u/sumoiser

I remembered everything.

I remembered everything. The way the school halls felt—a pair of hands tightening around my throat every time I dared to walk them. The sharp bite of stainless steel against my ribs as I was slammed into a locker, the air knocked out of me by insults, not just force. A fourteen-year-old girl, cornered by a pack. Because teenagers aren't children. They are animals - predators, blood-sucking carnivores. They are death.

Teenagers come from the deep, defying depths of hell.

I remembered everything. The way his hands took ownership of my waist, clawing at my insides and ripping me open. I was a product on display - a ruined, jagged art piece - while fear stilled my tongue and locked my joints. My psychologist called it Fawn, Freeze, and Flight, but to me, it was just the end of the world. The dirt under his fingernails, the acrid smoke of his cigarette, and that insatiable, suffocating need for control. He didn't just want to touch me; he wanted to dismantle me piece by piece, as if I was a doll.

I remembered everything. The way my three best friends took a knife and twisted it into my back as I laid in a hospital bed. Nine voice notes echoing in the hospital room, insults bashing my head against the wall, and her voice. Her voice, again. My fingers trailed along my infusion, clutching it as I threatened to pull it out. I wanted control, and second by second it was slipping, slouching, and sliding out of my grasp. Tears falling down my cheeks, painting my face with my internal feelings - finally.

The catalyst of torture was her. She gave me a temporary escape, and in return pushed me off a cliff.

I remembered everything. Blue and red lights blurring across my vision, hands grasping at my wrists, restraining me. Hands all over me as they searched me, flashbacks of him. Sick flushing my system, my breathing nonexistent, and my fear choking me from every entrance. He was a police officer, and yet he screamed at me for five hours, dragging me back to the hospital room when I tried to run, snatching my phone, and at last ruining me.

He was the state, he was the law, and he was the one who finished what the others had started - the final hand reaching in to pull the last threads of me apart.

I remembered everything.

Until I remembered nothing. A memory I kept buried under the weight of the others - a primary school computer room, cold and quiet. A boy, someone I thought was my peer, leading me inside. He asked me to lie down, and before I could even understand the wrongness of it, he was on top of me. I don’t remember the rest. I only remember the rule he whispered afterward, the threat of silence, and the bizarre, mocking melody he taught me to hum instead of screaming: "pink fluffy unicorns dancing on rainbows." A song to cover the sound of a metaphorical murder.

I remembered everything, until I remembered nothing.

The metallic felt cold against my fingers. There’s no doubt it was sharp, that was the point. It was meant to hurt. It was meant to hurt a lot, but “unjustified” punishment has consequences. People trying to convince you you’re crazy for doing what best - punishment is how people learn.

Sometimes punishment isn’t enough - sometimes you need a more permanent solution. I’d done this enough times to know it won’t get better.. hell, it’ll even get worse. There was one thing stopping me from slitting my throat, grabbing a rope, or laying down on the tracks, but was staying even worth it anymore?

The metallic hovered against my skin mockingly, as if it was daring me to press harder, and I did. I watched the blood bead up, and a sense of satisfaction was brought upon me - temporary satisfaction, obviously. This high is only temporary, until next time, because there will be a next time… there always is. Once you start, you can’t stop. A thought turns into an urge, and urge into an action. You feel like you’re on top of the world, the next second, being trampled on by it.

What if the high could be a destination rather than a cliff’s edge? I was tired of the shallow, frantic rhythm of the usual descent. I wanted to go deeper—to unmoor myself from the gravity of who I thought I had to be. I didn't want to stop existing; I wanted to see if I could strip away the layers of the ‘me’ that had done so much damage, to wander through the architecture of my own subconscious, but we know that has consequences. I didn’t want to see her again. The way she leans over my staircase menacingly, her smile wide with authority - daring me to talk to her - but with her, I froze.

It was my fault, as everything is. I press the metallic harder against my skin, my vision blurry with deviant tears - I didn’t deserve to cry, I deserved death. Death doesn’t come easy, there’s always barriers, from people, to pets, to small reasons to stay, but they don’t matter. How can they matter if you don’t know what’s real and what’s not? I know this feeling is real, the feeling of self destruction is euphoric. I look down at my hands gripped around the blade, blood trickling down my legs as I debate my existence with myself. Cut vertically in a deep line, and you’ll be lucky if you hit an artery. My hands blurred as I look down, don’t cry when cutting, because it’s a privilege.

Not all privileges are good, otherwise I wouldn’t be in this predicament - this is a special kind of privilege - one that claws at your thoughts begging you to indulge. Whether it’s good or not is based on your beliefs - everybody always talks about getting help, but what if you can help yourself?

The metallic felt like a piece of me, an extension of my own hand that finally understood what the rest of the world couldn't. I wiped a stray drop from my knee, watching as it bled into my shorts. I looked up at the mirror across from me - a sadistic punishment. My face distorted into a thousand jagged pieces of glass - I didn’t know who,what,where I was anymore.

