i am not insane.

I am not insane.

I tell myself so often that I think I've started to almost believe it. Those words are a chant in my head, every day, every hour, every minute every second.

I am not insane.

I don't think that I'd be very aware of it if I was, but that's beside the point.

I took my medicine this morning. Four green pills for clarity, three red ones to combat my own mind, and two blue antidepressants. I protested the last two at first but after a while, Dr. Menelis wore down my resistance. He said it would help. He always says that it will help.

I see things. I go to bed at night, I dream about magnificent things, and when I wake up, the magnificent things come with me. Dr. Menelis says that it's a hallucination. But he hasn't seen my room. My bedroom in my little, dirty apartment, absolutely strewn with fantastical things.

I have a messy room. In my room, there are glasses that allow you to see auras. In my room, there are pills that allow you to fly, swords that can light themselves on fire or freeze my opponents, and two orange trees that are growing from my ceiling. In my room, there are twelve identical porcelain masks that each show a month out of the next year.

The January Mask showed me getting a dog, a little border collie. I've always wanted a dog. It's a pretty mask, lined with beautiful golden embroidery. It's my favorite.

I don't dare look into any of the others. I'm afraid of what I might find. The September Mask is all black, with light blue tears painted onto the porcelain. I am too afraid to look into it. Sometimes the future is best left a mystery, I think.

In my room, I have a doll that makes me breakfast each morning. This is one of the ways that I know I am not insane. She made me toast and eggs and bacon this morning. She won't do it if I'm watching, she only moves when I am asleep.

In my house, I have a closet. It's a large closet, deep and wide. That's one of the reasons I bought this apartment. For the walk-in closet. It's a shame, really.

I look out from my bed this morning at the closet door. I look, specifically, at the thick chain that I have wrapped around the handles of my closet door.

This dreaming thing is beautiful, that's for sure. It gives me everything I'd ever need, and I never have need of anything. I don't need money or the grocery store, or friends. They are all in my head.

I know I'm not insane.

I reach around and feel my lower back, fingers searching for the ugly thing that scars my back. I stand and go to my bathroom sink, where there are makeups and perfumes that could ensnare the world if I wanted it to. The perfume that makes me the most powerful woman in the world, and the makeup that makes me a supermodel in one layer.

I lift up the shirt that I've been sleeping in, one of the ones my father bought me before he died. The gray fabric lifts up and I look at my back in the mirror. In disgust.

Carved into my lower back is a word. The cuts were deep, and the doctors said that I nearly died. Blood loss, they said. That's when they introduced me to Dr. Menelis.

It says, in ragged and ugly letters, MINE.

The problem, you see, is not with bringing my beautiful dreams to fruition in the real world.

The problem is what happens when I bring my nightmares.

As if on cue, the chains on my closet door begin to shake and the things inside start to scream. They know I am awake, and they want my blood.

There is darkness in that closet that I can't even begin to describe. Horrors that are so unimaginable that even thinking about them makes me want to scream.

I do. Scream, that is. Because those chains can't hold forever. And they know I'm scared. And because I'm scared they will fight even harder to get me. And because I am scared, I am weak.

If you thought I was colorful and creative with my dreams, wait to see what my nightmares look like.

There's no time to run for help. There's no time to call Dr. Menelis and have him help convince me that this is just a hallucination. They're coming for me, and there's nothing I can do about it.

The screams reach a piercing crescendo. I could try to run, I could try to hide. I don't have the time. Even if I did, it would make it so much more terrifying. These are not things that I wish to have scattered around my house.

I go to my front door and lock it. First the doorknob lock and then the deadbolt. I pull down my window shades, the heavy metal ones that I bought for any such emergencies.

Damn. I really thought that those chains would hold. I should know better than to underestimate the horrors of my mind. There is a pounding, deep and slow on the door, and I cringe.

All of the screams fall silent. I know who the knocker is. It makes all the little monsters in that closet look like ants.

I cringe again. They know. They know how close I am to believing it. To believing that I am insane, that these things aren't real, that I'm hallucinating.

About one more day of the medication and the lies and Dr. Menelis' cool, informative voice and I may have started to believe it. Believe what my parents think, what my sister thinks. That I am insane. That I carved these goddamn letters into my back, and that there are no trees growing from my ceiling.

I think, maybe, that if I had really started to believe that, that these problems would have gone away. That the porcelain masks and the trees and the monsters in my closet would all cease to exist.

It knows how close I was to believing those lies. And it will do anything, anything, to remind me exactly who I am. Exactly why I'm here.

MINE.

That's what it carved into my back.

I sit on my bed and look at the door. It's calling to me now, in that low rumble of a voice. It's telling me to open the door, that it won't be so bad this time if I just open the door. That maybe, it'll let me live. It's saying that it doesn't really want to hurt me. Just remind me of the things I've always known. I'm forgetting right now, it says. I'm forgetting and it's going to remind me.

I think I've started to cry. I don't know. I'm not sure. My eyes burn and my cheeks are wet.

Why me? Why did it have to be me?

The thing in my closet hears me. It sits in silence a minute before it laughs. The laugh echoes around my room and into my ears.

Because, it says, You're MINE.

I walk to my closet door. Those things in there will not rest until they have gotten to me. I know that.

I grab the chains.

I open my closet door.

The first talon rips into the flesh of my side. I don't scream as I fall.

I realize as it covers its hands in my blood, that I was right the first time.

I am not insane.