Inside the darkness I stand empty and alone. I feel them brush past speaking whispers in my ears. Their hollow voices reverberate off the inside of my brain; like the nightmares that fuel my hopeless existence. I sift through their soft cries like a puzzle of a million pieces. Finally revealed I see their hate filled poison things like “you are fucking worthless” or “you will never be good enough” float like huge storm clouds ripe with electrical bolts. When the lightning strikes I feel the shocks like electrodes buried in the pain centre of my brain.

Each jolt the effort to keep up this meaningless existence fades slowly leaving me numb and alone in this darkness. I awake, cold sweat covering my entire body; my sheets soaked in sweat I looked over to see if my wife had noticed; nope only noise she made was that cute little snore I so loved. Raising up I could feel the oppressive darkness of the house; still I trudged on shuffling towards the bathroom. I realized I must look like a zombie. I laughed to myself and made a low moan “bbbrains” for some reason I thought I was funny. But as fast as the happy thought was there it was gone “you’re not cute or funny you’re just being stupid and childish.” I begrudgingly finish my trip to the bathroom. Upon my return, I watch as my wife stirs in her sleep but doesn’t wake from her deep slumber. Laying a blanket over the soaking wet sheets I decide I should try and get some sleep.

Settling comfortably in my spot on the bed I close my eyes and lay there. Thoughts swirl through my head faster than I can make sense of them. Most of them bad or even terrible thoughts “you’re going to go to work tomorrow and before you even walk in the door you are going to fuck up and get fired” and “those people at work aren’t really your friend remember how they whisper and snicker in the office?” Some even painful to think about like “remember your ex? You probably deserved the abuse, I mean you’re probably ruining this relationship too with your pathetic attempts at being normal hahaha” the laugh make my eyes fling open “ugh” I release a disgusted sigh I look over at the clock “I’ve been laying here for hours and still can’t sleep” I thought to myself. So, I reach for my phone the only thing that is even able to keep my attention for more than a few hours and I begin cycling through the little casual games I play from day to day.

Frustratingly I glance back towards the clock “fuck I have to be at work in like three hours” now resorting to talking to myself. I had a psych professor once tell me “it’s ok to talk to yourself it’s when you begin answering back that you have a problem.” Again, thoughts whir through my mind “just call off no sense in going in as wore out as you are” why my why was I the one who had to be assaulted by all of these negative thoughts. the exhausting thoughts continues ” the bed is so comfy you need sleep” my eyes heavy began my daily rituals shower, shave eat, get dressed, smoke a cigarette, and then smoke a bowl or two. I know what you’re going to say “uhhhh drugs are bad mister man” well if I don’t smoke I get so nervous I shake and get sick to my stomach so there. Sitting there I realize I have this urge I want to do something but it’s like I can’t seem to figure out what it is I want to do. My mind kicks to life again at all of the possibilities “you could start a YouTube channel” but with every thought comes a negative “what would you put on there your life is so plain and boring no one would ever watch you and on top of that your fat and ugly.” They continue “What about exploring abandon places like everyone else on YouTube?” As soon as the thought left my head I could feel the bad ones coming along “your dumbass would get killed or worse end up kidnapped and used as some human sex slave in Mexico.” I glance over as the clock slowly ticks to the next hour “fuck” I say to myself “I’m going to be late again if I don’t leave now” throwing on my cloths I light a cigarette as I grab my keys and head for the door.

Sitting in the car I think to myself “the reason they all treat you like your fucking stupid is because you are” this shakes me to my core and I don’t even feel like going into work at all feeling that everyone around me secretly makes fun of me while my back is turned. So, like everything else I get to work and settle in by the end of the day I realize how fucked up I really am I can’t do anything right. I’m so going to skip the work part because it is extremely boring. As I walk through the door to my house this oppressive air settles down on my lungs like I’m trying to breath cement. As it starts again “you can’t afford this place” or “no one even cares how bad you hurt so keep that shit to yourself.” Laying down in bed I feel the exhaustion setting in my bones ache and my back feels like it’s going to snap at any second but if I try and talk to anyone about it they laugh “oh really well I’ve been working pregnant for weeks” “you’re just being a pussy grow up and get over it.” So, I don’t I lay quietly and cry myself slowly to sleep.

