Free

When you’re young, you don’t question what you see. Everything is real, from unicorns to peanut butterflies. Your parents may not see them, your imaginary friends, but you know the leprachauns were the ones who stole your socks and the big pink elephant that hides beneath the couch broke your mother’s favorite vase. Most people have one or two, you hear, but you have many. You’re never quite sure whether that’s good or bad.

There’s one, named Charlie, who plays out in the treehouse, swinging on a the rope that used to hold a tire. Another, Sally, jumps on the bed, her fiery hair leaving black scars on the ceiling as she shrieks with laughter. Jeffrey, who wears a tu-tu and walks around in your mother’s heels. Katie, who likes to make your father’s drills run when no one is looking. Lacey, who steals your dolls and toy cars and breaks you mother’s jewlery. Don, who lays about the couch drinking what you think is rootbeer and flicking through the TV channels late at night. Ricky, who likes to chat when your mother turns off the lights.

Ron, who sits at the foot of your bed and stares when you try to sleep. Jess, who wails out on the balcony every night. Michael, who pushed you down the stairs. John, who likes to bite and tug your hair when you leave the shower. Martin, who often plays with the kitchen knives.

Stanley, who hangs in the hallway, glaring at you as you walk to your room, his choked breaths heating the back of your neck. Maria, whose head drips read and sobs in a language you don’t understand. Nicholas, whose head’s on backwards and back’s lined with cuts and scars, chains still around his ankles.

You’re young, and you know they’re there. They never leave you alone. Always there, always watching, whispering or screaming in your ears. You have to hide your head at night, snug beneath your covers. You wait until the sun rises before you fall asleep.

You stop telling people about them, because they stop believing you - that is, if they ever had in the first place.

From five to fifteen, you’ve become too old to have imaginary friends. You’re too old to crawl into bed with your parents, too old to have a nightlight in the wall, too old to hug your stuffed bear close to your chest at night.

You never sleep, but the nightmare never stops. So you succumb.

You’re no longer scared of Stanley who hangs in the hallway or Martin who plays with knives. You comfort Jess who wails on the balcony and have staring contests with Ron at the end of your bed. When John bites you, you bite back, and now you are the one pushing Michael down the stairs. Maria still wails, though now you can speak to her, and together you both scream your worries at the top of your lungs.

Now Mother cries at night, when she thinks you cannot hear her. She wails away into her pillow, and you wonder what has happened. Father drinks, and Ron has taught you that it is not rootbeer but in fact alchohol you smell on his breath each time he pulls you close. His eyes grow wild, his voice harsher, and you believe he has started hitting Mother. Not that she doesn’t deserve it, you feel. For Mother has started hitting you, and you are sure Father is not far behind.

You’ve grown with the monsters in your closet and beneath your bed, formed with their whispers in your ears at night. You know death better than you know life, having lived on the precipice of it for as long as you remember.

You think of it now, as your mother weeps and your father screams. You think of it when they shove those rancid pills down your throat and tie you to the bed at night. You think of it when the doctors poke and prod at you like a frog to be disected.

You think of it when you sleep, you think of it when you wake. You think of it every moment of every day, and you wonder what it feels like, that sweet escape of death. You wonder what it tastes like, what it sounds like, how it might dance across your body when next it comes for you.

It is freeing, the ghosts tell you. A release. And you wonder if they’re right. How easy it would be, to drift away into nothingness. That freedom just within your grasp.

But you find yourself unable to reach for it. There’s too much to do, too much to see. And, God knows why, you still care for your parents. They are trapped here as much as you, unable to leave the confines of their own feable minds. They cannot see, cannot hear, cannot feel. To you they crash against their tiny cages, wild in the face of their captivity. If only there was a way to show them, a way to make them believe. To give them back the minds of the young.

And so you take the kitchen knife, and the gun in Father’s drawer. You crawl into their bed at night, marveling in their warmth while they are unaware. You think about those times, when you were young and happy, when Father pushed you in the tire and Mother showed you how to bake. You imagine their arms around you, loving you and oh so gentle.

You wonder what will happen to them, once you’ve freed them from this life. Will they go Beyond, or drift here like your ghosts? You do not know.

You kiss you mother’s forehead and your father’s cheek. As they stir, you cock the gun, the ghosts whispering in your ears. Do it, they say. Let them go.

And just like that, you set them free.