Compelled

TW: Mental Health and Self harm themes, particularly themes of extreme OCD and violence.

I could feel the itch before I even opened my eyes. A tickle at the back of my mind. The start of a compulsion. A defeated knot settled into the pit of my stomach.

It was going to be one of those days.

I opened my eyes, taking a deep breath in through the nose, out through the mouth, visualizing with each inhale and exhale, brushing the bud of the compulsion away before it could take root in my thoughts. Just like the doctors said to do.

It didn't work, it never did.

Rolling out of bed and onto the cold wood floor, I padded barefoot to the medicine cabinet tucked away in the en-suite bathroom in my sparse apartment, and popped a couple of the pills out of the little orange prescription bottle.

The little purple and white pills went down like thumbtacks, scraping at the soft tissue in my throat. I washed them down with a swig of lukewarm tap water still tasting of the metal from the pipes it came from, and I looked up at myself in the cracked mirror that hung over the sink.

I still looked like me. Same dark hair and brown eyes, same poor posture and crooked teeth. But deep down, I could feel the part of me that wasn't mine, gnawing at my mind. The compulsion. The itch that could only be scratched by horrible things, animalistic, deranged, monstrous things.

I looked deeper into my reflection, and saw the cold, dead stare of a monster. I was a monster. The little silver bracelet fused tight on my wrist told me so. Told everyone so. A shiny silver warning to the world that I was infected. Less than human, no matter how hard I tried to act otherwise.

A year had passed since second pandemic, since I'd lost my humanity.

The second pandemic was not as loud as the first had been. An over correction on the part of the world's leaders. It had swept through nations seemingly overnight, starting with a fever that boiled people's blood and an anger so severe, it ended in bouts of extreme, gruesome, murder.

It consumed it's victims entirely, the light slipped from their eyes and they ripped their friends and families apart without remorse, they were possessed by The Virus, by the compulsion to kill and destroy, and once that compulsion had been met, they crumbled to the ground, a lifeless husk.

Some people had tried to quarantine, some killed themselves before The Virus could get them, and then, there was the people like me. People who somehow, got better. Not entirely better, but better enough. People who were for some reason able to regain control rather than being completely consumed, who could come back from the fever.

Me and the others like me, were given identifying bracelets, were made to speak with a doctor twice a month, and were prescribed medications to dull the urges.

We weren't confined to hospitals or our homes, but I made it a policy to stay in, I wasn't ready to face the outside world yet, not after the last time I'd had an episode in public. I'd been inside for four and a half months.

So far, it had been mostly alright. There were bad days of course, when the fever would wake me in the middle of the night with the urge to feel blood slipping between my fingers, sometimes I did lash out at the people around me, I hurt some people I loved, and I hurt myself, but I was able to always find my way back somehow. Even when I wished that The Virus would just swallow me up and take me whole.

Today was one of those bad days.

I could feel the itch growing, biting now at the back of my mind, it filed my chest with pressure that ached against my ribs, my heart hammered with bruising force against my breast. I closed my eyes and breathed, telling myself that I was still me. Trying to keep control.

My resistance only fed the compulsion, spurred it on to spite me. I could feel it buzzing in my fingertips and boiling in my veins, the need to make something bleed. It was only a matter of time now before I caved, before the boiling and the burning and the aching got so bad I couldn't ignore it. Before I lashed out, before I hurt someone.

It isn't me. I reminded myself. It was only the virus making me think those things.

I dug my fingernails, chewed well below the quicks, into the flesh of my palms.

I could do this. I growled. I stared straight into my reflection, through my own eyes and into the heart of the compulsion. I could practically hear it snickering as I drew beads of red from my scarred hands.

I am still human. I am still me.

Tears prickled in my eyes and sweat cooled the back of my neck, I shivered as the fever came over me.

You're still human?

Then bleed.

The compulsion screamed from within me. I cried out as I peeled open the wounds in my palms, drawing out the blood and ripping through the scar tissue. I bled dark, warm, and red. Just like a human should. I peeled back the skin, and the underlying tissue and watched the blood pulse steadily from my hands onto the tiled floor.

My legs quaked, and the fever broke, the compulsion satisfied for now. I fell to the floor and stared at the redness that stained my hands. A pitiful sob wracked my body as I curled into myself and cradled my face.

My breathing evened out and my eyelids drooped, heavier and heavier as the adrenaline left my system.

I slept on the floor in a puddle of my own blood, sweat and tears. Dreaming of the day I'd be able to live like I had before, the day I finally beat The Virus once and for all. Dreaming of a time when the only thing that could compel me to do anything, was my own will. Not some demented voice at the back of my mind.

I could do nothing but hope that that day would come. That I might be free, that I might leave the house and feel the breeze or the sun and not be ashamed of what I'd done and what I'd become.

And that day would come. It had to.

I'd make sure it would.