The girl in the glass was a stranger, I hated strangers.

The silence that followed was heavy, pressing against my chest until breathing became a conscious, difficult task. It always was a difficult task - nobody talks about how hard it is to really breathe… to allow yourself to inhale air and not choke it back up in a panic - sometimes I couldn’t breath, as if I was a diver underwater without a tank. Sometimes I couldn’t breathe and it was their fault. Sometimes I couldn’t breathe, and I was okay with that.

I traced the line again, as if the blade was a pencil on paper - and I was an abstract artist - a cold, twisted, and pathetic artist. Again, just to see if the world would tilt, if the world was real, if anything mattered.

Maybe the "barriers" weren't really there to keep me in. Maybe they were just excuses I’d built to stay tethered to a shore I didn't actually want to live on. My pets, the people, the “plans” for the future—they felt like scenes from someone else's movie. I was just the projectionist, standing in the dark, watching the reel spin, waiting for the film to snap. “Plans” were a mocking commitment, never meant to be committed to.

I pressed the edge of the blade against the cool skin of my left leg, watching as a new bead of red welled up, bright and undeniable.

Just one more, and I’ll stop.

I promise.

My brain maps her movements the way a soldier maps a minefield. I don’t need to look up to know exactly where she’s standing in the square four feet of steel we’re trapped in. A wave of suffocating nausea fled over me, stilling my breath, mimicking hands around my throat. This time I didn’t have a hallway, a classroom door to slip through, or a crowd to hide in - I was trapped, holding my breath as waves of flashbacks drowned me, my oxygen tank was running out. The air was thick and stagnant, and I couldn’t move. Across from me, she doesn't look panicked; she looks like a predator that just realised the prey hopped into a trap willingly. The silence between us is a physical weight, stretching tighter and tighter like a wire about to snap.

The mechanical hum of the elevator was loud in the silence, mocking the sudden stillness of the trap. Panic wiped my mind clean, erasing the memory of where I was even supposed to go. I struck the button for the first floor repeatedly, my thumb a frantic, useless blur, silently begging the machinery to hurry—to swallow the distance and extract me from this suffocating steel. I could hear echoes of her laughter, whether it was real or not, bouncing off the walls squeezing the hands around my throat tighter. Stilling the last breath I had left.

My eyes fixate on the coldness behind her eyes. My brain instantly drags me back to October—the courtyard, the crowd of faces watching, the weight of her voice shoving me, laughing, accusations while those exact cold eyes caught the light. Back then, I could run. Now, looking at those same eyes, the trap feels absolute. I close my eyes, trying to separate the memory from the metal box I’m currently dying in.

Before I can draw in another suffocating breath, the elevator gives a violent, metallic clash. The floor drops an inch beneath our feet. The sickly yellow emergency light snaps off, plunging us into total, velvety darkness. In the blackness, the hands around my throat tighten, as I choke out one last pathetic breath. I slide down the cold steel wall until my knees hit my chest, completely blind, trapped in the dark with a monster. Three years had gone, and yet her face was worn by strangers in the street… mocking me, grinning at the fact I was running from a teenage girl.

A teenage girl, isn’t just a teenage girl. Teenage girls are monsters, predators, and lifeless creatures ripping every ounce of flesh off your bones. After three years, i walked away with nothing. a shadow of a person.* *A shadow doesn't speak; it just follows. For three years, I learned how to shrink myself into corners, how to camouflage into the background of classrooms so her eyes would slide right past me. I gave up my voice, my confidence, my peace—pieces of flesh ripped away until there was nothing left but this hollow shell crumpled on an elevator floor.

I press my spine flat against the freezing steel wall, trying to find an anchor. My chest heaves, but the air stops at my throat, blocked by the phantom weight of her laughter. "Breathe," I command my brain, but the signal gets lost in the static of the flashback. My hands grip my knees so tightly my fingernails bite through my jeans. I am fighting a war on two fronts: the broken machine trapping my body, and the memories trapping my mind.

The violent clack-thud of the elevator’s failing machinery doesn't die out in the dark. Instead, it echoes, sharp and splintering, transforming into the booming strike of a sneaker hitting cheap particle board.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Suddenly, the cold steel against my spine is painted wood. The velvety darkness of the elevator shrinks into the suffocating, fluorescent-lit confines of a school toilet stall.
Suddenly, I’m fifteen again, my hands shaking as the door puts up a defense against her kicks. A lock separating us, her kick the key to getting inside. The hinges groan. With every kick, the flimsy cubicle shuddered, threatening to fold in on me. She isn't just trying to get in; she is trying to break the world down around me.

I look up, back into the elevator—ping.

The sound doesn't belong in the bathroom stall. It cuts through the splintering wood, through her screaming, through the terrifying thud of her sneaker. The door hasn't broken down; it has split wide open.

