Sobnack

I am possessed by a vicious demon; it never leaves my body, but it relents its hold from time to time. Whenever the demon takes over, I feel a tightening feeling in my chest and my heartbeat rises out of the blue without a reason. Whenever the demon takes hold, I am drained quickly of my energy.

I see and feel everything, but I have no control over my actions. It feels as if I am watching my body act through some virtual reality goggles. It is as if I am sitting in the passenger’s seat of the vehicle that is my body while the demonic entity is the driver beside me.

Most times I feel tired shortly after the demon takes hold, but whenever I attempt to rest the creature clutching at my soul saws the seeds of down into my mind, threatening to take my ability to sleep forever, thus rendering me awake for as long as it sees fit.

In every unpleasant situation, the demon whispers terrible things into my ears, begging to I release onto the world. It scratches and claws at my mind forcing me to tense up and get battle-ready, even if I’m just a bystander in the situation. Just the other day, on the bus, a drunken man got into an argument with a few older fellows. As the voices grew louder, so did the voice of the demon in my head; it was that of a roaring beast. The demon was pounding at the gates that lead to my conscious state.

I try my best to keep the animal locked behind those gates, but sometimes the bloodthirsty predator gets out and then everything moves at three hundred miles per hour, I lose control and someone gets hurt. Usually just emotionally because I snap at whoever is in sight.

Again, I try my best to maintain control of the beast, but it’s not a simple task, especially not since… That night…

The first time I knew there was something wrong with me was when I was serving in Grozny, years ago. I’ve seen battle before and I had dealt with the stresses of a combatant’s life but this, this was different. I knew something was off when I began feeling anxious at the sight of decaying corpses riddled with maggots and scavengers pecking at them. I know it might come off like I’m some psychopath, but you somewhat get used to those things if you get the displeasure of encountering them enough. Yes, it’s never easy, but it’s not exactly anxiety-inducing anymore. The feeling of anxiety wasn’t what made me think something was wrong, no, it was the fact that I couldn’t shake the feeling off hours after the exposure to the scene. That day I couldn’t stop and think straight; I was restless and worried the whole day without even know what I’m worried about.

That night, I kept seeing images of the decaying corpses over and over in my head, along with the shape of a medieval knight with what seemed like a lion’s head. I didn’t sleep much that night.

The next day, we were attacked at dawn, obviously, that didn’t do any good to my vulnerable state. Stressed to the point of losing focus in my vision; I had barely pulled through the day successfully with a constant pounding in my chest and a never-ending fear gnawing at my mind. At night the images of the decaying corpses had returned, this time with a deep booming voice repeatedly warning me it could be me.

These nightmares became a reoccurring theme whenever I went to sleep, leaving me unable to sleep properly until I left the military.

When I finally accepted that something was wrong with me, once I acknowledged the fact that I am overly stressed over nothing virtually all the time, I started drinking. That didn’t help, whenever I was out of it because of the alcohol, I’d get these flashes of various grotesquely mutilated corpses dancing before my eyes before disappearing as quickly as they appeared. Whenever one of these apparitions manifested, I could hear the moans of the dead, it was awful.

I cried occasionally because of these diabolical visions I had been experiencing.

Luckily some gut issues prevented me from descending the path of alcoholism.

Some nights, I would shift in my bed half asleep to notice what looked like a screaming decomposing human head; the sight would jolt me awake for the rest of the day, filling me to the brim with fear.

Luckily, my fianceé bears with me.

I don’t even know how she does it, not after what I did. One night, we were out at a local fare when a suddenly screaming echoed throughout the crowd. I noticed people running around in a panicked state. My heartbeat rose, my breathing became shallower, and I felt my muscles tense up.

My fianceé tried her best to keep me calm and to get me away from the ruckus, but that was too late; an older man with a droopy stare and a large knife ran straight at us.

My vision blurred around everything but this man.

My hearing died out; I was deaf to all but my heartbeat.

Everything stopped dead in its tracks around me.

There was one thought in my mind; I had to fight.

A sudden pulse of liquid rage coursed through my veins and I knocked the man down, wrestled the knife away from him and before I could slow down a deep, booming voice echoed hoarsely in the depths of my mind urging me to fight lest I end up like the corpses that haunt my psyche.

I spun the knife in my arm and slammed the handle into the face of the drunken man.

He was laughing.

So, I hit him again, and again and again and again and again, but no matter how many times I’ve hit him the laughing wouldn’t cease. Even when I could see that there was nothing but blood and pulp comprising broken shards of skull and brain matter where a human head had been once. The god-damned laughing wouldn’t stop.

I only stopped hitting when a few people pulled me off the man and tried to restrain me to the ground to calm me down.

Once I came to, the police were already at the scene; it turned out that the man was an Afghanistan vet gone off the rails. I wasn’t criminally charged as I killed the man in self-defense, not to mention how he killed nine people and wound another four in his rampage.

That didn’t help me, I mourned the man; I cried days and nights over the fact that I killed someone who had no business dying that day. I know, I know; he gave up his freedom when he gave in to his demons and went out on an alcohol-fueled murder spree but he did not deserve to have his life taken away. He wasn’t fine. I can relate to him.

After the incident, the demon relented for some time, but that wasn’t to last as a few weeks ago I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and noticed something off in the hallway mirror.

At first, I didn’t pay any mind to the oddity, dismissing it as my half-asleep mind playing tricks on me, but then, when I made my way back to my bedroom, I saw it, no, him; I saw the old man. He was standing there, with his face completely broken and battered into a red and white gooey mesh.

I stood there for a moment, staring at the mirror as terror seized my heart again.

The apparition waves at me from the window before fading back to my bewildered reflection.

My demon took over again; this time it was worse than ever, the grotesque image of the old man consumed nearly every thought of mine. I couldn’t sleep straight; every dream during every night I saw his face and heard that sickening laughter.

I remember jolting awake every night drenched in a cold sweat with my whole body trembling in uncontrollably.

Every reflection in every mirror was a glimpse into that shattered skull, every humanoid figure outside at night wore his macabre visage.

I couldn’t stay seated; I couldn’t do anything right.

I was getting mad at every little insignificant thing.

I couldn’t slow my mind down.

That was the new torture the demon possessing me forced me to endure, eventually, it was too much to bear. It got so bad I had finally snapped and had done the unthinkable.

I… I… I found myself digging the corpse of that man out of his grave just to make sure he was still dead, and even when I saw that he was still six feet under I couldn’t stop thinking it’s just a ruse on his part.

I was sure he was still alive and out to get me.

So, I took the body home with me, kept it in my basement… That was the only way I could make sure he wouldn’t hurt me… Kept him there till my fianceé noticed the smell…

Buried him in the backyard.

When he was in the basement, I was calm; I knew he was in check.

Now, the demon is making me doubt it again; I think he’s taking over again. I feel a tightening feeling in my chest and my heartbeat rises quickly, seemingly without a reason, right?

I know I'm not alright... But... But...

I feel terrible… Out of air… Hard to think… or type… buttons get blurry… Hands shaking… Room’s shaking…

Gotta check if the man escaped from his new grave.

Hope not.

God… help me, please…