Author: Craig Ewan.

I sit on my bed, in front of the mirror. I stare at my reflection. I let my hair fall back down. The tension of my ponytail flees. I take off my makeup, it is clumpy, my mascara has dripped down my face, and tear stains drape my cheeks. My eyes are sunken, reminiscent of a ship, lost to the depths of the sea. The cotton pad is cold on my cheek, it is rough, though it has a strange softness to it.

I lie down. I am in bed, staring at the ceiling, longing for the ground beneath me to open and swallow me whole. My eyes close, though I do not sleep.

‘I am happy’, I think.

Yet, there is a voice, it sits at the back of my mind, and it tells me something.

I sigh, it’s just a silly line from a psychology textbook.

‘Happiness is a mask, is it not?’, the voice asks.

My eyes flash open. It’s returned. After all this time. It remembers me. The cruel voice continues, the rasp sends chills down my back, and pools of sweat form at the base of my spine, I can feel its claws grip my throat letting only short tremors of breath escape my lips.

‘…One that you wear when you do not want to face your problems. We keep on going on disguising ourselves with three single words.’

‘I am happy.’

We are not all happy.’

Trying to reply fills my throat with bile, it burns my throat, but I like it. There is a thrill in it. But I stop myself from speaking. Or is it the voice inside that stops me?

‘Happiness seems to come to us in bursts….’ it continues.

 ‘Unnatural, superfluous, it encompasses all. Even though it is a hollow feeling. Is happiness real? You find it so hard to find sometimes. Like it is some elusive creature, a physical entity that hides from us, that is until it suddenly overtakes you.

It is a demon, lying in wait till you cannot go on anymore, feeding on your sadness, your loneliness…your hurt,’

I can feel its crooked smile. I can see its eyes, cold and calculating, it drools over me like meat.

‘…gorging itself on the horrors that surround us, only to then like an angel drag you from the depths back to reality.’

The more it talks to me the more its ideas envelop me, its teeth start to penetrate me and gnaw at my very soul.

‘Happiness is a beautifully horrendous feeling. One that you like to see in another, yet not in yourself. You do not want to feel happy as you know it will soon retreat back to the shadows, leaving a shell behind. That is what your body is now, a hollow shell that an emotion fills. You become that emotion. Except happiness. You never become happiness. You only feel it. It is there, but you do not use it, you do not become it.’

It hurts to speak. It hurts to think. But I overcome it. I let words escape my mouth. I govern my body.

‘We all seek to attain happiness. Do we ever truly get it, do we ever truly become happy? Or do we just feel it, have it, grasp the strands of it? Never truly becoming it.

I am a slave to my mind. I am a slave to emotions.’’

Do I actually think this, or has the voice convoluted my thoughts that I cannot recognise myself?

I cannot tell if I said those words aloud. Or if they were drowned within the confines of my rotting mind.

It laughs at me, why is it so cruel to me?

Is it not a part of me?

I feel like no one cares for me anymore.

Its crooked, salivating smile starts to burn my mind.

‘I care about you. If I did not. I would have let you die long ago. I am not cruel…I am realistic…I am afraid, child, it is not my fault that you feel this way. I may be a part of you, but your thoughts are your own. I do not control you even though you naively think I do. I am here to help you come to terms with your emotions. Your fears are realised in my voice. The fear of emotions… The fear of feeling’.

The crushing weight of its words presses against my chest, pushing the air out of my lungs. I can no longer breathe, or see.