I jolt. Breathing is deep, traveling down to my toes before coming back out of my nose. Am I even alive right now, and if I am alive, will I die? I feel like I’m floating. I cannot feel my feet touching the ground. I reach out towards my innocence, my hope, my will. I slip and fall, my stomach drops and I scoop it from the floor and try to shove it back in. Now my insides are dirty, tainted, infected, and my blood burns everything that it touches.

My body is numb, but I can feel the deep thumping of my heart ringing in my ears. I can’t hear anything else but that low thump, thump, thump. I want to expel everything from my own body. I lean over the toilet, my hands wrapped around my forehead and tears dripping into the water. I heave and try to get the infection out, but it doesn’t come out. He stays nestled inside the crevices of my bones, sneaking in between the cracks of my sanity, and makes himself at home.

“Everyone hates you,” he says. “You are nothing.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to make him leave.

“I am all you’ll ever have,” He whispers.

I’m not sure if I’m actually breathing now, or if I’m already dead. My body is numb, far away, gone. I lean my head on the seat of the toilet, feelings the hairs raise on my arms. I’m cold and hot at the same time and a shiver travels up and down my spine like ants. I can’t vomit anymore. Nothing will come up. My body continues to try, but I’m too weak. The air pushes out of my lungs like molasses and my throat burns with acid.

I wipe my mouth and pull myself from the floor, shaking and disoriented, the monster having subsided his anger, but I know that he still lingers. He waits in silence until he grows hungry for fear again.