well

A long time ago, the voice was at a pathetic excuse for a whisper. The sound of the most miniscule insect could mask the voice. But the voice of whatever being was there, somewhere, hiding. You could cast your eyes away from it and instead focus on the sunsets and the rainbows. But it was always there, like an ugly and neglected creature, festering in the corners of your imagination. Some days the sunsets and the rainbows weren’t bright enough to make the creature crawl shy away, back into the dark crevice of your mind. Some days the whole world was dark. On the worst days the creature would come out and throw a black sheet over everything. On those days, nothing mattered and nothing made sense to you. Everyone was angry and sad and things seemed simply wrong. You felt out of place. Yet you could find the seams; the stitching, the lining of the black sheet, the end of the masquerade. You could lift it up and all the bright things and the happy things returned. And there it was, the happy sunsets-and-rainbows world. A simplistic world. The sun would always be shining on the coldest of days and there was always a bird outside your window singing bright yellows and oranges. You would wake up to the scent of a thousand flowers and the first breath you took was laced with the infectious toxins of joy. Oh how nice it was to find the end to that sheet that, some days, would hold itself so firmly over your life, hiding all the colours from you. You could laugh and paint and sing and feel free and not controlled, a creation of your mind’s colourful visage. Your mind raced constantly, buzzing with ideas and thoughts and emotions.

But day after day, that nagging, rude creature in your mind kept crawling out of its corner and dragging that black sheet over your world. And it kept happening. You became tired of having to get on your hands and knees searching for hours for the end of the fabric but to no avail. You became frustrated; angry at the dark world you were becoming all too familiar with. You did not want to become so absorbed by your feelings but the creature that once sat quietly in the corner, only sometimes lashing out, was growing more and more confident, more able to take control of you and constrict its cruel arms around you.