The Terrible Awful. Part 1

CASSANDRA

There comes a point at which the hallucinations just become another thing to get used to.

The walls are thin. The sheets have gotten itchy. There's an inhuman form lying next to you in bed. You really ought to check the mail.

I'm not going to pretend it's pleasant. I've never quite gotten used to the one where I wake up in a pool of what I guess is supposed to be my blood? I don't think I have that much blood in me. It's not something you look forward to.

There comes a point though where you see certain things enough that you can say, with a straight face, "Oh! Good morning, terrifying shadow-tar-rapist! It's been a bit, hasn't it? You just going to chill on the bed? Got it. I'm going to go put on some tea. Maybe you could not be here when I get back." It even gets to a point where you can think, "Oh, hey there, terrifying shadow-tar-rapist! I didn't know you knew where my office was! If you're just going to hang out there under my desk, I'm going to keep collating like nothing is going on."

It's not like they're going to touch me.

The first couple of times, when they showed up in my dreams, they did, or at least one of them did. You can't get them off of you once they put a hand on you. They stick to you, and you can feel the tar coating your skin for at least all of the next day. The harder you fight, the worse it gets.

They're everywhere too. I mean, I can't always see them, but the beauty of the delusion is that they're there even when I'm not looking at them. There are millions of them behind every wall and corner or standing behind me, ready to spring away the moment that I turn my head. The worst one I think was when I was looking at my lover's face and realized that one was lurking under her skin.

Now I live alone. They don't have anyone else to bother when they show up unannounced like this. They don't bother me anymore. They stopped being scary a long time ago.

I'd wanted out. I'd tried to suicide one too many times and failed one too many times for it to be worth considering again, because people had started to pay attention to where I was in relation to the cordage.

But I had another way  out. I had a bargaining chip. I wasn't young enough to sell my body to men anymore, or so I thought at the time, but that only limited my options without depleting them entirely. After all, something that walks like a man and seems to have a man's desires might have a man's weaknesses.

So I waited.

I was finished. I was ready to go. I didn't belong here. I was too big for this world, and I was too broken for its people. I was different, warped, twisted, and I needed, needed to know that all of that added up to more than being a freak or a waste. I needed to know that I was meant for something bigger. I needed to know that I was special.

I waited all night for it to come. I waited all night and knew that if it would take me, I would do what it wanted me to do. I would do what it wanted if I could be gone.

But it didn't come that night. It didn't come any night afterwards. I saw it at one point and stared at it. Even then, I would've wrapped myself in tar and shadow and disappeared if it had come to me, but it just looked at me out of a blank expanse of darkness.

They don't talk. Not anymore at least. They used to say my name and whisper to me about death and escape, but they had their chance and didn't take it. Maybe they never will take it if you offer it to them. Maybe they're just there to make you miserable, not to do anything about anything at all.

It was waiting in my car after work the day that it had been in my cubicle. I didn't care. They didn't bother me anymore. I was a little unnerved though, I must admit, at what had been a new wrinkle in this particular delusion. A stapler had fallen off of my desk, and when I had looked down it had almost looked like it had some sort of residue on it. Something black. But I dismissed it, like I dismissed the blood that pooled over my mattress or the eyes that stared at me from dark alleys. I pretended not to hear the dark whispers from the bushes that had been planted by my apartment, and eventually it went away. Eventually each one went away, and the terrifying shadow-tar-rapist would also go away, someday, at least for a little bit.

I just needed to adjust my medication, or get some insurance so that I could at get back on my medication. I just needed to breathe and ignore it, and there was a sticky warmth on my exposed shoulder.

As I looked into the back seat of the car, it was sitting there. It was staring at me with it's burning, red eyes. It had reached an oozing, swirling arm of shadow up to me and had encased my arm in cloying darkness.

In the hollow plane of its swirling black face, directly beneath the twin flames that had yet to move from my face, a tooth-filled chasm wrenched open, too wide and too full and too horrible for me to think or breathe or know that it wasn't real. A dark sound bubbled out from inside the gaping maw, grating against my skin and tearing into my ears. I would've done anything in that moment for it to be gone. I would do anything to make this terrible awful thing go away, but I couldn't stop thinking until it culminated my terror into one concrete direction.

"Drive."