The velvety darkness of the elevator vanishes, swallowed by a blinding, artificial glare.
My eyes snap open, adjusting to the sudden light as the steel doors slide back. But I’m not looking at the knightstone reception, a hallway, or a street I can run down. Hanging directly in front of the opening are heavy, sweeping drapes of crimson velvet. Red curtains.

The trap is open, but the exit is a stage.
My legs move on autopilot, carrying my shadow forward. I push through the thick, dusty fabric of the curtains, stepping out from the wings and into the spotlight. The floor beneath my feet isn't concrete or tile anymore—it’s polished, hollow wood.

I stand there, exposed, the target of a thousand invisible eyes hidden in the dark auditorium of my own mind. Three years of running, three years of shrinking, three years of being trapped in a metal box with a monster, all laid out like a script I've memorised by heart. The terror wasn't a private tragedy, but rather, a play for others sick entertainment.

I take a slow, agonizing breath of the stale auditorium air, looking down at my shaking hands. The war on two fronts is over for today. The actors have played their parts. The wood has splintered, the elevator has fallen, and I have died again.

I bring my hands together.

Clap*.*

The sound is sharp, hollow, and lonely in the vast space.

Clap. Clap.

The transition wasn't a fall; it was a surrender. One moment, I was staring at the familiar cracks in the plaster of my bedroom ceiling, the air smelling of late-night thoughts and the faint, sweet scent of a candle. I blinked, and the air turned thin and metallic.

The ceiling wasn't plaster anymore. It was a grid of buzzing, flickering fluorescent panels that hummed at a frequency that vibrated right through my body, a mockery of distorted grounding technique. The walls had closed in, dressed in that suffocating, monochromatic yellow wallpaper—damp, peeling, and endless.
I wasn't in my room. I was in a hallway that felt like it had been rotting for decades, yet it was pristine, devoid of any real history.

The hallway gaped open like a throat, a designed predator trying to prey on me, a representation of the external world.

And then, at the far end of the corridor, a shadow detached itself from the wall. It moved with that jerky, staccato rhythm of a corrupted video file. It didn't have a face.

The entity didn't hunt me. It waited. It stood in the center of the corridor, wearing a face of a version of me I barely recognised—someone quiet, someone who kept their head down, someone who had learned to make themselves small enough to disappear into the yellow wallpaper - someone who had been eaten alive and spat out. Its hands were pressed firmly against the yellow wallpaper, gripping as if the wallpaper would run away. The entity held static glitches, as if, it was a mimic deciding its form, its form for whatever suited the person it was entertaining.

I took a step forward, the sound of my trainers echoing on the floor, mimicking a gunshot in a library. Its hands still gripped the wallpaper, knuckles white as if trying to control a world it had no control over. I look up, plastered to the wall are cameras, shifting with every movement I make.

The walls suddenly shifted, the yellow wallpaper peeling, behind it the ghost of a harsh, clinical school corridor I hadn’t stepped foot in for a year. The hum of the fluorescent lights stopped abruptly, now contrasting with a light mocking laugh echoing down the hallway - a sound that wasn’t human, but a distorted voice. They weren’t just standing there - they were multiplying.

Multiplying, standing there with their look of lazy arrogance, their proud faces as they spit out every insult, their deafening stares which made my heart beat pump violently against my chest - begging me to run. Their faces twisted distortedly, unable to be perceived as ‘normal’, their eyes halfway down their face, their mouth twisting into a devilish grin. A grin I spent 3 years running from. One of them stepped forward, their movements jerky and unpredictable limbs snapping into place like a puppet on tangled strings. It held a fragment of a memory - a social media post mocking my attempts to die, another, held voice messages shouting insults down my ears as I laid in a hospital bed.

“Still scared of us?” the entity hissed, the voice layering over itself in a dissonant harmony. It didn't need to name me. It knew my labels. It knew the "problems" they had invented for me. It was the physical manifestation of every time I had been told my existence was a inconvience. I didn’t need to be reminded again, for as the words were engraved in my mind, echoing in every day’s daydream.

The leader of the pack—the one who always knew exactly where to twist the knife—stopped its jerky, staccato pacing. Its blank, smooth face suddenly rippled, the static smoothing out into a hauntingly familiar expression of cruel boredom.

"You're still stuck on it, aren't you?" it vibrated, the voice no longer dissonant, but clear, sharp, and unmistakably his.
It reached out, not to strike, but to touch the yellow wallpaper. Where its fingers pressed, the damp paper didn't just tear; it dissolved into the memory of a summer day. The stale, recycled air of the Backrooms was suddenly replaced by the suffocating, humid heat of July 9th 2023.

I wasn’t in the Backrooms anymore. I was back there.

the wall turned into the grey concrete of that day. The artificial hum of the lights grew distorted, pitch-shifting until it became the sound of the world as it was on July 9th: the muffled street noise, the specific, sharp cadence of their voices, the way the sunlight hit the pavement in a way that felt like it was burning me. It was three against one, I had already told Freya I didn’t want them around my house, but she persisted.

