Phoenix's Lies

Pain of the Past

River

After he's gone I don't move from where I'm leaning against the door. Hating how right his words are. How much it hurts, makes what I try to push down rise. The darkness. The demons. The words. The voices. The memories I try so hard to push back because when I let them out when I let them win, they consume me. Pulling at all I have to keep them down and making it that little bit harder to pick myself up again and carry on. Make them that little bit harder to ignore like they can't be right now. Awoken all too easily banished not as easily as I hoped after all these years of dealing with them.

They taunt me even now, alone and hurt in the dark house. Belittling me, hurting me. You're a plague, a disease. No one can love you because all you touch dies. Dies and turns black as it withers. You're a curse and no one could ever love you. You don't deserve it, all you do is kill people. Kill them or use them for what you want. You should be ashamed of yourself. Why not just end it and make the world a better place? Imagine all the people you'd save. Imagine how much happier they'd be without you polluting their lives and making them miserable. Burdening them. Just end it and make them better. Happier. Healthier. Stop killing what you touch and then crying about it like a fucking victim, because that's not what you are. You're not a victim, you're the villain. The thing doing the killing, the plague that needs eradicating...

The words go on and on. Hurting me over the years like thousands of knives under my skin until I thought I'd grown strong enough to shut them out, at least most of the time. But the nightmares? The nightmares I can never eradicate hurt more. Because then the voices come back and haunt me with vengeance since other than during those times of mental torture I am strong enough to shut them out. I can ignore my demons as they scream for attention when they yank their chains. Can block it all from my mind and tell myself it isn't real. That I imagine them. That it can be banished. But that truth is uglier than that. Not as easily buried either.

The truth is that no matter how hard I work to shut it out it never goes away. Not fully anyway. Part of it is always there to torture and torment me until I think about what the voices whisper with serious intent. Until I'm tempted to do it as I tried once a few years ago before I lost Indra and Delia. Before I had to step up and look after El, meaning I couldn't take the selfish route and leave her. Yet now I'm done. Trapped and alone. Desperate to eradicate the voice I am just about willing to try anything. Even what I swore to El - and later Ari - that I'd never do, not again. All because it's too hard.

"Riv?" Ari's voice in my ear snaps me back and I feel my hand shake when I notice what I'm holding. What I was doing in the numb haze I slip into when trying to block out the voices. The demons. Taking a deep breath I placed the razer in its holder, shut the bathroom cabinet and washed my hands mechanically, tears already in my eyes since I was so close. So close to giving up even if I consciously didn't mean to. "Riv? I've picked El up for you since they said you hadn't come to get her as you usually do. Are you ok?" My best friend's voice usually soothes me but this time with the voices so fresh in my mind all it does is make the voices worse. Make my demons screech and pull at their chains, bang on the cages keeping them trapped. The voices continue to cackle gleefully at my pain. My trauma.

See, see what we mean. You're the problem. Not her, not your mother. Not the people around you who don't understand. You're the issue since you can't even stick to the promises you made to your sister when she found Delia on the floor after what your mother did. You who you swore you'd never give up on her just contemplated it and almost would have succeeded. What would have happened if Ari hadn't been there? Would you have done it? Would you?

I shake my head and try to silence the voices fully, only managing to push them so they're muted. "Coming," I whisper to myself, tears dripping down my cheeks as I thought over what the voices said, what he said. How right they both are. "Coming Ari," I shouted that time, hearing that she'd knocked on the door. Only I hadn't locked it so my friend's face appeared in the mirror before I could wipe all the tears away, seeing the worry and fear in her eyes. "It's ok I didn't do anything. I just needed time after what happened."