There is no safe place
No where to hide
No where that feels safe inside
There is no safe place
You can’t run away
When it’s your own mind that drives you insane
There is no safe place
When the panic penetrates your soul
When there is no where left to go
There is no safe place


They follow me everywhere, whatever they are. They whisper things in my ears; evil nasty things in the breathy voice that only belongs to dying men. They scare me; telling me to **** people for no reason, planting evil thoughts like that in my head, I hate them. They tell me to hurt myself badly; they tell me how much better the world would be without me. They told me once that I was insane. I questioned them, why would I be insane? You’re talking to the voices, they cackled at me. Only one thing came to mind in response to that, *******. Why do they have to be so evil, so scary? Are they the voices of the Devil? Is this like in a T.V. show when you have a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other? If it is, then where’s the angel’s voice? Maybe the devil already owns my soul, Maybe I sold it to him in a past life. Or maybe I’m just insane. Yeah…they are right. I am insane. I should be locked in an insane asylum somewhere and never let out. But the government banned those years ago…Guess that puts a damper on that idea.
Did I mention? They aren’t just voices. Oh no, no, no. They have shapes. They are people. Evil, malicious people. I call them the devil’s people. They only find me at night, after all the voices of dying men have gone to sleep. That’s when the people come. They come every night, whether they stay for a moment or remain long enough to move towards me, bringing forth the suffocating smell of sulfur and death. Sometimes they’re small, harmless. They took on the form of a baby once. He was lying on the floor one second and was gone the next. He hasn’t come back since. There are a lot of them that come once and never return, but some come again and again. There’s a man, a rather large man. I have never seen his face, only the shining knife in his hand. Sometimes he’ll move from my open door to my bed where he’ll lean over me, knife in hand, whispering, you’ve been a bad boy. A very, very bad boy. The knife will rise up, pausing in the air for suspense and plummet down towards my heart. But it always disappears just as it grazes my sweat-drenched skin. I can’t help but fear for my life when I see him. If these people or spirits or whatever are real, then I can’t figure out why they haven’t harmed me yet. But then again, they’re probably just hallucinations. The voices speak truth, at least some times.
The man’s presence is definitely the most threatening, but it’s not the most frightening. The little girl is the only one who has disturbed me so badly that I had to flee from my room. There is something about her that is just not right. She always appears kneeling on the floor, face held in hands, and sobbing heavily. She wears a white dress that flows around her as she shakes and her undoubtedly once golden curls hang lifelessly behind her shoulders, appearing more gray than golden. She never does anything but sit there on the floor crying. She cries so much that I have at times feared that water will seep through my floor and drip into whoever’s apartment is beneath mine. Her tiny hands always clutch her face, I’ve no idea what she looks like, and I’ve never seen her face. On her pudgy arms there are numerous bruises, cuts and scars. I thought at first they were self inflicted, but they were too numerous and the wounds seemed far too severe for a young child to have done. Perhaps she was abused. That would make more sense, but why anyone would ever want to harm a girl that was once so beautiful. I’ll never understand.
When I see her kneeling on my floor, it’s almost as if she radiates the extreme pain that she is forced to carry for all eternity. She ***** the life out of you; she makes everything seem so pointless, like no matter what you will end up battered and bruised just as she is. The sorrow she brings upon you is enough to make you jump out the window even if your life was going just fine, no not just fine, if your life was perfect, she would still make you jump. Every time I see her, it feels as if she takes a little more of me away. The fear, the depression is so intense that the feeling will never leave you. It may hide in your subconscious mind, but it will never ******* leave!

My apartment is a whole different world at night than it was during the day. During the day, all they could do was talk to me, make me go insane. (Even more so than I already am) But those are just voices. They can hurt sometimes, oh how they hurt you so bad sometimes. But pictures are worth a thousand words. The figures will scare the **** out of you. They could easily turn even the strongest of men into blithering idiots.
I was dreading whoever was coming to visit me tonight already as I splashed cold water onto my face. I could already tell that tonight was going to be hell. My day hadn’t gone well. The voices had been speaking to me constantly. They wouldn’t stop. They all spoke at once, yelling over each other, fighting for my attention. The one that was loudest was shrieking, Insanity! Insanity! You’re a mad man! Lock yourself in the closet before you ****…before you ****….My heart would take off at amazing speeds after those words, but I gave it no more consideration than the others received. That doesn’t mean it didn’t send chills down my spine though. It definitely did that.
Before you ****…The voice echoed once more in my mind as I wiped my face off with the towel. I immediately glanced at the mirror to see if maybe someone was standing behind me. I saw nothing but myself. I saw my grayish eyes staring right through me. I saw the heavy wrinkles and dark circles around my eyes. I haven’t slept a whole night through in years, no matter how many sleeping pills I take. They always come….No matter what.
No doubt about it, they would come soon. I climbed into my bed and wrapped the sheets around me. They smelled of freshly washed linen. They were soft on my skin and a comfort to my heart. It feels so much safer when you’re completely covered with pillows and blankets. Maybe if I fell asleep before they could get here I would be safe…Yeah then I’ll be safe. Just relax I told myself, relax and rest, the sun hasn’t even gone down yet. You’re safe. At least I am for now.

