The Echoes. I can’t recall the first time I heard…
By: Morgan Gleaton
Tags: Voices, Mental, Different, Difference, Mind

I can’t recall the first time I heard them. Maybe I was born with this…difference? A gift? A curse? Something that separates you from the crowd, but not in a good way. Not in the way that people would call you special or interesting. The kind of separate that results in lonely lunches and a lack of inside jokes.

I was in grade school when I first realized the other children weren’t like me. I envied them and hated them for what they didn’t have. My childhood was spent being dragged from one white room to the next. Doctors and psychiatrists did their best to diagnose my “problem” and my parents ate up every single word they were fed. I was crazy. I was schizophrenic. I was faking. I had an overactive imagination. I would grow out of it. After several years of hearing this I guess they got bored and just decided it would be easier to pretend I was like the other kids. You know, normal and not hearing things. For the most part, I’ve managed just fine. I finished high school with decent grades and found a job at a little used bookstore. It isn’t my dream job, but it’s generally pretty quiet, which is nice.

At first the voices were soft, a whisper you could only hear if you concentrated on it. As hard as I concentrated, I could never quite figure out what they were saying to me. Like a foreign language it was nothing more than garbled syllables strung together. I could make out words, but they had no meaning, they weren’t concrete. I’ve spent many years of my life believing I was hearing the thoughts of those around me. Or maybe it was the echoes left from worlds before us. Whatever I was hearing, I was the only one hearing it.

Lately they’ve become louder and louder, consuming my existence. Two days ago was when it started to become unbearable.

My day started off like any typical Thursday. I woke up at 7am, took a shower, ate toast smeared with peanut butter, got ready, brushed my teeth, and headed off to work. My shift was about halfway through when the noise started to get in the way of me working.

“You alright there Emmett?” Ms. Betsy, the owner, a gentle old woman asked me.

I was clutching one of the bookshelves with enough pressure to turn my knuckles white.

“Oh, yes ma’am. Just felt a little…” I relaxed my grip. “My head just isn’t feeling all that great.”

“Well how ‘bout you just head on home?”

“No, it’s alright I’ll be fine till my shift ends.” Each word felt forced.

“I can manage without you. It’s not like we’re even busy on Thursdays, I’ll be happy to see three more faces before close.” She said with a smile.

I felt bad leaving her, but the voices had gotten so loud I couldn’t focus enough on anything to be of use anyways.

“Thank you, Ms. B., I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Take care hun.”

The drive home I was hardly aware of what I was doing. When I pulled in, the driveway was empty, which meant both of my parents were still at work and I had the house to myself. They would have had more kids if it weren’t for the way I turned out. I might would have a sibling or two, but by the time they were ready for another one I had already been to doctors and specialists and they were mentally drained.

I pressed my forehead against the steering wheel as I tried to figure out what was going on with my head. I could call my mother, but I know what she’ll say. She’ll tell me it’s because I’m not sleeping enough or that I’m exaggerating and need to understand she has more important things going on than to worry about the imaginary sounds in my head. Dad would just advise me to take a nap and “talk to your mom.”

My hand reached to undo the seat belt, but it wasn’t buckled. Did I drive all the way home unbuckled? Or do I just not remember doing it after I got home? I climbed out the car and made my way up the front steps. I fumbled with the keys before finding the correct one to unlock the door. The noise was like being in a crowded mall. I could hear everything, but I couldn’t quite tell what they were saying.

I locked the door behind me and headed to the kitchen. I pulled a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water from the tap. The facet reflected back a distorted version of my plain features. I raise the glass to my lips and notice my violent shaking hands. Sleep, that’s what I need. That’ll help. I placed my drink on our kitchen table, decorated with condensation circles from years of not using coasters.

I kicked my dirty sneakers off as I made my way to bed. The beige carpet was littered with dirty clothes and water bottles as always, yet somehow it felt so unfamiliar. I contemplated changing out of my sweater and jeans, but right now my only concern was silencing these voices, or at least getting them to quiet down. I pulled my curtains together, blocking out the harsh sunlight, then buried myself in the mountain of blankets on my bed. Surely sleep would offer some comfort. I tucked my head into the mountain, hiding from whatever lurked in my mind.