Soon the nightmare resume in this one I’m an ant but I’m trying so hard to lift this huge piece of food. Standing there I feel the laughing eyes upon me tearing at my very soul and finally to their surprise I lift the thing high above my head. Sweat starts leaking from every little pore on my tiny ant body and I realize I’ve pushed myself farther than I was able just to make them all like me. So, I begin looking around at the faces smeared and blurred but identifiable. The sweat coats my body and I begin to feel sick as an ant surrounded by people I begin to vomit blood not the light pink ulcer kind either. I begin to vomit dark red arterial blood and I star panicking and when I do I lose grip on the heavy piece of food.

I feel my arms buckle and the bones snap through what I can only describe as thick chitinous shell but they were human bones with little chunks of fatty tissue and muscle holding on to the ends. As they collapse so does my ankles they snap right at the point where they meet the thigh pouring blood from the now gaping holes where my feet had once been. Knowing that the worst was yet to come I just let the tears flow as it lands on my back shoving my lungs deep into my ribcage piercing them in three places. Laying the slowly bleeding out gasping for my last breath I can feel the object slowly rolling towards my head and at that moment I hear a roaring laughter. I look up in enough time to see the people I love send a crushing foot down to what is left of my frail mangled body.

I feel the rubber sole on the back of my head as it begins to slowly crush me into the concrete. My teeth shatter first leaving sharp little shards that dig deep into the flesh that used to encapsulate them. As the pressure reaches my skull I feel my eyeballs pop and dangle at that point all I can see in concrete as the pressure builds and my skull cracks. I hear familiar voices “thank god you got rid of that trash” and “is he finally dead damn that took forever.” While my brain starts to leak from my nose, mouth, and ears everything fades to black. I wake up a scream in my throat and cold sweat on my forehead. Giving up on sleep I realize that I deserve everything I get honestly, I deserve more.

So, I head to the bathroom and sit down quietly reaching for my hidden razor blade. The cold steel feels good in my fingertips as I lay the blade on my skin and drag it across leaving invisible lines that slowly start to fill up with blood. It’s at that moment I finally understand I am truly alone no matter how many people I surround myself with I will be alone. My children can’t stand me my wife treats my like I’m a stupid little kid who has to be watched and chased after. All if my friends ignore me when I’m around and act like any idea I have is fucking stupid what am I saying anything I think is fucking stupid. Feeling the true darkness settle in I go back into my living room and drag out my laptop. the cursor blinks on the white screen for several minutes before I start to type. My story begins like this digital ink on a digital surface but it’s as good as anywhere to write my story. Growing up I’ve always been looked at as second best by everyone.

I busted my ass to get good grades and do well in school even though I was picked on relentlessly. At home, it always seemed like everyone liked my little brother so much more than me my parents always believed him over me no matter the evidence. My friends sit enamoured at what he has to say telling him how awesome his ideas are. So, I retreated into a digital world of video games online I could make friends and they would never have to know the real piece of shit me. Hiding behind male and female characters alike I realized here I was loved. But as time flew by I became bored so I moved from game to game losing and gaining fake friends. Surrounding myself with people I thought cared and wanted me around. But the truth was they never really wanted me they wanted my help and my high-level items. As time went on I began to get bored with life and the pain that I felt every single day so I slept.

Somewhere I had once heard it was the closest you could get to death without actually dying. Finally, people realized there was something truly wrong so I got an appointment with the local low-income psych department. These people were so fucking stupid the therapist just wanted to talk about how my day had went and decided that my problems weren’t even worth talking about. The actual Doctor just decided to tell me I was too fat and if I lost weight I’d feel better. Yeah well fuck you I’ve tried my whole life to lose weight. Anyways I finally understood there was no help that I was never going to get better so I confined myself to my miserable life. Though some of the medicine made the dreams nicer. So, I decided to live there for the most part I’d sleep till late in the day only getting up to sit alone all night on the internet spilling my guts anonymously to anyone who would listen. That never panned out no comments and most of my posts were marked dead shortly after I had finished. No one cared not a single soul. After that I began hitting the dating sites that’s where I ran into my EX and my first sons mother.

For the first few weeks things were amazing I was treated like a king it was my man this and isn’t he amazing that. Soon after like everything in my shitty existence this too turned dark. I spent the next five years in an abusive relationship she would call me names and tell me how pathetic I was. If that were it I probably would have stayed but I was also shoved arounds and to top it all off every time I left to make money for the house she was sleeping with everyone from the low-income apartments we had to live at. After we had my son I was left to take care of him alone I did everything while she laid in bed and told me how bad she had it. A few weeks later I realized that this was for one not an environment a child needed to be in and my EX was nuts.

