Since that fateful day in November, when the storms came to settle, and the hearts of men remained tender, I’ve been haunted by many faces that I came to know in the past. What are these faces that I keep seeing in my dreams, you ask?

Well, they are both of men and women that I’ve known or know in my life. All different colors and styles are represented; there’s yet to be one that I’ve seen twice, though if I could stop seeing them altogether, that would be very nice. Anyhow, these faces come to torment me in my nightmares, as they plague my visions and corrupt my heart with their wickedness. When they’re not shouting at me over some meaningless mistake I committed, they’re trying to seduce me into sin; that of which is so unholy that the very mention of the acts they implore me to explore would be so ghastly that bile rushes to my throat at the mere thought of it. It makes me downright sick to my stomach, like a poison that has been injected into my veins under the guise of it being a cure to my insanity. The symptoms remain, and even more come about, yet the underlying sickness is still rooted within.

What do they say to me? Well, it’s just as you imagine: the most vile and reprehensible of beliefs and their thoughts on every aspect of my life, monitoring it as if they had been my mother and father, long since gone from this world. But even they appear again in my dreams, as they criticize my every action and rag on me for everything that I’ve ever done wrong. The shrill of my mother’s voice as she argued with her husband, who always saw fit to bring about the belt in order to discipline me — yes, that is what I always see.

They come to me as phantoms in the night, that I always see creeping behind me — around me — above me — below me, in the deepest darkest depths of Hell — and even within me, as I feel myself becoming just like the faces that haunt me. Who knows; maybe in time, I’ll become one myself.

Photo by Jesse Bowser on Unsplash