I don’t know how much time passed, only that I couldn’t fall asleep. I got up to go find something to help. The journey down the hallway seemed to go on for a mile. A wave of dizziness crashed over me as new voices explored my thoughts. I searched through the kitchen cabinets and drawers until I found the bottle of Nyquil. I struggled with the cap for a moment before I wrestled it open. As I turned it up, drinking directly from the bottle, the voices I could name as my own thoughts warned me against it. I didn’t listen. I retreated into my mountain and waited for the relief of sleep to silence the conversations in my head.

It was illogical for my ears to hurt when I knew this was all in my head, yet somehow my eardrums pulsed to the rhythm of the chaos in my mind. This was too much. Maybe I should call my parents. Shouldn’t they be home soon? What time was it anyway? How long have I been in bed? The sun was coming through my window from a new angle, I must have been laying here for at least a few hours. An invisible vise was clamped on my head, causing my thoughts to mush together. Slate blue walls spun around me as I sat up, no doubt from the cold medicine I drank like cheap whiskey.

I slid out of bed and onto my floor. I sat with my hands pressed firmly against my ears, but it didn’t help in the slightest. I wanted it to stop. I needed it to. I could feel myself becoming something else. I wasn’t me. Whatever was in my head was taking control. It was like I had been carrying around something all my life and it was reading to step forward into the light. I was losing myself to my mind. I was going to be sick.

I drug myself from the bedroom floor to the bathroom. Seven feet at the most, but now felt light years away. I gripped the edge of the counter and used it to pull myself to a slouching stance, half held up by the sink. The face in front of me I swear I’ve never seen before. It’s eyes were being sucked into it’s skull. It’s skin was a nauseating grey with lips that stretched across rotting teeth. I stumbled back into the wall, repulsed by what was in front of me. I leaned forward. Time lagged between me and my mirror. The thing staring back at me copied my every move, but a fraction of a second slower. I raised my left arm slowly and studied my reflection. Then did the same thing with my right arm. I smiled with my reflection, but it was off, too wide. The muscles in my face relaxed. Panic spread through every atom of my existence as the thing in the mirror continued to smile, if you could even call that exposure of teeth a smile. A sharp exhale of breath escaped my lips as my hand clasped over my mouth. The thing in front of me didn’t move, it stood still and watching, like horrifying art.

I wanted to run, I wanted to scream, but my entire body was paralyzed with fear. Maybe they were right, maybe I am crazy. There’s no other way to explain whatever is happening to me. What was once an echo in the back of my mind was now real. It now flooded the room with such force you could physically feel it. My brain stopped working. My heart went into overdrive. I could almost hear it over them. What even was them? Terror filled my stomach and threatened to come up my throat.

The atrocity in front of me leaned forward, craning its awful neck as if to observe me better. The eyes, were arguably the worst of it all. Never blinking, void of any human emotion, just as lifeless as the dirty mirror between them and me. I wanted to close my own eyes, but they refused. Everything that was my own felt foreign. My eyes, my lips, my fingers, the heart that was tempting to crack my ribs, none of it belonged to me, only to the demon in front of it all.

Spindly fingers reached out towards me with the pace of a Sunday stroll. A shiver rolled through my body as I realized the mirror was no longer a barrier between our two worlds. Long jagged nails met the laminate counter top with an unsettling thud. I couldn’t force my body to move, so I had no choice but to watch as the rest of its body climbed from the glass and onto my counter with movements so slow it was almost dance-like. Its arms and legs were disproportionate, too long and thin, like somehow it had been stretched out.

My mouth tried to produce a scream, but only air escaped my trebling lips. The monster or demon or whatever title you wish to give the abomination in front of me reached forward as if to caress my face. There was a haunting gracefulness about the way it moved, slow and careful, like it had an infinite amount of time. Its fingers, colder than ice, grasped the side of my face. My legs went limp beneath me but I did not fall. I’ve been scared before, but nothing sized up to the all-consuming fear that filled my body now. Its numb eyes stared into the deepest parts of my mind, and then, with one swift movement, it was over.

For the first time in my life, all I could hear was silence.