Voices I

Part one of the voices. They were particularly harsh back then.

I hear them, I hear them, the noises, the cries, the sounds all around me. I lie in bed in silence, letting the abstractness fill my ear drums and then I hear them again. I am in silence and then they come again. I am never in peace. I hear their tortured voices, their noxious stories, the tales they tell without relent. My heart beats louder and louder, stronger and stronger, thud, thud, echoing in my hollow chest, trying to block out the voices that whisper in my ears. And I tell myself it’s just a nightmare, that I’ll wake up and never hear them again, that they’ll be gone and they’ll never come back, I try and fool myself into believing it, but I know it’s just a lie.

They’re always here. They never leave me and never will. I blast music in my ears, trying to smother their indignant cries but they ignore my attempts, they just keep on coming, never ceasing. They chatter and screech like crows, demanding attention, refusing to be relegated to a corner. Oh, the noise, the noise, I hear it, I hear it, it never goes away. I hear the voices from everywhere, they are never quiet. They talk and sing, they shriek and hum, they don’t stop, never stop, always there. The voices, the voices, the voices, they are haunting me. I must listen and when they demand an answer, I talk into space and others look at me and sigh. And I dare not reveal that the speakers are invisible, that I hear them talking, talking, talking.

Like a martyr, shall I be burnt for hearing the whispering and taunting voices inside my head, the ones that tell me I do not deserve to live? The patter of little feet, the shrill giggles, the sounds, the sounds, they haunt me, they follow me everywhere. If only I could free myself of these life-sapping voices, of these parasitical souls that haunt me. I say it in bitter jest that I hear voices but in reality, they are truly there, flitting around my brain, filling my ears with their endless clamour. The others wonder about my sanity, worry that I’m going slightly off, that I’m getting ill. But it’s not a sickness, it’s not a disease, for you see, it cannot be cured. These voices that whisper in my head, they stay, always. The noises, the voices, I hear them, I hear them. They never go away.