They weren't moving with the jerky, unnatural gait of the entities anymore. They were fluid, relaxed, and entirely too human in their cruelty. The leader stood slightly ahead, his posture a masterclass in performative apathy. He didn't look like a monster; he looked like a boy who had never once considered the weight of his own existence, and he was clearly bored by the prospect of dismantling mine.

The heat of the memory was suffocating. I could feel the phantom pressure of his hand on my waist - the memory of my resistance, and him just effortlessly pushing my hand away for an entry.

“I don’t want to kiss you, we don’t know eachother much" I mumbled, his response, a grey cloud blown into my eye. He hissed, the entity’s face now a perfect, terrifying replica of ‘his’ face. "You didn't try hard enough to fight me off. You basically let me." But this time, the Backrooms flickered. The yellow wallpaper didn't just peel; it shredded. The camera lenses on the wall—the ones that had been watching my every move—suddenly shattered, the glass spraying out like diamonds. I wasn't a survivor, I was a victim. I never survived.

But as the boy’s voice began to loop, the sound distorted. It slowed. It warped. It dragged, stretching into a heavy, rhythmic thudding.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

It wasn't a heartbeat anymore. It was the rhythmic, heavy clatter of tactical boots on linoleum.

The yellow wallpaper began to bruise a colour of siren red and blue - mocking me, colours that pose a facade of safety, but instead maintain an authoritative injustice. The concrete walls didn't just transform; they wept. The grey, damp surfaces bled into the stark white of a hospital room, yet the lighting remained the sickly, buzzing yellow of the Backrooms, a grotesque fusion of two different nightmares.

A shadow emerged from the corner of my eye, but it wasn't the boy. It was a silhouette dressed in the rigid, unyielding lines of a uniform—the high-collared jacket, the radio clipped to the shoulder, the reflective surfaces of a badge that caught the flickering fluorescent light and turned it into a cold, clinical glare.

The officer stood in the doorway, his silhouette blocking out the only exit. His uniform was too sharp, his presence too heavy for the thin, fragile space. He didn’t just occupy the room; he colonised it.

He didn't see a patient. He didn't see a person who had been broken by someone else.

He leaned down, his face a landscape of absolute, calculated disdain. The flickering fluorescent lights overhead caught the metal of his badge, turning it into a serrated blade that seemed to slice through the air every time he moved.

“There are actual sick kids in this hospital.” He spat.

The words weren't spoken; they were dropped like lead weights, crushing the air out of my lungs. His face began to stretch, the skin pulling tight over bone, his eyes retreating into deep, shadow-filled sockets that reflected nothing but an icy, bureaucratic void. The more he screamed, the more the room physically distorted around him—the ceiling tiles began to drop, hanging by frayed wires like broken limbs, while the walls pulsed with the rhythmic flash of red and blue lights that never actually brought help.

“You’re wasting resources.” He barked, as if he was talking to a criminal. His voice echoed, amplifying until it sounded like it was coming from every corner of the walls, trapping me.

I looked toward the corner, hoping for a witness, hoping for anyone to step in, but there was only her. She stood in the periphery, a ghost of a bystander, watching with that same cold, inert stillness. She didn't blink. She didn't move. She was the silent witness who validated his cruelty by simply allowing it to exist.

I ran out the room - a pathetic attempt at an escape, but I had given up. He lunged after me, his hand a clamp of cold steel around my upper arm. The grip wasn't just bruising; it was an anchor, dragging me backward, erasing the distance I had fought to put between us.

He didn’t pull me back to the hospital room.

The floor beneath us didn't just end; it collapsed into shadow. The smell of hospital antiseptic—that sharp, clinical lie—vanished, replaced by the suffocating, stale scent of dust and ancient, dry wood.

The walls of the hospital room didn't just recede; they rotted away into nothingness. The sirens, the white tiles, the clinical glare—it all dissolved into a cavernous, empty dark. The only light left was a single, sickly pool of yellow illumination, hanging from a fraying wire in the center of the void.

And there, swinging gently in the draft of an unseen window, was the rope.

The rope was knotted with precision, a final fantasy of control. It hanged there mockingly, underneath a crooked wooden chair begging to be stepped on. It was the endpoint of the labels, the quiet resignation of the girl who had spent years trying to disappear into the wallpaper.

The noose swayed, a rhythmic, hypnotic movement that mirrored the hum of the fluorescent lights I had left behind. It didn't just hang there; it invited me. It promised an end to the interrogation, an end to the sirens, an end to the feeling of being an inconvenience to a world that had already decided I didn't exist.

After everything that had happened, I didn’t feel real anymore. I belonged forever in the Backrooms, I belonged to not exist.

I stepped closer. The floorboards groaned, not under my weight, but under the collective history of everyone who had been brought to this edge. I wasn't just standing in a room; I was standing in the center of the trap they had meticulously laid for me.

