Sceptic Read online

  ‘That’s not what I meant at all, Dazzie.’

  The boa tightens even more, and my vision blurs. I’m sinking down into the bog, closer to the abyss. Maybe I’m not ready. Though I long for peace. To have a break from the activity in my head, to sleep until I’m no longer tired, and I can be as energetic as my parents.

  Breathe.

  But that’s not who I am.

  Mum crosses the threshold into my room. It’s as alternative as I am, with dark fantasy images stuck over the white walls, dragons twisting over treasure, dark fairies dripping with blood, and a gargoyle who I like to think is a pet, watches over me, keeping the dark monsters in my mind from escaping my grey matter and becoming real in my room. Though, right now, I think the gargoyle is struggling. The monsters are awakening in my mind, and I’m not even ready for sleep. That’s when they are worse, at night when I’m trying to sleep. They aren’t good for my complexion, and my dark eyes don’t help my situation. It only fuels other peoples’ fears of what they don’t want to see about death when they look at me.

  My thoughts bang against each other as Mum wraps her arms around me, hugging me close to her. I can smell her floral perfume. The fresh smell is lost on me, washes over me like water off a duck’s back. I’m more of a spice girl, heavy and bold with dark edges. Smouldering scents which hint of the darkness that’s within me. My face crushes into her shoulder, and she puts her hand on the back of my head. I go stiff. I can’t help it. I don’t really like to be touched. Especially after a day like today where my thoughts pull me down towards the edge, and the abyss inside of me. And Frank is the only one there to help me.

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I know.’ My words are muffled in her cream blouse, lost in the silky material. I almost laugh. Almost. But then the snake tightens his muscles and squeezes around me, and the darkness thickens.

  She pushes away, breaking the hug, holding me tight at the shoulders so I’m forced to look into her blue eyes, to see the lightness, a glimpse of peace that I could never have. My eyes are dark, darker than Dad’s. They have so much more to hold than life. I was born on the wrong side of the moon cycle or some weird shit.

  ‘I love you just the way you are.’ Mum stares into my eyes with as much love as she can muster. I can’t feel the love emanating from her. She’s doing really well, for I can’t even see her fear. My eyes water a little, but then they dry quickly. There’s some emotions I don’t seem to be able to absorb, some which don’t sit well inside of me, like when you’ve overeaten on cake and your stomach churns with regret. That’s how I’m like all of the time. Today’s worse like I said, and it’s getting hard to hold it all together.

  ‘I love you too, Mum.’ I smile weakly. It’s so false. I wish I meant the words. I wish to be happy, but I’m not.

  The main thing is that Mum buys my pathetic act. Maybe she’s having trouble holding it together too, but in a different way to me. A loud hissing and spitting noise comes from the kitchen as the potatoes boil over.

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Mum releases me and runs off to the kitchen.

  About time. Frank is grumpy.

  I’m free, in my room to be myself. I move to the study desk in the corner by the window, I don’t bother to look outside. I slap the book on the white laminate and stare at the image that’s in front of me on the wall. A framed print of a witch-like girl, dark curly hair that goes down beyond her feet, pooling like waiting snakes as she sits on a wooden throne, writing with a feather on a thick book recording what I imagine to be all things important. Darkness creeps in from the woods that surround her but is pushed away by a dozen candles positioned around her, orange flames standing tall and strong, showing the soft watercolours the painter used. Her white face shows peace. Her robes flow down, gently and naturally, and I long to be like her. I wanted to buy this image as soon as I saw her. Maybe she’s there to pull me from the edge. It’s not working today. Especially when I turn my head and see my other favourite print in black and white. A devil fairy, with goat horns, wings folded on her back, naked, long dark hair covering her bits, as she sits on the crescent moon, head bowed in reverence of thought. This is who I am.

  ‘Dazz, dinner’s ready,’ Mum yells. She yells a lot. Especially when she’s stressed. Dad isn’t home yet. He usually takes another job, fixing the plumbing of someone’s house. But we are eating now because Mum’s going out with the girls since I’m in senior school, my last year, she’s decided I can be trusted home alone.

