A short piece for
’s prompt: Window. This piece was a little rushed, but I wanted to submit something anyway. Enjoy <3
They’re watching me again.
Celia freezes. Shakes her head to shake the voices from her mind. It doesn’t work. She can feel them, pressing against the cold window that peeks into her brain, sliding phantom fingers across its glass. Always watching.
She shimmies into the corner of her bedroom. The lights are off, but it doesn’t help, how can it? They can still see. She presses her eyes shut, cups her hands over her ears. Like she did when she was a little girl and the voices in her daddy’s movies frightened her. They were there, even then, but they only lurked on the outskirts, clinging to the shadows. Now… now they’re plastered to the window, faces pressed to the glass, eyes peeled open. Bright. Waiting for the moment when she’ll close her own eyes and they’ll shatter the glass and step into her mind and rip the thoughts from it.
She wonders what they’ll start with. The memories of that frightened little girl, of her daddy’s shouts and the crack of leather against her back, or the present. The feeling of her spine grinding against the wall, her toes curled into the carpet.
A tear leaks down Celia’s nose.
She tried telling them – her daddy, her therapist, the man who lived with her for a couple months before she scared him off. They didn’t listen. How could they? Only she can see this window in her mind, this thin veil of glass that separates her thoughts from the demons.
Her demons.
She can feel the glass vibrating. It makes her temples throb.
A hairline crack slits through the window.
Don’t let them in.
She feels their hot gazes, like brands against her mind.
Another splinter. Sudden. Sharp as the whip of leather.
Don’t let the demons take me.
Wow, I loved this one a lot! Your use of italics brings up its emphasis in a quiet surge. Very dope work here and it had more than a few lines that POPPED.
Short but efficient, it does the trick if you know your demons too.