It Whispers

It whispers: I can have the power over others.

I’m foetal position under every blanket I have. I can’t breathe under the blankets, so the top of my head, up from my nose, is exposed in the winter night. I’m freezing because the bedroom heating won’t be fixed by the property manager. I can’t sleep very well, like this. And, I’m in a kind of half awake, half sleep state when I dream I heard a whisper: I can help you.

I do need help.

Weird stuff happens to me all the time. I’ve always seen the shadows of people in my periphery. I’ve seen them in the corridors outside my various apartments. I hear the nails of the invisible dogs that follow me, sometimes. I’m only concerned I’m mentally ill and I keep all that to myself. When I moved into this particular one bedroom unit, all the weird stuff started happening inside my space.

On my first morning I wake up to find every single cupboard and drawer in the kitchen open exactly two inches. It was the only time that had happened. A week later, after napping on my bed, I got up to get a glass of water and as I grasped the handle of my bedroom door a gut feeling made me pause. There’s a man on the other side. I was convinced of it. But what else was I going to do but open the door? No one was there. I didn’t even see the shadow people that day. And it was the only time that had happened.

Then my pillow started getting yanked. I’d need to sleep during the day after my twelve hour night shifts. But if I slept in after noon I’d get woken by a hard pull on my pillow. And this happens constantly.

After living here two years, this is the winter when my bedroom heater broke down and started the drama with the property manager. This is when I started hearing voices. Or, whispers, specifically: I can help you.

I hate it when people try to help me. I never get what I need, only what others care to give - done in their own time and in their own way. But I can help you to help yourself. Don’t you want the satisfaction of getting others to do as you say? I can help you have power over others.

I need power and influence. I need to be important enough for people to listen to me. Like, when I reported my broken heater to the property manager. I reported that the faulty unit wouldn’t turn off and the thermostat was no longer regulating the heat and it was Hell in my bedroom. At first it was friendly, the property manager promised to send an electrician around. But that electrician said there was nothing wrong with the heater, though if I had any concerns just turn it off at the wall. I’d already turned it off at the wall. The entire freezing winter has been one argument after another over whether or not I had a broken heater.

I admit, I lost my shit. After the abusive emails, I shut down into an unhealthy silence and the hatred pitted in my gut. But what can I do, other than hit my head against the brick wall? The real estate companies, the landlords, all of them have the power. To escape them I’d have to give up and be homeless until I died.

I can give you power over others. It whispers.

It’s the first day of spring. I’m trying to soothe myself into thinking winter is just a bad experience to forget. I find myself sitting at the end of my messed up bed staring blankly over the stone cold heater.

“How?” I ask the informed air. “How will you give me power over others?”

There’s no reply, and what did I expect?

I have a dream. I’m in a cave. On the flat of my back in the centre of the cavern. I’m warm and I’m naked. Shadow people flit in my periphery. I can hear long nails tapping, tapping on wood, I can’t see where.

Suddenly, I can move - I get up and bolt for the entrance. Hell hounds bark their alarm. The shadows detach from the walls and their forms evolve into tentacles to get me. You cannot fight me when you cannot even stand up for yourself, It whispers.

I call in ‘sick’ at work five minutes before I was supposed to start my shift. Work isn’t happy with me. I sit and think for hours on the edge of my bed.

People are shit to each other. My experience isn’t unique. What, exactly, makes me so sensitive? What’s wrong with me?

Mid-morning, I put myself back to bed. I don’t dream because I can’t get myself past the dividing line between half awake and half asleep. I lie flat on my back. I can’t move. I became aware of a someone in my bedroom. I sense this presence lean over me and I feel two palms push down on my chest. I try to move. It whispers: I can give you power to stand up for yourself. I can give you power to have satisfaction over others. I can feel myself start to cry. Yes. I can only scream the word within my mind. Yes.

I am reborn. I feel free of the weight of my miserable soul. And I wake up in my same shit-life, but everything - I don’t know how I know, but I know - will be different. I have permission to raise Hell.

I will make your life unworthy of living.