  That’s her first mistake. It’s so easy to do things wrong with me. People I’m around make lots of mistakes. I distract myself by counting them. Today there were 103, and I stopped talking. Bree, my one and only friend, even struggled to be around me today and took her lunch with some of the others in our year level. I didn’t mind. Alone is how I wanted it to be. I needed to think. Frank was talking to me, telling me what to do, making suggestions on how to join them. I wanted to listen. I wanted to be good and do what they said.

  ‘Bloody hell, Dazz!’

  ‘Coming!’ I don’t know why I didn’t say I wasn’t hungry. I’m not. Maybe there’s a part of me that knows how to keep up appearances. Mum knows the signs to look for. If she saw them, then she wouldn’t go out. I need her to go out, and I need Dad to be late. Luckily, Ashla has a new boyfriend, and tonight they’re going to the movies. It’s time I found my peace once and for all. They were always watching me so closely. They had to get tired of such an intense vigil. I’m hoping that tonight will be the right time for that to happen. For my sake. For all our sakes.

  ‘Dazz!’

  I cringe at the sound of my name again. Sometimes I blame my name for the way I am. Pathetic, right? Maybe it’s because of my name that all of this happened. Dazz. Pretty sure it’s a boy’s name, but my parents liked it because it meant electric spark of light. See they aren’t all conservative, I think it’s just how they have become since having me. Especially since I’m not what they expected, and I’m sure they can’t work out how they could produce a child so quiet and moody when they’re always bubbly and full of energy.

  They’ve taken me to all sorts of therapists, western doctors, shrinks, even clairvoyants, and I’ve laid on a table undergoing Reiki, and some other energy healing one time where I was told that there were entities attached to me. Dark ones. No shit Sherlock. But I’d kept my mouth silent when the woman apparently used her energetic sword to cut them away. She did jack shit. I could feel the darkness around me. I think it was even laughing at her. Best fun I’d had ever, listening to the rasping sound of the darkness, anyone else would’ve been scared. I wasn’t. But then I don’t feel like everyone else. Sometimes I have to think to make sure I haven’t slipped away into some ghost form.

  Still, it’s not really a reason why all of this happened to me. Fuck knows why it happened, it just did. I had no choice but to go along for the ride, and what a hell of a ride it was.

  ‘Will you be fine until Dad gets home?’ Mum isn’t asking. She is in a hurry to leave, which suits me fine. I only just managed to eat enough to satisfy her. Not eating is one of the signs they look out for. And eyes being drawn on the front of my exercise books. Cutting up clothes isn’t liked either. Neither is burning photos. I don’t know why. I just do these things. It’s the only time I feel good. The only time I have a glimmer of hope, and afterwards the darkness goes away. Not fully, it’s always there, but it’s more bearable. That’s why I really do these things. Least that’s what the therapist tells me, but I don’t know whether or not to believe them.

  ‘Mum,’ I draw out her name in a whine. This time I do have enough energy to roll my eyes.

  She buys it. ‘Good. I’ll be back by ten.’ She kisses me on the head as I stand washing the dishes. It’s an effort, to stand, to wash the dishes, to feel her lips on my hair. The love from her falls away without penetrating my skin.

  ‘Make sure you do your homework.’ She winks.

  I smile weakly. I know she’s trying to joke with
me. That’s another thing I don’t do.

  She pats me on the shoulder. ‘Bye honey.’

  ‘Bye,’ I manage and place the last dish on the drying rack on the side of the sink. ‘Have fun.’

  It’s time. Frank interrupts my thoughts like an unexpected punch in the face.

  ‘Homework,’ she says firmly pointing to my room before she grabs the keys and leaves.

  At that point of the door clicking shut my knees buckle. I sink down, my soapy hands slip down along the old sixties style kitchen wood doors, leaving a smear that my mind imagines is blood. I gasp for breath. It’s like I’ve been holding on to a lungful of air for hours, waiting for Mum to go. Now that it’s finally time peace envelops me.

  I’ve decided.

