I glared into the eyes of my deepest shame. The being that destroyed every part of my life that hadn’t yet turned cruel. It smiled softly back at me, for it was only a baby; my baby. I lived alone with the filthy thing, listening to its cries as I desperately fought to tune out the voices screaming all around me. For the baby wasn’t the only thing trapped in my head and in my home. I was never alone from those who tried to frighten me. The ones who had warned me of this baby and how its existence was dooming my future. They would scream extra loud so that I knew that I’d made a deadly mistake. One day, they would come for me, but not until they knew that I was miserable enough to ask for their help.

These voices sometimes came to life; show’d themselves to me in ways that nobody else had ever understood. In fact, people figured I’d gone mental by the way I yelled at them to leave me alone. I’d wake at night to them over me, staring into my soul and sucking it into themselves. I’d scream for help, only to have nothing come out. Then I’d awaken in a panic as if it had all been a dream to begin with. That’s when I began to feel isolated. I was isolated by those who had left me due to their incredulousness. I was isolated from the world after I spent all my days caring for the child whom I resented. Whom I wished had never been born but whom I knew would have come to haunt my dreams regardless. This child could never be a blessing, for it was a cruelty gifted by shadow monsters.

Little by little, day by day, cry by cry and nightmare by nightmare, I became unhinged. Mad and demented. Thoughts weren’t my own anymore, for they belonged to the shadow monsters. So did the howls of my baby. At one point I was driven so insane by the maddening monsters and the shrieks that they inflicted on my child that I grabbed her and shook her until she shut up. I never heard her cry after that. Sometimes, I couldn’t even hear her breathe. The only times when I even really knew that she was alive was when I would hear shaking from the crib and I’d watch as her eyes rolled back and vomit spilled from her fragile lips. In those moments, the shadows would creep up onto my shoulders and whisper, saying You did this; not us. We warned you and you turned on us. Look at how bad of a mother you’ve turned out to be. Sometimes that would make me cry. Other times, I’d smile. The shadows already felt like hallucinations, and sometimes, so did my life. I was a part of one waking nightmare that would never end, so maybe if my baby died, it wouldn’t hurt it. I’d be freeing it.

I’d be innocent, I thought. Just like I always have been. The thought of never hurting this child again, like the shadows wanted, made a weight lift from my shoulders. I smiled; even chuckled a little to myself. She’d hopefully go up to heaven where she couldn’t be harmed anymore, but probably not. If she was a creature of the shadow monster’s creation, she’d by taunted and tortured her entire afterlife. For eternity. Again, a sly and thin grin stretched across my face. No matter how hard I fought the pictures in my mind, I couldn’t unsee this. I could only see her, surrounded in a puddle of blood and vomit, whimpering and trembling as my fingertips jammed their way into her jugular, and as I laughed savagely, suffocating her to death.

Then, as rapid and unexpectedly as I normally did, I awoke and regained consciousness. Except it wasn’t the same as I’d always awoken. I always awoke to nothing there. No shadow monsters, no blood, no pain. Only fear. Yet there I stood, fearful, covered in blood, and watching as my baby wheezed in and out a final, suffering breath. Her mangled figure lay in a blood-soaked blanket, which was the only thing that had ever comforted her.

You did it, cried the shadow monsters in bellowing, excited voices. My head whipped backwards, staring into a box of staticky, noisy nightmares, provoking and teasing me. I grinned a final grin into the box, letting it absorb what was left of my soul. Help me, I told the shadow monsters. Help me.