Peaceful, Happy, Bloody Life

Have you ever seen a child drenched in blood curse at his stuffed teddy bear? Have you ever heard a ghost’s terror-drenched scream as she relives her cruel, sudden death, over and over again? Have you ever felt warm, thick blood drip over your shoulders as you try vainly to tell yourself it isn’t real?

I have.

My life is surrounded by death, horror, fear. The things I see no human should ever have to see. Sick, twisted images that my mind fabricates and forces my eyes to watch. I am a helpless prisoner to the world’s most feared criminal.

I am my own prisoner.

I don’t really know when I became “a psycho”, as my dear daughter puts it. Ah, she does so love to hear my stories…she thinks I’m playing, you see. Alas, if only I were. I stray. I suppose I have always been in this particular mind set, only progressively spiraling downwards. I remember, even as an early child, waking from the most dreadful of nightmares. I believe it was not once, but twice that I asked my mother if I really had to live or not. I wonder how she took that…must have been rather startled, I suppose.

I myself have never given it much thought. I have always lived this way; I don’t know any other way to live, so I have nothing to miss or regret. Besides, they are rather pointless emotions. What’s regret going to get me? Surely the ghosts would laugh. The banshees would shriek in amusement. God only knows what the demons would think.

No, I do not suppose I wish to be normal. If I were normal, I fear I would be dreadfully boring. At least when I break down and scream my lungs out, I bring amusement to someone’s day.

I wonder whatever I would do if I were normal? What if I no longer had to ignore the blood pouring from my acquaintances’ eye sockets; the demons that howl at the moon and rip babies to bloody shreds; the people that shriek in pain as they melt at the bottom of my bowl of soup? Hmm…I suppose I would die of boredom.

I would much rather die of insanity.