  The spark inside me was never there. I don’t need to even put it out. I can just go and take the last step now, finally find my rest in death in the abyss. I can go back to hell where I belong and never should’ve been released from.

  I’m alone. The monsters come out, the fog, the boa constrictor, the devil ram, dragon and Frank, all start to celebrate.

  It’s time. His deep, commanding voice echoes in my head, reverberating off my skull, getting louder and louder, so much so I just want him to shut the fuck up. I’m listening to him, he doesn’t need to keep repeating himself. I move. Standing slowly, I walk back to my room, one hand holding my head. I go to my desk, pull out the drawer completely, slip my hand up inside and pull out the letter opener. The one, my great grandma, used to own. The one I told my parents I’d lost.

  I flop on the edge of my bed. Symbolic right. It’s not lost on me, even now, when I’m not sure I’m completely in control. Always on the edge, not close to the edge, on it. Always.

  I want things to end once and for all. I don’t want to draw the red eyes of the minions in my mind who are always looking at me. I don’t want to be so heavy with regret and doubt, or the sadness to creep over my skin, even on a day like today when the sun shone its autumn light. I don’t want to do things to my body to make sure I can still feel to see if I’m alive, and not just a walking zombie.

  Unbuttoning the cuff of my blouse on my left arm, I scrunch up the material beyond my elbow. I’m not in a stupor. I know exactly what the fuck I’m doing. I know how it’s going to end up for me. Back in hell. And it’s for the best. My parents don’t need me to be holding them back, being that dark, heavy anchor in the depression that always clings to me, and I don’t need to be upsetting my friend Bree, or scaring the teachers, or causing my therapist’s forehead to wrinkle. I don’t want to stop Ashla from seeking her boyfriend.

  I want to be free.

  I want to be at peace.

  I want to be in control.

  Then do it, Frank whispers.

  Since I’ve reached the edge in my mind, there is nowhere else for me to go. I’ve drawn the eyes, cut the clothes, burnt photos, cut myself and the darkness returns. It’s time I went home once and for all, and join the dark creatures who make me who I am. I’ve cut my skin before, little marks that were only tests. I’ve had to work up my courage.

  The thin knotted white-ish skin patterns out over my wrist. This time I will work in a different direction. The right direction which will get me where I want to go. I’m going into the woods and taking the road less travelled, my road, my way. I find the perfect untouched area of skin on my arm to start this journey.

  I lift the letter opener in my right hand. It’s ornate, mother-of-pearl handle, filigree in silver that stretches three-quarters of the way along the little blade-like end. It isn’t sharp. I’ll have to have a stronger resolve if I want the release I’m after. I clench my left hand into a tight fist, laying it on my left thigh. I see the purple-blue veins pulse. My spark is about to go out once and for all. Peace breathes deeper inside of me. I’ve found my flow to where I need to go, the path I need to tread, so I will be happy forever.

  The point pierces my skin. Red rings around the metal. The pain is expected and is nothing to the peace I know I will feel. I press harder and drag down.

  Holy fuck!

  The pain rips through me. Sharp agony that tears me apart forces away the peace I was after. What the fuck am I doing?

  This isn’t what I want. No. Frank’s voice is gone. The monsters are gone.

  Something else has changed. Me?

  I drop the letter opener. I know I do, but the pain remains and continues, opening up along my arm, ripping between the worlds.

  Something is wrong. Very wrong.

  Stop. Stop. Stop. I am sobbing. I want to live, but I’m taken away from life. Sucked through the veil, like a performer who’s gone on stage at the wrong time and then someone grabs them back, pushing the thin material away. I feel it gliding over me. There’s more. I’m not just going into the space in between. I know that space. I go there when I read poetry. It was there when I first met Frank and the edge of the foggy darkness that has become part of me. This is different. The force is pulling back in time. I feel myself slipping away. I wish I was unravelling, but my core, that part of who I am, the part that’s uniquely me stays intact, watching as lights flash past, as if I’m travelling at light speed and the stars are smears on a canvas of black.