So, I spent the next week or so talking my EX into signing him over to my parents where he would have a good life and be taken care of (and she no longer had any rights to him what so ever). I spent another few years with this person until something happened and we split. So again, I was alone I moved back into my parent’s basement where I spent 97% of my time. So, I decided to try school for a while everything was awesome but then I slowly started slipping my grades declined and I was booted out. I appealed because at the time my grandparents were slowly dying and we had to make a bunch of trips so I missed a lot of classes. It went through something good actually happened to me. Everything was looking up I had made a friend that I had something in common with and we talked during classes. This went on for a few more years as I was barely able to keep my GPA up enough to stay in school.

Then one day I came in statistics ready to sit next to my friend when I saw her the most beautiful girl in the school so stupid me couldn’t keep my balance and tripped over a trash can making a spectacle of myself yet again. But I guess she thought it was cute. From the first moment, I laid eyes on her I knew that we would become something and fast. I slowly began giving her all of my attention after class we would stand by her car for what seemed like forever. Hating with every fibre of my being that she had to leave and once again I was alone. I truly enjoyed out time together we would cuddle beneath the stairs or in the lounge making me feel like I had finally found my place. We would Skype every night (for those who don’t know Skype is a free calling app). she would fall asleep on Skype and I would just lay there watching her sleep for hours wondering how I could get so lucky. Well one day her dad walked in and found her sleeping with the computer on realizing it was me he flipped out and so did I. When she finally called me, she sat the phone in her bra and I listened to her mom, dad, and two sisters call me every name in the book and cuss me like a dog even though they had never met me. After a while of seeing her only at school and secret phone call here and there she calls and says her dad is gone and she wants me to come and get her. So instinctively my grandmother and I hopped in the car and drove the 45 minutes it took to get to her house. My grandmother let us stay with her for a little while until management from her low-income apartments began to give her hell about it. So, talking to my parents they let me fix up the basement and stay there until we found a place of our own. So, we took our school checks and began looking.

In just a little while we had found a lovely little place that we both liked and having our school money we were able to pay rent up for six months in advanced. This worked out great until our grades slipped and we were both dismissed from school. Though our rent was paid for six months we still knew that it would run out so we began looking for work. Shortly thereafter she found a job and I was left alone home while she worked feeling like an inadequate loser. I need to explain growing up I was raised that the man worked and the woman stayed at home I know this seems sexist now but at the time it was normal. So, sitting home all the time I began to sink deeply into my darkness again. Thinking how pathetic I was that I couldn’t even take care of the girl I took out of her home where she had everything she needed. The job she was at began to slowly take away her hours until she was making almost nothing so she started looking for another job. When Walmart calls and gives her an interview. That’s when the arguments started over the stupidest stuff. I blamed myself even if she said it was her fault and apologized.

As the arguments began to happen more and more I realized I needed help so I talked to my doctor about a medicine I knew worked well for me. After that things began to slow down more often than not I blamed myself so I would just let it go and move on. One day in my paranoia I believe that she had found someone else so instinctively I downloaded a program that would show me all of the deleted messages on her phone. So, one night I plugged it into my laptop and pushed the little button on the flashing screen. It seemed to take forever after it was finished I began reading. What I found killed my very heart and soul. She had been talking to her EX internet boyfriend from Ireland saying things like “I really miss you” or “why won’t you tell me you love me” and to top it off there were conversations about him flying in to pick her up and get a motel. So, after crying for a bit and letting the feeling of death subside I confronted her about it. We went around and round until she swore it would never happen again. I believed this and let it drop. months went by and everything seemed like it was going back to normal. Until one day she was in the kitchen and her phone went off so instinctively I grabbed it and flipped it on. staring in horror I saw that there were messages to him once again. Following another two days blow up in which she stated “put a keylogger on my phone it’ll never happen again.

So again, I let it drop. Days turned into months and months into years after we had been together two years we finally got pregnant and the arguments started again I let most of them go due to hormonal imbalance. But one night I once again got paranoid so I plugged her phone in and once again I found messages between her and her EX in Ireland. This time it hurt deeply. It felt as though our life and child didn’t matter that all that mattered to her was him. So again, I began to feel inadequate. I cut myself a few times to release the endorphins that made all the bad go away. After confronting her again and threatening to leave she seemed like she understood this time so again what did I do I dropped it of course.

Months went by and everything was perfect we had finally spilled the beans about the baby and we were finally seeing baby on the ultrasound. When one day she got a call from an out of country area code which I realized was his upon seeing this she swore that she hadn’t messaged him back and had no idea why he was trying to call. After that the asshole had the audacity to send an email. I gave him what for. The rest of the day she seemed depressed and upset but when asked about it she said she was mad that he had tried to message her back and mess up her life. But the whole day she seemed distant and angry and it seemed pointed in my direction. But she swore she was mad with him so again I dropped it (are we seeing a pattern). But so far, I have yet to find or hear anything else about him she even told me several times to check her phone so I believed her and we moved on.

