Inner Demons

“I can’t help it!” I scream at the police who are tailing me. My anger rising to an almost unmanageable boil. My vision goes red as I try to keep control of my own mind, but it’s difficult. I grapple with the darkness trying to take control of me, a battle back and forth dimming my attention to the world surrounding me. It always starts like this, I attempt to keep control of my own mind, but the demon inside always wins out. As usual my mind drifts back to the subconscious, now all that connects me to the outside world are the disengaged visions of watching someone else control my actions, body, and conscious mind.

I passively watch my limbs move to block and hit the cops. I’ve learned that when this happens it is best for me to just drift away into the river of almost forgotten thoughts.

I wake up laying in a hospital bed. I happens a lot, because when the demon is done it often leaves me in a state of being half-dead.

I sit up and check to see if the room is familiar. No. It’s not familiar. Actually, the room seems to look more like a cage then a recuperation room. There is only one tiny window in the entire room, and it’s located in the door. I get up on wobbly feet and amble slowly to the whitewashed door and look out the porthole sized piece of glass. I feel a ping of fear rise up in the depths of my stomach as a see a long white hall contrasted by the black bulletproof vests and shining black guns of the elite guard.

I bang on the door and scream at the statue-like figures in the hall, then a calm voice behind me says, “You know they won’t let you out.” I slowly turn around, terrified by the false sympathy in the pouty voice. The owner of the pouty voice is my demon in form, she has talons for nails, her hair in black dreds falls down her back to the base of her tail which is razor sharp on the end. Her skin is a fiery red with black marks all over what's showing. She’s sitting in the bed opposite mine propped up against the wall, examining her knife-like claws.

“I can’t be,” I whisper to myself. I shake my head and try to make her go away. It can’t be real. It can’t be real. I repeat in my head, trying to convince myself.

She pushes herself up off the bed and walks toward me, “Annie, it’s time to face your demons,” she says as her claws extend toward my shivering form.

In one last attempt to survive I leap at my demon. I land on top of her and suddenly under me is a little girl, cowering with her hands thrown in front of her face to protect her from my grasping talons. I jump up off the girl and back into a corner. The girl starts to cry and I reach out a hand to console her, she startles away and gets up. Then she looks back at me and again grows into the demon, smiling and smug. I foolishly turn my back and try to make sense of the situation. Then I feel the prick of claws on my throat, I flip the form onto it’s back and dig my nails into its chest. Then under me the form shrinks into an innocent little girl, gasping for breath while her lungs fill with blood. I look up into the mirror and see the blue color drain from my eyes and turn into a brilliant red, marking that my demon won.