Voices

TW: MENTAL HEALTH, SUICIDE.

Digging up the past is a lot easier said than done. Maybe the digging wouldn't have been so bad if the voices would just shut up. Gwyn lay on her back, taking deep breaths and trying to shut out the voices that bounced around her head like a game of ping pong.

The worst part: the voices weren't even her imagination. They were the callings of the dead, speaking to her with hushed desperation. In the three years since the voices started, she hasn't known a moment of peace. She often wondered why she was the one they spoke to. What made her so special?

She tried to ignore them at first. Maybe she needed more sleep, more time outside and not huddled in front of the computer screen hopelessly typing a story that could never fully take form.

The worst ones were the children. The small innocent voices asking what happened to them, crying endlessly for their mothers.

Gwyn pinched the bridge of her nose as she felt the headache forming. It was always worse when she was in the actual cemetery, unable to turn the music up or distract herself.

When she finally caught her breath, she pried the small coffin open. The sight of the little boy almost broke her. He looked like he was sleeping. His small hands crossed over his chest atop a black suit. His blonde hair matted against his forehead.

Gwyn blinked away her tears as she set the blanket he requested over his hands.

"I want my blankie. I can't sleep without it." Gwyn's bones chilled at the memory of hearing his voice for the first time. "Please. The others said you helped. Please help me."

She has become quite the burglar in the recent years, procuring the dead's favorite possessions so they had nothing else tying them to this world. Where they went after that, she did not know. Gwyn was just happy knowing she helped in some way, even if her chest filled with dread with each new voice.

It took an hour to shovel the dirt back in the hole. The hour must be late if the empty road was any indication. As Gwyn packed her stuff to head home, she heard a contented "Thank you."

Gwyn hummed to herself as she walked along the stone pathway, averting her eyes from the familiar gravestones. The moisture in the air clung to her skin as she worked her way towards the exit. The voices were already quieting as if sensing her annoyance with them.

Hungry and tired, she walked to a 24-hour diner with every intention of replacing the calories she just spent. The diner smelled of bacon and cigarette smoke, a combination that made her want to gag. The bar area was roped off with what looked like duct tape stretching from a chair on one side of the bar to a chair on the other, not leaving a lot of seating options. There was a group of loud, presumably drunk, men sitting in the back of the diner, and an elderly couple nursing cups of coffee in the front. She chose to sit by the latter.

The waitress met her as she was taking her seat. Ordering a cup of coffee first while she looked over the menu. The door chimed, but when she looked up out of reflex, she found it odd that there was no one there. Shrugging it off, she sipped her coffee as an uneasy feeling of being watched settled over her.

As she slowly lowered the cup, she was met by a set of icy blue eyes. She choked on the hot coffee which set her into a coughing fit, catching the attention of just about everybody in the diner.

The little boy with the icy blue eyes had blonde hair matted onto his forehead, a disheveled black suit, and no shoes. In his hand was a yellow blanket, just like the one she just put in his coffin.

Gwyn's heart raced as she stared at the boy. A combination of disbelief and absolute terror on her face.

"Are - are you alright miss?" The older gentleman in the booth in front of her asked. His eyes narrowed with worry as all she could do was stare back and forth between the old man and the little boy.

Hearing the dead was one thing... seeing them was downright terrifying.

"Y- you dont see him?" She gestured towards the little boy with her head.

The old man looked to where she gestured and back to her with concern. "See who, miss?"

Gwyn looked back to the little boy as he started walking closer. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears as he neared and started screaming. Screaming so loud she couldn't help but put her hands over her ears and start screaming back.

"Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!" Over and over again.

A few days later, Gwyn couldn't remember everything that happened next in exact detail. She knew the hot coffee was thrown, she remembered someone screaming. She did not remember who took her to this padded room. She did not remember why she needed the strange white jacket that held her arms against her chest.

She did remember perfectly, however, the way the doctor looked at her when she told him she heard the dead and did them favors. She remembered how her mother looked at her with tears in her eyes as she signed something on the clipboard and left without saying goodbye.

She remembered the doctor explaining what schizophrenia was, and how they were going to give her medicine to help her. The incident at the diner was a manic episode brought on by lack of sleep he said.

"How long have you been hearing these voices?" The doctor asked her this question every session as if he expected her to change her answer.

"Three years. I never saw them until that night at the diner." She sighed and closed her eyes, picturing the little boy again.

When she opened her eyes, the icy blue stare of that same little boy met her in place of the doctor's usual dull brown eyes.

Gwyn screamed and reared back, slamming to the floor. Scrambling to her feet, she ran out of the door and down the long, fluorescent hallway. Nurses started running after her, yelling her name. Yelling for her to please stop running. There was nothing there.

But she saw it. She saw it with her own eyes, and she would be damned if she was told it was the mental illness that she took so many pills for, but they never worked.

She ran to the emergency exit, usually blocked by a security guard. This time however, she caught it unguarded. She threw herself against the door. She braced herself on the rails of the stairwell, counting the floors from the bottom up. Gwyn tugged back and forth internally. She knew what she wanted to do was wrong. But these doctors... they were wrong. Not her. She knew what she was seeing was not in her head. They didn't listen. She tried to steady her breathing as the voices, louder this time, started again.

Hers was the loudest.

Do it. The voices will finally stop. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it.

Her mother's voice: I left you there because you're broken. You're broken, Gwyn. Get help.

"I'm not broken!" Gwyn screamed at the ceiling, hot tears rushing down her face. "I just need the voices to stop!"

The walls seemed to scream back "Broken. Broken. Broken."

Gripping the railing, she let out a final cry as she flung herself over the rail.

The voices stopped and she knew just a moment of silence. The only thing she could think as she fell those seven floors was maybe in the next life, she would leave the past in the past.