The entity from the hallway—that distorted, glitching version of myself—appeared in the corner of my vision. It didn't have a face, but I could feel its gaze. It was waiting for me to step up, to accept the form that the world had decided for me. It wanted me to vanish into the wallpaper, to become the final piece of the rot, to surrender the 'problem' of my existence once and for all.

As I stepped onto the chair, the shadows began to solidify, sealing the exit, sealing my fate.

The wood groaned once, a sharp, splintering crack that echoed like a gavel, and as the chair skidded across the floor into the abyss, the silence of the rope finally drowned out the noise of the world.

My hands felt shallow as the blood pumping around my body violently stopped, my skin turning a ghostly white. The phantom pressure on my waist from that July day, the lingering sting of the officer’s grip, the heat of the pavement—it all dissolved into the dark. I wasn't fighting anymore. I wasn't trying to exist, or trying to be heard, or trying to prove that I was human. I was simply dissolving into the architecture of the void, a final, permanent exit from a reality that had never been designed to hold me.

As the last flickering of my consciousness bled out, the yellow glow of the Backrooms faded to black, leaving only the silence, a unbreaking silence that finally, finally allowed me to disappear.

And there, on a wall that no one would ever walk past, a single missing person poster curled at the corners; the face in the photograph, once mine, had already smoothed over into a featureless, distorted smudge, the ink of my name bleeding into the damp wallpaper until I was nothing more than a forgotten detail in a system that keeps everything it kills.

I slammed my foot down, saluting my major - the rustle of my uniform aching as I sharply raised my hand.

That was 24 hours ago. 24 hours ago, before I entered the battlefield.

My hand clutched onto my pistol, a destructor of life - and yet my hands were capable of pulling the trigger. Across the land, I saw them, enemies blurred into the background. The people I was supposed to kill, it was different, because these people weren’t citizens of a defiant country, and rather monsters of a state, sent to destroy me, piece by piece.

They stood there, they hunted in groups - as most predators do. Their smiles were mocking, twisted muscles of glory that they achieved from torturing, they enjoyed power, but the urge for power becomes obsessive, if your used to power, you’ll kill for it. They threatened me, said they’d hunt me, I waited,waited, and waited until I was paranoid, every corner was an unpredictable, suffocating, dark force.Whispers of my voice surrounded me, mumbling, whispers, and murmurs begging that they would hurt me, but now I was the one with the trigger. I pressed the cold metal against their skull, an action that should grant power and yet I was the one being strangled with fear. They smirked at me, because they knew I wouldn’t pull the trigger, they were used to having power, control, and influence - and so they stripped me of all mine.

I shoved past them, looking a the enemy behind.

He stood there, a smirk on his face, daring me to come closer despite my initial instinct to run. Dirt embedded under his fingernails and a cigarette in his hand - his brown hair was unkept, he was slouched, and everything undesirable in a person, he embodied. Yet I was forced to approach him, to hold my gun to his head, what posed itself as a moment of power, felt like a gut wrenching cascade of fear. I said no three times, and yet he carried on, slipping his claws into my leggings. I said no, and yet he wrapped his arm around me keeping me down. I said no, and his hands danced around my stomach, as if taunting me, daring me to run but I was frozen, frozen with fear. I held the gun to his head, pushing it against his temple, and he was anything but scared. The sharp metal pressed against his head, giving me the power, and yet he smirked. A smirk that held a thousand taunts,mocks, and laughs - killing him wouldn’t change a thing, because his claws left scars in my stomach, his actions left knife wounds, and suddenly the 'enemy' across the field seemed like a ghost compared to the demon in my presence. Humans were trained for war, for tactics, and for glory—but no manual had taught me how to breathe when the air itself felt like it belonged to him.

I walked past him, my feet dragging behind me as I held onto the gun - my hands trembled, begging me to stop walking and turn back.

I treaded through the trenches, mud clutching aggressively at my boots while storms shouted from above, daring me to keep moving. I looked up and the world flickered. The trenches became lockers; the thunder became the slamming of metal doors.
There they were—three girls I once called friends. They didn’t need guns, but rather teeth. Their smirks remained unmoved, carved into their faces like trophies. Even in the sudden, ringing silence of the hallway, I could hear them. I heard every jagged whisper, every jagged laugh, echoing off the linoleum. They lingered in the corridors like hyenas, shoulders hunched, jaws clenching and dribbling as they scented my fear.

I had done nothing wrong. Every guilty person says that, but I had the proof, the "not guilty" verdict—and yet, it didn't matter. Hyenas don't hunt for food; they hunt for the thrill of the snap. They fed on the power that was absent in their lives outside these walls, growing on my isolation. I knew their secrets—the rot behind their own front doors—yet silence held me in a chokehold. I wasn't like them. I couldn't bite back.

But here I am again, pressing the cold metal to their foreheads. My finger hung, shaking, suffocating over the trigger. This was the moment I was supposed to be in control, and yet, they still smirked. They looked at the barrel and saw a toy. They had already taken everything from me; I had nothing left to threaten them with.

