You

You

A psychological horror story by Shi Shang

This story contains themes of mental illness, suicide and self-harm.

You open your eyes. You realize that all this time you’ve been in a cold sweat. The ceiling fan hums and drones above you.

You don’t remember falling asleep though.

You tell yourself that there’s nothing wrong. People fall asleep on the couch all the time.

It felt like yesterday when it happened, though it must have been a year or so. You’ve already lost track of time a long while ago. Not long after moving in, your teenage son went to school and never returned. They found his body in the swimming pool.

Your sister, who you grew up with all my childhood, who you loved dearly, went on holiday to Costa Rica. According to the police, she went into a bar one evening. Apparently, the people there were not friendly to Americans. She’d been declared missing, though you know better.

Ever since then, you thought you’ve seen things in the corner of your eye, in the very corner of your peripheral vision. Things that seem to dart away whenever you try to look at them.

You remember your old classmates’ declaration that they saw a ghost haunting their house.

Bullshit, you think to yourself. Ghosts aren’t real. Science has more than proven so.

You’re just seeing things.

They’re all in your head.

They aren’t real.

Then there were the voices. Whose voice, you don’t know. All you know is that someone always seems to be talking to you.

Once, you were finishing up a dry report on consumer statistics for your boss for work. You're in the safety of your study at home. 

The door creaks open. A whisper. It’s right behind you. 

You whip your head around. The door is exactly as you left it, firmly shut. There’s no one behind you.

Maybe it’s a trick your mind is playing on you. Maybe it was the dryness of the report that was boring the crap out of you. 

Maybe it was real.

Who knows?

Soon, you start to see gray, indistinct things circling around you. You start too see shadows on the ground, yet they belong to no one.

They are speaking to you. Louder, louder, more intrusive.

Shut up, you tell them.

They don’t shut up. If anything, they grow louder.

They remind you. Remind you of things you would rather have forgotten. They tell you. Everyone in the neighborhood sees you as an alien, an enemy. They warn you. That they’re going to get you eventually. 

But they’re not real. How could they be?

It’s all in your head.

But you’re not so sure anymore.

Lock the doors. You don’t enter any room in your house without checking that it’s locked first. Eventually, you start putting chairs against the doors. 

Anything to stop them getting in.

They mock you, though. They tell you nothing can stop them. 

Close the windows. You never liked the way people stared through them anyway. They tell you that you’re different, broken, that you shouldn’t be seen. You draw the blinds, fix the curtains. You start putting up sheets, blankets, anything at all, to cover the glass, that transparent thing exposing you to the horrors outside.

Anything to stop them getting in.

Their mocking becomes louder. They’re in your walls. They’re right here. You can’t block them out, that’s what they’re whispering in your ear. 

The house feels like it’s suffocating you. The walls are closing in. You can’t escape. You don’t want to. 

They’re watching you. Your every move. They know everything.

Stop it, you say aloud.

They don’t stop though. You still hear them. The whispers have become bolder. They’re not just annoying you, they’re commanding you.

Turn off the lights. Don’t go to sleep. Don’t look in the mirror.

Your wife tries to talk some sense out of you. She tells you it’s just a product of your mind.

You don’t believe her. They told you not to. They told you she was one of them.

You hire someone to remove all the mirrors in the house. They’re a symbol of bad luck anyway. The last time you looked in a mirror, you saw a creature on the other side. The creature had your face, your clothing, your eyes. But you knew it wasn’t you. 

For one thing, it was just a shell, a mindless zombie staring back at you from the other side of the reflective glass. It didn’t move when you did, or so they told you.

Now, objects are appearing where they should not be.

You find your keys on the top of a shelf one day. You don’t remember putting it there.

You find your revolver held tightly in your hands one day. You don’t remember taking it.

Maybe they did.

Maybe they’re trying to mess with you.

Maybe they’re trying to tell you something.

About your wife.

You see your wife’s face everyday. You start to notice things that are off.

Was it her face, looking a bit more distorted than usual?

Your wife’s face seems to grow more and more monstrous by the day. She isn’t the loving, caring woman you knew for fifteen years anymore. 

They tell you, no, they laugh at you, that she is one of them.

Her face is sprouting warts. Her skin turns gray. Her face is twisted unnaturally. The person you’ve lived with for fifteen years is now a monster in the guise of a human.

She’s one of them. She’s one of them! They told you so. What reason is there to believe otherwise? After all, you feel her rough skin. You see her evil, twisted smile. You hear her evil cackle. Aren’t the tactile, auditory and optical proofs enough?

That she’s one of them?

Soon, you start to distance yourself from everyone and everything. You padlock the door, in case the monster decides to enter. During mealtimes, when you have to, you sit as far away as you can from the monster.

“Honey, I think you need to see a doctor. Shall we go tomorrow?” the monster asks gently.

That’s what the monster wants you to think! said they.

I pretend I don’t hear her.

Sometimes, during moments of clarity, when my mind isn’t as tightly guarded by them, I seem to see my wife’s face again, that beautiful, kindly face. But seconds later, it morphs into the monster again.

I try to think positively. The psychiatrist tells me that if you think positively, they won’t be able to get to you.

But I know the man in the white coat, sitting next to me with his clipboard, is one of them too.

Everyone is one of them.

They are everywhere.

They are everyone.

One thundery afternoon, I am hunched on my bed. The door creaks open.

Fuck, you forgot to lock it!

Before you can move, the monster walks into the room.

“Honey, we need to talk. This is getting out of hand-”

I scream and back away, but there’s nowhere to back away too. I’m trapped in with the monster.

With my own mind.

“Honey! What’s-”

SHE’S HERE TO GET YOU! SHE’S HERE TO POISON YOU!

SHE’S HERE TO KILL YOU!

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

You look up to see a revolver dangling limply from your hands. The desk drawer is open. How you got hold of it, you don’t know. They must have put it there.

The monster is lying on the floor, blood oozing profusely from 5 gunshot wounds on her chest. In that instant, they seem to leave your mind, and the monster’s face morphs back into your wife’s, beautiful as ever, but dead.

You sink to the floor, still limply clutching the cold metal firearm. What have you done?

What have they made you do?

All you remember is looking at the blood, seeping slowly through the cracks on the tiles. Tears drip down your pale, bloodless cheeks.

In an effort to get rid of the ‘monster’, you have become the true monster instead.

How much time has passed, you don’t know, kneeling in front of your wife’s dead body. A whole night? A few hours? Weeks? Months? Years? You don’t know, nor do you care. 

Voices, loud, clear, and distinct snap you from the reverie you don’t even realize you’ve been having. You hear sirens wailing, almost mournfully, outside.

“Open up! If you don’t, we’ll break the fucking door down!”

“Last warning!”

You don’t get up. You don’t open the door. Instead, you look at the revolver.

There is only one bullet left.

That bullet is for you.