Until one day she calls me crying “please come pick me up they are firing me” so instinctively I get her back and I get angry. I fly up there trying to defend her to her boss only to get yelled at and yanked away like a little child. So, I got angry another argument ensued. After the anger subsides I start feeling like shit because instead of backing me up she acted like I was a piece of shit for trying to defend her so I retreated back into the oh so loving darkness. Finally, upon arriving home she ignores me and heads to the neighbour’s house where she always goes instead of coming to me and trying to fix things or work things out. So, I begrudgingly head into the bathroom to find ole faithful my hidden razor and begin hacking at my flesh because it’s the only thing I know to do. Realizing I am a pathetic loser I grab my laptop sit down and light me a cigarette and I begin typing. I start with a dream. Inside the darkness I stand empty and alone.

I feel them brush past speaking whispers in my ears. Their hollow voices reverberate off the inside of my brain; like the nightmares that fuel my hopeless existence. I sift through their soft cries like a puzzle of a million pieces. Finally revealed I see their hate filled poison things like “you are fucking worthless” or “you will never be good enough” float like huge storm clouds ripe with electrical bolts. When the lightning strikes I feel the shocks like electrodes buried in the pain centre of my brain. Each jolt the effort to keep up this meaningless existence fades slowly leaving me numb and alone in this darkness. but the ending is so much worse. As I sat there listening to her scroll Facebook, twitter, and watch videos I continue to write feeling the dark oppressive feeling again. Alone I sat in the living room bleeding into the arm of my shirt writing about my shitty existence. Knowing full well that I could no longer handle the pain and anguish that was life.

I just felt so tired and so sick and all I wanted to do was sleep but as I sat there listening to her snore lightly I realized what I had to do. Feeling like a piece of shit and not wanting to make anyone clean up after my mistakes I locked the door handle and walked outside. The crisp night air filled my lung making them burn a little but I continued my destined path. I began to slowly walk into the woods tears streaming from my eyes. Telling myself how much better off everyone will be without me. How they might even throw a party.

I decided once I am gone everyone will get what they truly want away from me. No more stupid childlike innocence, no more stupid ideas, and no more money spent on my stupid habits so now everyone will have the money they need. Breathing heavy now from the walk I realized I had gone so far all I could see was trees. So, I sat down leaning against one of the many trees and began to cry no I didn’t cry I bawled. My nose ran, I could barely breath and the tears flowed from my eyes like a broken faucet. I rubbed my eyes realizing the pain that it caused. Laying my favourite hidden razor onto the top of my wrist I felt the tip puncture the skin just below my hand and I began to cry more if that was even possibly. Thinking of all the people I would miss and all the things I loved to do I slowly drug the tip down (like they always say if you want to do it right go down the road and across the tracks). So as the blood poured from the first wound I began to panic I started to regret my decision. But I knew that this was something I couldn’t change my mind about so while shaking from the searing pain on my arm I slowly drug it across the tracks. I realized that I was terrified and that this was going to take longer then I wanted so I switched hands and travelled down the road across the tracks.

Now watching the rivers of dark crimson leaking from my arms I laid the razor down. Lying there I started getting cold which I attributed to the old night air but then I started getting very sleepy. I finally realized it wasn’t the night air as my eyelids drooped and my body slacked against the trees. All I could think about was the good happy times. for once in my life the darkness was gone. I thought about playing with my son and smiling as we all soaked in the hot tubs at myrtle beach.

Even the times where we could all just sit around and smoke weed talking into the night about any and all things stupid or not. Just laughing around the bonfire sipping sour mash and staring out into the happy faces. The Transition was seamless. As the happy memories seemed to swallow me whole the trees, the air, the fight, all the assholes who hurt me, the tears, the pain, the sadness that didn’t even have a reason were all just gone. In that last moment, I felt my mouth slowly twist into a smile as the last bits of oxygen left my cold blue lips. Finally, I was at peace. Finally, I could rest. Finally, I got to know what true happiness and normality felt like as I drifted off into the darkness but this time it wasn’t a bad darkness this time it was like a warm blanket being wrapped around a new-born child. All the cold and the fear was gone. Not once did I think about the aftermath because that was not my story that was someone else’s tale of woe. I left my laptop open the last words followed by the slowly blinking icon read “Goodbye and I told you so.”