I lowered my gun, and continued walking - I had to save the last bullet. Their laughter followed me, a mockery of my surrender - a powerful weapon in itself bouncing off of the battlefield and into my ears.

Ahead, there she was. I stared at her - emotions shot trenching waves through my body, anger, sadness, and pity. She swore to protect me, as a mother should, and yet she watched. She was a bystander, not a knight with a shield and sword. She watched as I got broken down, piece by piece. She accused me of liking what happened, saying I enjoyed being touched - having claws dug into me, taking the little control I had. How could somebody enjoy that? She watched me get shouted at by a police officer, for hours. She didn’t step in once, even as tears were streaming down my face and I was begging him to stop. She stood there, and she is still standing there. She made me feel crazy, and here I am now, crazy, holding a gun to her head. I watched as she smirked, as tears fell down my face, it hurt. She never understood anything, she never understood how she hurt me, even if she was in the same position.

We were related in many ways than one, and yet we were so different. She could never understand. I lowered the gun as tears fell, laughing at my fear. The gun in my hand wasn’t an object of power, but an object of waste - an illusion making believe I ever any had sense of control.

I continuing walking. My movements heavy, tired, and overwhelming. I didn’t want to move anymore.

I didn’t bother looking up as I heard his voice, his uniform. A smirk plastered on his face as he dragged me back into the patient room by my arm - firm grip reminding me of his control, and my lack of. His uniform was supposed to be held as a symbolise of trust, protection, and even support - and yet that was an illusion of erosion. He screamed at me for hours, even as I was crying my eyes out, calling me stupid, and my mum just stood there, and watched. A bystander, who stole the role as my mother. I cried, mascara running down my face, my contacts falling out, and she watched. Watched, as her daughter got destroyed by a monster displayed in a police uniform.

My hands shook as I held the sharp metal to his skull, his laughter echoed in my ears. Tears escaped my eyes, I never cry. I stared at him, my whole body shaking, my breathing uneven. In the presence of danger your instincts tell you to run, but I tried that already.

I lowered the gun.

I continued walking, a fountain pushing its water out of my eyes, which were tired, so tired.

I got to the end of the battlefield, and I woke up, sprawled out in my bed. A place that alluded itself as a place of safety, yet I was killed in this room. I sat up and looked in the corner, her. She stood there - her eyes absent and instead replaced with void holes, like they’d been ripped out. She smirked at me, a smirk I knew all too well. She watched me, mocked me, and fed on my fear. Isn’t that what predators do? She told me to do bad things, she told me secrets, she was angry, and so was I. I walked to the bathroom, throwing open the door. I stared in the mirror - who was I? I couldn’t feel my body, or feel anything for that matter. I was floating, drowning, and falling. She followed me into the bathroom whispering, muttering, and mumbling.. but the only words that echoed were, “Do it”.

I held the trigger to my head as I stared at myself. For once, I wasn’t scared, i felt euphoric. There’s no point killing the executioner, but rather the imitator.

I was the reason all the bad things happened. I wanted my control back. I pulled the trigger, watching it like a hawk as it shot into my head splattering blood all over the bathroom walls, blue blood.

And I dropped.

I shivered as the sharp metal came in contact with my skull. It grazed against the bone, mocking my vulnerability—once again. I wasn’t scared… for the first time, I had been here before, a different weapon, but I had been here. A weapon of fear, which was much stronger than a piece of metal directly conjured to manufacture an ending to one’s life. I wasn’t scared though, because I had been here before.

As the metal pressed further in my soul, I was back there again. January 16th 2023. I was put in a group chat, builled, mocked, and attacked for 5 hours. Threats suffocated me, their words wrapping around my throat. I called a Bear, and he lumbered in, determined to shield me.he got mocked. The Bear brought his Rabbit for reinforcements, yet the Rabbit had a different allegiance. The Rabbit didn't fight. It simply tilted its head and mirrored the monsters' smiles, the nestling easily into the monsters' den, whispering kindnesses to them while they tore the last pieces from the fawn. I cried, and everything closed in on me, I wanted that bear to protect me, and he couldn’t. I died that day.

again,July 9th 2023.His claws mockingly treading down my leggings, his twisted fingers grazing my stomach. I had said no, but he was a monster, He talked in growls, snarls, and mutters—his communication an echo of wanted control. Control is what holds a gun towards a person’s head, that day that monster took all my control. I got out with my limbs detached, I didn’t feel real anymore. I walked into the bathroom, during the monster's attack, and the walls closed in on me, attacking me like the monster awaiting in my bedroom, eager to destroy its prey. Tears fell down my face. I wanted help. Nobody was there, nobody was there to hurt this monster. This monster was too strong, too hungry for a prey, for a prey that was scared to run,and so he preyed on me. His claws digged into my stomach. A shadow of his touch left claw marks, a remembrance of his feasting, I died that day.