I woke up trembling from the cold. I was afraid I would be able to see my breath soon enough. I reached down towards my feet only to realize that all my sheets had fallen on the floor. That couldn’t be good. Goose bumps crept all over my body as I dared myself not to look down. But of course, curiosity got the better of me. That was when I saw her. She was kneeling on the floor cradling her head in her hands. I stared only long enough to see her shake violent and gasp for breath through her tears.
I couldn’t look any longer. I rolled over and faced the wall. My heart was going a mile a minute. I could feel the blood pulsing in my temples; I could hear it in my ears. I was shaking uncontrollably, not from the cold but from shear terror. If she would only just leave…Why does she have to torture me? Can I not sleep a single night in peace? Why me? Why me? Is there anywhere I’m safe? Anywhere I can sleep in peace? Undisturbed? That would be lovely. But I gotta be realistic here, it just isn’t gonna happen. Hasn’t happened since I was five years old.
Wait…? What exactly am I afraid of here? She’s simply a little girl. She’s sad but only a little girl. She probably just wants help right? She’s not gonna hurt me. She isn’t like that man. I took my eyes away from the wall and turned towards her once more. What I saw made my heart drop through the floor.
She was still sitting there. Sobbing into her hands. But this time I saw blood. It was on her dress. I realized that tears were streaming down my face, flowing like a river. I felt empty, like the depression had taken my mind over completely. I was simply a body, nothing more. All I could bring myself to do was stare at the heartbreaking sight. Whether it was the fear that wouldn’t let me move or the sadness of it all, I’ll never know. But I kept watching.
Her body stopped shaking so violently and her sobbing ceased for a moment. I was breathless. She had never stopped before. She sat there for a while and I stared, afraid to move, afraid to blink. A drop of blood fell from between her fingers and landed on her silky dress. I took a sharp breath in and whimpered like a frightened puppy. She was bleeding; I’d never noticed that before. She’d never stopped crying before. And here she was simply sitting there holding her face.
Until she heard me. She whipped her head in the direction of the sound like a hunting wolf would at the snap of a twig. I swear that on that moment whatever sanity was left in me completely vanished. I was drenched in sweat and my head throbbed with every frantic beat of my heart. I might as well have been holding a pistol to my temple in a game of Russian roulette.
Her face had undoubtedly been beautiful at one point. But now, I wouldn’t even recognize her as human. Her lips were the grey color of a rotting corpse and were chapped so badly I’m surprised the blood wasn’t leaking from them. There was plenty of blood but no from her mouth. It was dripping off both sides of her face, coming from her eyes. She was crying blood. But even more disturbing than that were the eyes themselves. They had rolled so far back into her head that you could only see the whites of her eyes and the blood vessels in them. She was not human. Maybe she had been but she no longer was.
Choking noises came from her throat as she gasped for breath. Her delicate chest heaving up and down with such effort. I could do nothing to help her, only stare in disbelief. She was dying. An innocent child dying before my eyes and there was nothing I could do about it. Dying? She’s already dead isn’t she? I couldn’t sort it out, was she really there dying or was she a ghost or even more disturbing was she just a hallucination that my own mind created? I couldn’t answer my questions, I could only stare.
I watched as her whole body began to shake uncontrollably as if she were having a seizure. Her eyes rolled even further back so that I could see the thick red veins creeping up her eyes like snakes. Tears were pouring down my face.  I couldn’t watch yet, I couldn’t not watch. I was compelled like a small child peeking through their fingers at the scariest part of the movie. For a moment she became still. My heart pounded against my ribs, threatening to burst through my chest. Her body fell to the floor like someone who was shot with a .38. Her body was limp and lifeless. But her eyes were not. They darted back and forth making the veins slither just like snakes. She began gasping for breath again as she mutter the words, “Help me.” Her neck was thrown violently back and the subtle crack of the bones rung over and over again in my ears. Her body was twisting itself in ways any human being could never dream of doing. Her limbs bent at awkward angles, her body was literally twisting around and her head dangling as if it were merely attached by a string. She lay there writhing on the floor like a dying beast. My heart was going at an unbelievable rate; I was almost to the point of suffering a heart attack. Less and less air cam into my lungs with every breath I took. The last thing I remember seeing was her face. Blood creeping out the corners of her eyes, the deep brown, almost black eyes filled with such fright and desperation. Those eyes I will never forget.

My head was throbbing. I was no longer on my bed, I was on something hard. I tried to move but could not. My wrist and ankles were tethered down. I opened my eyes but for a second and saw the bright light that was coming from above. Men were all around me. I knew not what they were doing. All I knew was that the Men in the White Coats had finally come for me. Come to lock me in the rubber room where I belong.