I’m not really a sports guy. Things like soccer and football, I was never really passionate about it. And basketball…don’t even get me started on how boring that is. But ESPN has been on for the last 7 days after the seeings started again.
It was around 4 in the afternoon, and I had to go to the bathroom. It’s a weird feeling, living alone. I’ve practically depended on the company of others since the doctor gave me the “magic medicine”. That was what first caused the seeings. I wasn’t focusing in the 1st grade, so my doctor gave me 27 milligrams of adderall to swallow. Since the pill was too big for my tiny face to swallow, my dad would pour the powder into a spoon of molasses and make me swallow that. And it was bitter. Like, you ever licked that little powder on the counter top just to realize it was Oxi-Magic powder? Imagine gulping down a spoon of that stuff with the liquid detergent, and your dad made you do that shit every day because molasses was “good for you”.
I’ll gladly choke to death on that pill, thank you.
So I would focus more. In school, that is. But what I couldn’t focus on was sleep. And it wasn’t possible because of the seeings.
The first seeings were monsters on the walls. Giant bug monsters barging into my room in the night faster than I could run, with barbs all over and big, gooey, misplaced eyes. It made atrocious noises when it blinked, and there were even eyes in its mouth so it could watch you while you were ripped apart inside its body. I would scream and shake in the night. And would hug tight to my blanket, but that was a bug monster too. They came in all different forms, from a hairy-eyed caterpillar to a gray, hammer-headed slug, and They always caught me. It was fast, and I would jolt and shriek. And then move on like nothing was wrong, because that’s the only way to forget. They came back throughout my childhood. I befriended a couple of them, but most of them were after my six-year-old flesh and bones. That was the first wave of seeings.
The second wave of seeings was in 4th and 5th grade. They were still after me. But this time, they weren’t the same sort of monsters. They were human too. One of them was always around the corner, and disappeared if I dared look in its direction. From the corner of my eye, I would see it. This one wasn’t human at all, rather it was a walking, preying hunk of flesh, wearing a human jumpsuit and face mask. Another one was behind me, only no matter how much I tried to see it, it would never really itself. But the scariest one was the nanny. She was pale white, and wore a black sleeping gown and carried a handbag. Her hair was black and wet, and her eyes were yellow and slit down the center, like a snake. And her smile. Big and triangular, with long teeth that slanted up each way and made for a horrible, crooked grimace. She would beckon me toward her when my mother would leave. And if I went to her, she would put her hands on me, and touch me, everywhere. I didn’t know what she was doing at the time, and I almost welcomed it. But it felt wrong. After her gnarly hands were done with me, she left. There was nothing to show what she did to me, because no one believed me enough to investigate.
I was in my teens when the third seeings came. They weren’t humans, nor were they monsters. They were giant, mechanical traps. But they were alive all the same. I would start in a room, and in that room was a door. But to get to the door, I must first get to the trap. Oftentimes, my sister was there too. The first trap was always a door of knives. We would have to escape horizontally across a rock climbing wall, and then jump out onto the floor of the second trap in the inescapable gauntlet. The ceiling was slowly collapsing, and would surely crush us. The room was a square mile in area, so there was no point in running. These seeings were recurring and stressful. And even when the seeing was over, I would feel hopelessly broken. Some people would ask me what was the matter, but of course I couldn’t tell them. In one seeing. I was in one room, and my friend Kai was trapped in another. And I had to press the right combination of buttons, of an unknown number of digits, in order to get him out. I could never get the right combination, and every time, the ceiling of his room would open up, pouring battery acid onto his body, which would drain through the floor in seconds, leaving a dead pile of unrecognizable Kai bits.
And they were now happening for the fourth time. But this time, there’s no one to shake me awake. I have to face it myself. There’s screaming from the bathroom. I ever so slowly walk down the short hallway of my apartment to the bathroom. There is the monster. In there. And the girl.
The monster was like a tall, faceless, inhuman thing. It had arms and legs like a human, but looked stiff like a stick. I usually just stood there, but sometimes he would be sitting on my bed, and I’d have to sleep in the living room. The girl was there too. She was blonde and around my height. I feel like I’ve seen her before. She would always be yelling, “he’s coming! He’s after me!” But there was nothing I could do. He pulled her into my bathroom and I heard her screaming. He wrapped her arms all around her and raped her into a pool of her own necrotic flesh. She was still alive, but in a torturous form in which she could only slither across the ground and gurgle through her deformed mouth.
I walked towards the bathroom. Suddenly, I heard music. That eerie, spiraling music from the horror movies. The swooping fiddles stirred in my head and made me nervous. And it was getting louder. Louder and louder and louder AND LOUDER AND LOUDER AND LOUDER AND LOUDER!! I felt something leaking from my ears. Then, in front of me, was the most repulsing hybrid of all the seeings I’ve had merged into one big, mushy… monster. With the body of a fat, creeping invertebrate, and many horrible heads. The walls were closing in. “Give us your eyes….. save us…” The thing came closer. The heads spoke again. “Give us your eyes.” It was louder and deeper than the almost deafening noise of the spiraling fiddles. “Your…eyes…”
The monster plunged their tentacles into my eyes and tore them from my head. I lifted my head to the ceiling and let out a horror scream, and I pulled my bloody thumbs out of my loose and gored sockets. The monsters are gone, and only I am there, left blind and in horrible agony.
I fell to the ground.
“……..an overdose of Adderall…”
“..the television was on..”
“…push morphine,”
“……..he’s screaming …”
“….need to operate stat……..”
The world faded in and out. I couldn’t see a thing.
-————————————————————————
I woke up in the hospital. The doctor was standing in front of me. He said that I had too much of my meds, and tried to rip out my own eyeballs. Everything was fine, but I would have to stop taking my medication. He then handed me the bill. I sighed, and messaged my mother.
The seeings themselves have since gone away. But I can’t help but occasionally see the nanny from the side of my vision. Or the thing. Or the tall, grey predator. Sometimes I’m back in the collapsing room, screaming as my sister gets crushed between a pair of collapsing walls. They never leave me. I have yelled at them and kicked them out and told them to never return, but they always do.
But not for long.