Again,September 2023. I told somebody I trusted, a butterfly. This butterfly tried to help, but he didn’t. He let the monsters destroy me, and he watched. I kept coming back because the butterfly reminded me of the bear, he said things I wanted the bear to say. He comforted me, but he made me feel inconvenient, like the monsters preying on me were just having fun. Almost as if everyday they weren’t ripping me apart, feasting on a fawn that was too scared to fight. I told this butterfly, about the monster that destroyed me, and he was proud of me for finding my voice. I was happy I made the butterfly proud, but the butterfly had to tell the deer. The deer wasn’t happy, she told the fawn it was her fault, her fault for letting the monster in her house, and that she must’ve liked been ripped apart by the monster. I died that day.

I was back there again, October 5th 2023. Disillusioned monsters approached my table, monsters that could blend in, take a form of a friend and rip you apart. They accused me of things I hadn’t done, they accused me of hurting them, they accused me of lying. They were my best friends, but they were monsters. I felt a sense of pity for these monsters, I wanted to prey on them like they did to me, i had a lot of ways to hurt them, but i felt pity. Monsters don’t feel pity, but they feel a need for control, and so I gave them that. I allowed these monsters to prey on me, to destroy me, and so they did. I wished that these monsters would hurt me physically, maybe that would provide sense of relief, a sense of control, but for the utmost.. I wanted them too. I wanted them to hurt me, because everyday I could hear them in my head taunting me, torturing me, terrorising me. If they wasn’t going to hurt me, I would hurt myself. These monsters were inside of me. I died that day.

Again, 9th july 2024, I was back there. I sat there on the grass with my hoodie up, waiting..waiting..waiting. A dog was there for me, a dog which I didn’t want to leave in the dark. He wanted to help me, but how are you supposed to help somebody that’s already dead? My phone was on 13% and it was almost time. But The monsters caught up to me before the dog did, they asked me if I was okay.. which was a stupid question. I told them to go away, and that I didn’t like them.. that made the monsters angry. I didn’t like them because I was scared, I had met monsters before and these monsters had more control than any. They grabbed me, they thought I was trying to escape but why would I try outrun a monster? Monsters are determined to get their prey, I had already tried running before. I told them to let go of me, and I laughed, but I was scared, I was trying to regain control.. to show the monsters I wasn’t scared. They could smell my fear, and they fed off it. These monsters preyed in a group, they touched me on the stomach, where claw marks had been dug in before. I cried as I fought, I didn’t want to be touched again, but these monsters were strong. There were four monsters, five sets of claws digging into my flesh. I died that day.

Again, - I was sat next to a deer, this deer wanted to protect me, she loved me in all the wrong ways. She didn’t know how to love, not because she was a monster, but because she lacked control. That made her feel angry, she wanted to control, but most of all she wanted to protect her fawn. This deer claimed she was there when her fawn was being attacked by a monster, but she wasn’t. She claimed she tried to help, offering comfort, protection, and defense for the fawn. I wanted to wrap my hands around her neck, to show her what a lack of control felt like, to show her the fear I was paralysed by, but I couldn’t move. Instead, I shot daggers with my eyes, I wanted to hurt the deer. I felt so angry, I wanted the deer to protect me but she wasn’t there, she wasn’t there when her fawn needed her. I confronted the deer and I asked why she lied, I begged to know, to understand and she said she didn’t. She accused me of forgetting what happened the day that monster took my life. I didn’t hurt the deer, I cried, I begged her to tell me the truth. I wanted to hurt her, and she made me feel crazy. I died that day.

11th October 2024, I met a Gorilla. This gorilla wasn’t a monster, he got angry, but he wasn’t a monster. He was a knight underneath his gorilla form, he saved me from any monsters, no matter how big or small. He was my shield, and I felt safe with him. His smile was beautiful, a golden touch in a dark world. A art piece worth a billion, he was a carefully constructed god. He was my gorilla, and I was his fawn. He protected his fawn, he made her laugh even when the monsters still tore her apart, he helped her. As long as the gorilla was next to the fawn nothing could ever happen, no monster could prey on the fawn again.

So, as the sharp metal pressed into my skull, I opened my eyes, staring at the mirror infront of me. My finger hovering above the trigger, but as I thought of my gorilla, I felt safe. Monsters in the world didn’t matter because I had the beacon of safety that my gorilla provided, he was my saviour in this world full of torture, disdain, and an urge for control. I smile as I stared at the mirror, my finger trembling, then slowly bringing the gun down. The gorilla was my hope, and at the sight of him, every monster inside me scattered. I was his anchor, and he was my hope,for the first time since January 16th 2023, I hadn't died.

Her face was ghostly, the type of white you find on a sleek new white bedsheet cover, the type of white you never want to see on a person. Her eyes were sunken, as if being tied down to the bottom of an endless ocean, because bad feelings were endless… weren’t they? People say bad feelings don’t last forever, but they don’t ever leave, there’s no farewell, goodbye, or a long ceremony to remember their “temporary” existence, because bad feelings are forever…until you find a solution at least.