  This is wrong. It’s about the only thought I have. That and what the fuck is happening and how did I lose control over an event that I should’ve had complete control. But then maybe this is what it really is like when you die? This could be the road to hell. The darkness isn’t claiming me like I had hoped. Something else is. Something I’ve never connected to before. Bright light blinds me, claims me.

  With a gut-wrenching twist, I realise I’m not dead.

  I’m not alive either.

  Help. My voice is lost in the light around me.

  I pass out. It’s the only way I know how to get to the comfort of my darkness.

  My awareness opens. Like what happens when you’re waking up from sleep. But this is different. I don’t think I actually open my eyes.

  Cold wraps around me, seeping its icy claws into me, deep, scratching on my bones, stirring the pain inside of me. I wonder what monsters I’ll meet here. I reckon Frank will be here. I stand waiting for the devil, or death or one of his minions. I sure as hell knew it wouldn’t be Peter waiting for me in a halo of goodness. This is what I’ve been researching. Hell. The underworld. Asylums. What it should be like when I enter. Hey, I know the colour of my heart, and while it would bleed red but its true colour is black. I learnt long ago not to fight it.

  But my mind is scattered, worse than before, and I can’t help wonder why there’s no lava moat, and why is there walls? Brick walls. High walls, painted in a thick off-white colour.

  There’s no one else here.

  There is only one certain thing I can come up with. I cling to it desperately.

  I am in a cell.

  And I am alive. k°1°2

  Not the outcome I expected.

  I move to the door. I dunno why I didn’t go there first.

  I reach out.

  There is no handle.

  Course not.

  It’s a test.

  Set by the devil, and unlike my History exam, I’m going to pass this test.

  I place my hand on the door. It’s wooden with the same thick creamy paint on it like the walls. There are dirty brown marks, ruddy in hue, smeared in a pattern like someone was too lazy to clean them off properly.

  For some reason, I shiver. I shiver so hard I pause waiting for my heartbeat to slow.

  Finally, the blood slows in my veins, that whooshing sensation of high-pressure eases and I press my hand.

  The resistance comes back. Newton’s law and that shit. See I did pay attention at school.

  The door doesn’t move.

  I press lightly. I don’t know why. Sometimes you’ve got to try the least obvious.

  My hand disappears into the wood.

  I stare at my arm, my wrist meeting the grains of wood as if it’s the most natural thi
ng in the world.

  I wriggle my fingers. I don’t know if they move or not. I can’t see them.

  Fuck.

  I pull my hand out of the door.

  So, I’m not alive.

  I’m a ghost.

  Disappointment eases the pain that shivers through my being. If this is the gates of hell, I should be welcomed.

  I fold my arms over my chest in a pout. Yeah, I know it’s childish of me, I’m long past the age of sulking like that but what else am I to do. I’ve come to the end of the journey, and the destination fucking sucks. Where’s the brimstone, the flames, the lava?

  Shit. It’s bloody cold. I shiver, my teeth chattering. I look around thinking that perhaps I have to open my own gate into hell, and well if that’s the case I better find it.

  I’m in a small cell. At a guess two by three. The floor is wooden. There’s only one window, a style that’s far from modern. I look closer. There’s no lead lighting, it’s very practical, a multi-glass panelled window, each the size of bricks, are aligned horizontally. One of them can open. There are bars on the other side. A metal panel has been secured at the bottom half of the window.

  No one is getting in.

  I gasp at how wrong my thought is.

  No one is getting out.

  Panic, razor-sharp tears through me. Thinking I was standing at the gates of hell didn’t scare the fuck out of me. Standing here right now in front of a window designed to keep people, I assume people, though maybe perhaps monsters contained, scares the bejesus out of me.

  A sensation of sharp pinpricks on the back of my neck causes me to turn and look at the space I’ve been delivered to. Is this my deliverance? Is this what my short life amounts to? Dunno what the fuck I’d been thinking, but I thought it would’ve been a little more than a small room, and a window that will never let me out. I was expecting something like a large cavernous space, larva to surf on, flames to jump through, you know that sort of crazy shit. After all, I was coming to a place where I belonged, so I anticipated something more.