Username: cara_fairy
Word Count: 1,900
Title of Entry: Mental Mashed Potatoes - The Mixings of My Mindscape
Entry:
Plink.
There it is again. Plink. The sound of dripping water. Or blood.
Plink. No, let’s think positively. It could be..a..a..stream.
My mind quickly spins an image of a beautiful blue stream gently winding its way through a Victorian garden. There are roses, and picnics, and cookies. The dripping is just the sound of an icicle melting. Plink. Hidden just beneath the dripping icicle could be the faint sound of wind chimes. Yeah! Wind chimes.
This mental image of a stream in a garden is strong.
So strong that it lasts a few seconds.
My beautiful vision is hacked, overridden by the twisted depiction of a blood-river flowing through and around corpses of my friends, my family, and my enemies too. Body parts and innards are strewn everywhere. Some of my enemies are even still breathing. With rasping breaths they reach towards me, begging to be heard. I feel sorrow then my upper lip curls into a smirk. I feel a surge of pride due to my enemies’ destruction. In fact, I feel personally responsible for their marvelous defeat. They deserved every bit of—Plink. Then I remember where I am. Plink. Plink. And I realize that I managed to lose. Again.
Dark laughter resonates around me, clearly mocking my weak attempt at distracting myself from the pleasure of destruction. The laughter is in a voice both mine and not mine. It echoes inside and outside, all around my head, all around the room, and frightens me.
Bravely, I pull a blanket over my head and curl up against my soft red armchair. It is comforting, here in the armchair. I feel almost hugged. The more rational side of me ponders on how some people describe this safe feeling as ‘bliss.’ But I don’t feel “bliss” for long.
An animalistic snort blows the blanket off my head and sends shivers down my spine. I’m too petrified to lean forward and pick the blanket back up, too petrified to move in general. I beg my imagination not to imagine the creature I know is behind me and anxiously start to wring my hands. I concentrate on the fireplace in front of me and the bookshelves in my peripheral vision. It’s safe here, I tell myself, because I’m in my safe place, my safe place. My library, my sanctuary. Like in Kindgom Hearts, when Sora was wrapped up in that egg thing and getting his memories back, like a butterfly wrapped up in its chrysalis, transforming; I’m safe. I can not lose myself to chaos here. Of course, no sooner do I think these reassuring and rational thoughts that I feel my body seize up and start to rock.
Then it hits me. I’m genuinely afraid. I’m dreaming and I’m genuinely afraid.
I’m not in control. I’m scared because this is my dream and I’m not in control.
Fighting back hysterics because I can feel the thing watching my every move, I stiffly steady myself and grip the armchair’s arms. There are no more ‘plink’ing sounds, so it’s safe to assume the thing has stopped drooling or leaking blood or bile now, right? Or has it? Maybe it left me alone here; satisfied I’ve succumbed to my destructive mindset again. Happy that I’m submissive to it again…Or is this a trap? Oh, GOD, what if it’s a trap? It knows I can’t resist my curiosity! Is it behind me or isn’t it? The hair on the back of my neck stands up and I hear it whispering my name.
Is this what happens to schizophrenic people? Or schizotypal people? They hear voices—and then the voices take over? Or would that be dissociative disorder? What if I’m possessed? I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. The thing behind me is real enough, a product of my paranoid mind. Everything I know, it knows. And it knows, like a fly to honey, I’m drawn irresistibly to learn more about it. Against my will, I find myself turning to look behind the armchair.
In real life, I feel tears forcing their way out from under my closed eyes. Even my physical body knows there is something wrong. I demand myself to wake up, but I can not. I feel myself turn over under my bed sheets and I mentally start screaming at my conscious mind to open my eyes. As my dreaming self’s eyes lock eyes with the demon, I know it must be a demon—for no good or godly creature looks that way—my heart starts racing. It can’t be real. Just a dream.
WAKE UP! WAKE ME UP!
I don’t wake up.
The first I see of the creature is a figure like a guardian angel, hauntingly beautiful, perfect and welcoming—but it has empty sockets where eyes should be. The sockets bleed and around its neck is a large chain, like I’d miraculously managed to keep it shackled until this moment of mental weakness. It beckons to me. Smiles and opens its arms. I know, deep down, I am being deceived. I am not to embrace it. If I so much as touch it, I intuitively feel it will get stronger and something bad will happen.
I force myself to turn my back to it and get out of the arm chair. It’s just me, this area of the library, and it. We’re in an ultimate showdown. The fireplace casts heat onto my clammy legs. Wait a minute. I stop and take a deep breath. As I calm down, I’m reminded of a very important fact. This is my mindscape, my meditative zone. I am the one responsible for imagining that fireplace, the bookshelves, the heat— and I refuse to be dominated by the likes of some specter! I turn back to the angel to smugly assert my dominance as its creator, but find it is now a large, sleeping, white wolf that takes up half the room.
