ll want me.

Am I capable of love? I don’t know, but obsession and possession are second nature to me.

It’s time to stop running from the storm and face it. I’ve let it fester inside me, battering the remnants of the person I was, drowning under its surging tides, but now I’m ready to learn from its destruction. To take stock of its devastation, allow it to wipe away the dregs that I’ve clung to and listen.

I finally realise that some things in life can only be learned when you face the storm, live, or die. It doesn’t matter. The only thing that does is change through new beginnings.

I’m listening... Can you hear me?

Because I can hear you.

“Hey, Maxie. How are you today?” The pencil slips from my fingers and I slam the journal shut before it can roll to the floor, trapping it within the pages. Lifting my eyes to see Michelle bouncing from one foot to the other through the door to my cell, her bright yellow, orange hair floating around her shoulders.

“Uh, what are you doing here?” I turn my head to the side, watching her through my clumpy eyelashes as she bounds over to sit on the floor opposite me, crossing her legs, resting her hands on her knees, with her back rigidly straight like the correct posture has been drilled into her since birth. She rolls her head from side to side before fixing her different coloured eyes on me— one ice blue the other burning amber. It’s unnerving when she does this. Makes you her sole focus like she’s looking at you under a microscope. Anything could be happening around us. A fucking bomb could explode, but she wouldn’t even notice her stare is unwavering, penetrating.

“I, uh,” she shrugs, pulling at the hem of her white top, fanning it like she’s hot, as if she was the one on the hot seat—not me—under her scrutinising gaze. “I wanted to see you before breakfast,” she smirks. “I stole the master key from Jenna’s bag. Kait said not to but, ya know, I just couldn’t help myself.” Kait being one of the other crazies I’ve gotten to know since I’ve been locked up in here but she’s not Michelle, that girl is special and sees me in a way I haven’t known before, it’s like she knows my brain, my thoughts before I do.

“What can I do for you then, you little pickpocket?” I snicker.

“I know how you don’t like it when there are staff changes and umm...” she rolls her lips before sinking her teeth into her bottom lip hard enough to break the fragile scab that covers the soft skin.

“What about it?” I shrug, hating how well she reads my little nuances even though she’s only been here a couple of months and had only really spoken to me in the last few weeks. I’d felt her watching me like I was some kind of a pet project of hers before she got the courage to approach me and now, well I can’t get rid of her she pops up all over the place. “Michelle?”

“What was I? Oh yeah, there’s a new guy starting this week. Jenna said he’s really nice and all, and that she spoke to him on the telephone interview?—”

“Aaaand?” I drag the ahhhh sound out exasperated, not in the right frame of mind for her antics this morning. Not when I’m feeling so raw and vulnerable.

I can feel the storm rising within me, it starts with a ravenous itch beneath my skin, a soft rumble of thunder that builds and builds. The air is dense, particles vibrating mirroring the mania in my head. It becomes an entity in itself calling to my monsters in the deep recesses of my psyche, urging them forward with whispered promises of freedom. Freedom and blood… my blood. If only I had my blade I could purge them through one perfect incision and watch as my ruby red essence spilled.

I shake my head as if I could shake off the surging seas, close my eyes trying to regain my carefully masked control but my monsters roar in the encroaching darkness ravenous with need. Insufferable with hunger and unquenchable thirst.

Biting her lips again, her eyes glisten at my sour tone. Guilt ghosts over me like some far off concept I can’t truly comprehend because at the end of the day it’s everyone for themselves here, there is no loyalty, no trust—not really. “Ijustthoughtyou’dliketoknow,” she squeaks, jumping up and running for the door. Grabbing the handle, she wrenches it open with more strength than should belie her slight form until she freezes on the spot and spins round to face me. A rueful smile lifts the corners of her lips. “I have a feeling he’s going to be very important to you.” And just as fast as she gatecrashed into my morning, she evaporated from it, the resounding click of the lock on my door left echoing through the room like giant’s footsteps.

Scrubbing my hand down my face, my eyes drop to my journal, emotion tugging at my dead heart. “What in the fuck is going on in here today?” I don’t have time to dwell on that interaction though because it won’t be long before we’re all herded like cattle for meds and breakfast. It really is like feeding time at the zoo more often than not. The range of inmates and conditions can lead even the most mundane things to become spectacularly explosive.

I slide back under my bed stowing away my journal and drag myself back onto the bed. It’s not the most uncomfortable thing ever but it’s not comforting either. Not the kind of place you want to linger. My brain is frenetic, crazed in a way I have no way to sate and my blood buzzes in my veins an eruption waiting to happen. The meds here dull the roar to a dull hum but it never stops its incessant like a dripping tap. Drip… drip…drip.

“Come on eighteen, time for meds,” Daryl’s voice drawls in that lackadaisical way he has as my door swings open. Between the hours of nine a.m. to eight p.m. the doors to all inmates—I mean residents—rooms must be open. I know Jenna would be hurt if she heard me calling us all inmates but at the end of the day that’s what we are. I don’t know anyone here of their own volition, most have been sent here by family or court order section.