I walk toward, tracing my hands over her purple fingertips - her fingers felt cold as they danced over my hand. Her body was slumped, being held up by one thing. One thing was keeping her up, and this time it wasn’t her boyfriend.

I look up at her eyes - they stared back at me as if putting up one last fight. The forest green colour in her eyes was now a milky damp, expressing the lack of life. I wanted to help her but it was too late.

Her body no longer defied gravity, but instead condemned to be a passenger of it - a stale lie as if she was choosing to hang there, waiting for permission to let go, permission that would never come. The body no longer held the fight it used to, but rather, acceptance, a stance of a mediator - a stance of a person who had a final choice.

But there was no final choices in life - at least that’s how it’s meant to be, but this was different. This was a choice, her last choice, her last final grasp at control.

What once was a deafening scene, was silent. Her mind was finally silent, it had nothing to say except deterioration, much like the rest of her body, and the world still spun, because fortunately the world doesn’t stop spinning when somebody kills themself - surprise, right?

She was once a person, but now she’s hanging by a rope, fraying at the sides, begging to be cut, but it’s too late. It’s too late. She’s dead, but that comes with the perspective of initiating she was alive. Living and alive are two different conceptions - she wasn’t alive, she was barely walking, she was barely surviving.

I remember her laughing in her bedroom, a sound that filled the room like oozing light. Now, the only thing filling the room was the heavy, stagnant air. She hadn’t just stopped being alive; she had stopped being the person who inhabited those clothes, who laughed at those jokes, who existed in the space between the breaths that now she struggled to take.

The silence in the room wasn't empty - it was textured. It was a thick, velvet weight that pressed against my eardrums. Outside, the world continued its indifferent rotation. A car horn blared in the distance, a sharp, jarring sound that felt like a violation of the quiet, yet she didn't flinch. She was beyond the reach of the city, beyond the reach of the noise, she was beyond the reach of anybody now - a twisted sense of peace.

She was beyond reach, but she was there. She was there, hanging lifelessly,

and I envied her.

I envied her success in death, her success on avoiding the guilty thoughts of leaving everybody behind, but who really was there? I envied how she left this earth, how her mind stopped spinning, stopped thinking, stopped urging to hurt.

I envied her.

She was a girlfriend, a student, a patient, and now most importantly…

She’s dead.

Her face was ghostly, the type of white you find on a sleek new white bedsheet cover, the type of white you never want to see on a person. Her eyes were sunken, as if being tied down to the bottom of an endless ocean, because bad feelings were endless… weren’t they? People say bad feelings don’t last forever, but they don’t ever leave, there’s no farewell, goodbye, or a long ceremony to remember their “temporary” existence, because bad feelings are forever…until you find a solution at least.

I walk toward, tracing my hands over her purple fingertips - her fingers felt cold as they danced over my hand. Her body was slumped, being held up by one thing. One thing was keeping her up, and this time it wasn’t her boyfriend.

I look up at her eyes - they stared back at me as if putting up one last fight. The forest green colour in her eyes was now a milky damp, expressing the lack of life. I wanted to help her but it was too late.

Her body no longer defied gravity, but instead condemned to be a passenger of it - a stale lie as if she was choosing to hang there, waiting for permission to let go, permission that would never come. The body no longer held the fight it used to, but rather, acceptance, a stance of a mediator - a stance of a person who had a final choice.

But there was no final choices in life - at least that’s how it’s meant to be, but this was different. This was a choice, her last choice, her last final grasp at control.

What once was a deafening scene, was silent. Her mind was finally silent, it had nothing to say except deterioration, much like the rest of her body, and the world still spun, because fortunately the world doesn’t stop spinning when somebody kills themself - surprise, right?

She was once a person, but now she’s hanging by a rope, fraying at the sides, begging to be cut, but it’s too late. It’s too late. She’s dead, but that comes with the perspective of initiating she was alive. Living and alive are two different conceptions - she wasn’t alive, she was barely walking, she was barely surviving.

I remember her laughing in her bedroom, a sound that filled the room like oozing light. Now, the only thing filling the room was the heavy, stagnant air. She hadn’t just stopped being alive; she had stopped being the person who inhabited those clothes, who laughed at those jokes, who existed in the space between the breaths that now she struggled to take.

The silence in the room wasn't empty - it was textured. It was a thick, velvet weight that pressed against my eardrums. Outside, the world continued its indifferent rotation. A car horn blared in the distance, a sharp, jarring sound that felt like a violation of the quiet, yet she didn't flinch. She was beyond the reach of the city, beyond the reach of the noise, she was beyond the reach of anybody now - a twisted sense of peace.

She was beyond reach, but she was there. She was there, hanging lifelessly,

and I envied her.

I envied her success in death, her success on avoiding the guilty thoughts of leaving everybody behind, but who really was there? I envied how she left this earth, how her mind stopped spinning, stopped thinking, stopped urging to hurt.

I envied her.

She was a girlfriend, a student, a patient, and now most importantly…

She’s dead.