Dear Lord, that crackpot psychiatrist did more harm than good. My nightmares are transforming now.
The wolf’s sleeping with its head resting on its front paws and tail curled towards its belly. The whole scene before me looks like something right out of Miyazaki’s, Princess Mononoke. I hesitantly tiptoe towards the wolf which must be a product of my imagination due to it looking like something I’ve seen before--and part of me laughs at myself. I’m afraid of an angel, something human-like, but not a gigantic wolf.
I feel safe with this wolf. Granted, that is probably because it’s honestly asleep. No deceptions. I grab a book off one of the shelves. Oh hey, the shelves must have materialized again due to my stabilized mental condition—and sit against the wolf. My mind assures me that even though it’s not okay to touch the angel, it’s okay to touch the wolf. I open the book and a rotating sphere of images and words are projected into the air in front of me, like one massive globe. I see my house in Florida, the orchards—my baby dolls, movie quotes like “a spoonful of sugar” and hear little clips of songs I liked back then. Normally these memories all rush by fairly quickly, but when I’m sitting against this wolf, the memories are slower and I can study them better. I fondly thumb my way through the memories, as I usually do when I meditate here.
Once the book hits when I’m 12 and I start to get bullied for being little, for being smart, and for being weird, I notice that the sphere’s edges get darker and darker. I squint to try and get a better look and hear panting by my ear. Due to my self-absorbed discovery trip, I managed to neglect the fact that the wolf’s awake now. And its mouth is by my head. I shut the book, thus ending the sphere and look up with teary eyes, again—stupidly, too scared to move.
In the journal that is my thought process, I see my life laid out like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. Do I choose to:
A) RUN, happy end?
B) Stand still and accept my defeat, sad end?
C) Scream, happy end?
D) Profess my love for chocolate, sad end?
I choose option E. Run, scream, profess my love for chocolate, and try to wake up. The wolf catches me in the middle of my spazz-fit and bites down. I feel a wrenching pain in my gut and feel blood spill into its mouth. An alarm inside of me is triggered, and I realize the “fight or flight” instinct is—
Beat that thing’s snout! Charge into its eyes! Twist yourself free! That’s it!
I end up in a bleeding heap at its feet. I forget I am not a super saiyan from Dragon Ball, nor a Powerpuff Girl. Or Jackie Chan. Or Harry Houdini. I am just a small Indian girl, scarcely a mouthful—and with far too active an imagination. Didn’t someone once say that an adult with her imagination in tact is a child that survived? Is this surviving?
I feel lighter.
The wolf’s licking my wounds. Closing my eyes, I let it. I don’t care about being in charge anymore or avoiding this thing. Sensing this, the wolf picks me up by the back of my shirt like I’m its pup and then slams me into the floor. Repeatedly. Excruciating pain. I can’t move. Why didn’t I run when I could have? I lay there as the wolf places a triumphant paw on my chest and pushes down on my ribs. I am a glass figurine.
I am a flawed human being.
I am a weak thing, unable to control my temper, my wrath—unable to control anything.
I’m so stupid.
I’m an idiot.
I hate myself.
WHY didn’t I try harder to wake myself up? Am I that much of a masochist? I enjoyed myself in pain?
Or a narcissist?
Afterall, I couldn’t escape my own mind. Probably means I liked it in here.
With each negative thought, I feel weighed down, like any moment my ribs will give way and puncture a lung or something. Maybe that’s what people would like, after all. Then they wouldn’t have to put up with all of my moods and my comments. Part way through the self berating, I see the wolf is now back to being the angel. Its hands are around my neck—burning! White hot! I kick it!
My nudge against its side is ineffective.
I give up.
And then just like that, the BIGGEST ice cream cone I’ve ever seen plummets from the ceiling and simultaneously smothers the angel and numbs my wounds.
It’s strawberry—thank god. I was craving that yesterday.
With new energy I eat my way to the door of my library and open it wide.
Before me lays sunshine, rolling fields, a stream, roses, picnics, and cookies. Just beyond that lays a world at its end with storm clouds and decrepit buildings.
It’s beautiful. Harmonious cacophony.
To Hell with my paranoia, my depression, my personalities—I think I killed them...were they the angel? The wolf?
Now that I’ve found this beautiful place within the crevices of my mind, who cares?
I decide I won’t wake up.
Not for awhile. I like it here too much and just enough. I’m my own knight in rusting armor.
Τɦɛ ɯɩɳɳɛɍʂ...
100
100
100
200
100
200
