Scream

Another dark short story/narrative.

You close your eyes.

Shut it out.

Out, out, OUT!

But you still see it. That face. It’s a woman--she screams, but her eyes are full of rage and madness. It scares you because she is screaming at you. It’s your fault, again. Your mistake, your error. It makes you want to crawl into a small hole and disappear from the world.

But still yet, she screams as you.

Why? she demands. Why can you not do it?

You tell her that you just can’t. That it’s probably easy for her because she is strong, but you cannot. Presumably because you are weak, as she tells you.

Easy! Just get your stuff together and do it again! Until you get it right!

Again, again, again, again, again, until the word loses its meaning.

Never, ever good enough. Never will be, you are convinced.

You want to scream at her to shut up, to get out of your life because she unravels you slowly until you are simply strands of you, rather than the whole version you used to know so well.

But if you scream, she will torture you further, twisting you and warping you until up becomes down, and left becomes right.

So you shut your mouth.

You learn to hold it in, even if it shreds you from the inside.

Even if your heart physically aches from it.

Even if you are crying buckets.

No expression. None, or else you give her the satisfaction that she has won.

Some old, buried part of you wants to defy her. Wants to push back, but most of you has given up.

You see it again; that flash of insanity.

It is a girl, you realize, not a woman. But she will not go away. You run the the bathroom and scream silently, trying to get her out.

Out, out OUT! Shaking, you stare into the mirror at yourself and the vision only intensifies.

Why?

Because she is you, you realize.

You are the girl in your mind, the one terrorizing yourself.