Story-A-Day #332: Flashes

FLASHES

The voices had been calling to her for weeks, dark and sinister message of hate and pain.  She wasn't the type to experience such things.  She was a well-rounded 15-year-old who did well in school, had a broad circle of friends, and a loving and supportive family.  She did well in school, played on a number of teams, and didn't fall into the trappings of youth that some of her friends did in time.

She was a good girl, but over the past few weeks, she had started to change.  Her parents had expressed their concern, but she didn't know how to explain the voices.  They would think she was crazy.  Instead, she told them that she was under a lot of pressure at school, trying to get things done under some tight deadlines.  They seemed okay with that explanation.

What was she supposed to do, tell them that there were voices in her head urging her to kill, maim and destroy?  They were non-specific urges, and she didn't really understand most of what they were saying, but it seemed like that was the gist of it.  They were growing more consistent now too, like a constant hum, a chant of destruction.  They kept her awake at night, which made everything even harder to deal with.

She woke up crying most mornings, feeling as though she had only just fallen asleep, which was in fact the case on most mornings.  On a cool morning in October, she wandered down into the kitchen and poured a bowl of cereal.  As she set it on the counter to pour in the milk, she noticed a knife left over from dinner the night before.  She picked it up and shifted its weight in her hand.

It felt good, a natural extension of her arm.  She spun it around in her hand and peered into the cold steel blade.  For a moment, it looked like she could see a bright door reflected in the cold, grey steel of the blade.  An escape.

She raised the blade high over her head and heard her mother call out her name as she stepped into the kitchen.  she turned towards the door and smiled at her mum, then quickly drove the blade down into her own stomach, once, twice, a dozen times.  With each downward thrust, the blade flashed and the reflection of the doorway grew brighter.

She raised it once more, looking for a thirteenth stab, but the blade fell uselessly from her hand and clattered across the kitchen floor.  A moment later, she collapsed next to it.  The voices were gone now.  She lay on the cold ceramic tiles, and stared across the room at her mother as a pool of warm, red blood, slowly grew around her.

"I love you," she managed to mouth, a bubble of blood bursting outwards from her lips as she did.

The sound of her mother's screams filled the silence as the kitchen slowly faded to black.