“Stop it, just stop it!” I half hissed, half whispered to Jessup.

“I want your promise.” Jessup persisted. “I want your word that you will bleed it out for me. The poison is in you, I am only trying to help. If you can bleed out the poison you will be saved.”

I took in a deep breath and let it out really slowly before I spoke.

“You need to just be quiet, you aren’t trying to help, and Dr. McCleary says that you aren’t real. She says that you’re just a symptom and that I can’t listen to you.” I spoke quietly and tried to move my lips as little as possible. The staff from the residential program I live at were already starting to look at me funny. I think they could see that I was talking to Jessup again. Talking to Jessup, Carleton, and Fregaman, was one of those ‘behaviors’ that was ‘inappropriate for the common area’ according to them.

“Those people don’t exist for anyone except for you, and it scares the other kids in the house when they see you talking to someone that they can’t see. You can talk to them in your room if you need to, but when you’re in the living room, kitchen, or any other common area you can’t respond to them,” Sammy, one of the charge staff, told me just the other day. I love Sammy, but sometimes she just doesn’t understand. She didn’t get the way the way Jessup and the others would punish me if I ignored them. Sammy didn’t understand that they would actually make things even more intense if I pretended they weren’t there. When things get even more intense I lose even more control over myself and then end up either putting myself in serious danger, or actually hurting myself.

“You need to listen to me. You need to bleed out the poison. You know the poison’s in you. You can feel it, can’t you?” Jessup’s voice was calm, but loud and overpowering at the same time.

I could feel the poison pulsing through my body. Every beat of my heart pushed it further and further into my organs, into my very being, into my soul. I knew that if I didn’t do something soon I would be irreversibly damaged and the people around me would start to get affected too.

My head pulsated and ached. It was hot and on fire with the poison inside. Even my skin was hot to the touch. When I stroked the smooth, pale skin of the inside of my wrist, my fingers jumped and curled back from the burning heat emanating from inside me. A small squeal of fear and surprise escaped my mouth.

“Mara, what’s going on?” Sammy asked. She was walking across the living room to the couch I was curled up on.

“There’s poison in me again,” I whispered. My voice cracked a little bit from the intense fear and panic that was building up deep inside me.

“Mara, there’s no poison in you, we’ve been over this before. The only way for there to be any poison in you is if you swallowed something toxic. Have you swallowed anything you shouldn’t have?” asked Sammy.

I shook my head no.

“Well then there’s no poison in you, you’re fine. Are you hearing voices again?”

I nodded.

“Why don’t you take some extra Haldol then. I’ll call the nurse and get her to bring some over.”

I nodded again, Haldol was a powerful antipsychotic and the only thing that ever made Jessup and the others go away. It wouldn’t make the poison go away. Sammy was wrong; there was poison in me. She didn’t understand the horrible but powerful magic that Jessup possessed.

“You can take a Haldol, but you’ll still be infected. You need to bleed no matter what. There’s no getting around it, and you know it.” Jessup persisted and I knew he was right.

“You need to stop talking to yourself in front of the other girls,” Sammy was telling me. I looked up from the corner of the couch. Jasmine, Katelyn, and Libby, three of the other girls that lived at the program with me, were also in the living room. Their eyes were on me, but when I looked up they looked away. They didn’t have trouble with dealing with beings from other worlds. There problems had more to do with depression, anger management, and eating disorders, they didn’t understand either, nobody really understands me. That thought sent shots of anger jolting through my system. I was angry with the other girls for staring at me. I was angry with Sammy for trying to boss me around. I was angry at the world for not understanding and not taking better care of me.

“Fine, I’ll bleed for you, I’ll bleed until there’s nothing left inside me, and you can’t talk to me anymoreI’ll bleed until no one can talk to me anymore, because I’ll be dead, dead, dead.”

My voice rose higher then I meant to allow. Jessup wasn’t the only one to hear me.

“Mara, you need to come with me to your room to wait for your medication. You’re getting too out of control.” Sammy told me. I could see more staff coming into the room, ready to escort me out of the living room. Everything was started to get fogged over; it was hard to see. The mist was swirling in fast if I was going to do something I had to act quickly before the foggy mist paralyzed me.

Ignoring Sammy’s direction and the staff coming towards me, I made a dash for the staff office. The staff office was a room attached to the living room. Inside the staff office was a locked closet filled with things that us kids weren’t allowed access to because of safety reasons. Among other things, the office contained sharp knives and razors.

I’d made it all the way into the office when I felt hands clamp down on my arms. Sammy had one of my arms, and a staff named James had the other arm. They were talking too me, I knew that much, I could see their mouths moving, but I couldn’t tell what they were saying because Jessup and Fregaman were screaming and laughing maniacally in my ears. More hands were grabbing me, I could feel my legs being slid out from under me. The hands were all over me. One person slid over the top half of my body and held my arms inert at my sides. They had their whole weight on my so that I couldn’t move anything except my head. Another person was lying on top of my lower body and had my wrists firmly grasped, one in each hand. I had been put in what staff at my program called a “therapeutic restraint”.

The fog had gotten worse and so had the manic laughter in my ears. I struggled and struggled to try and get free, because at the point all I wanted was to just kill myself and leave all these horrible experiences behind. The problem was that the more I struggled, the tighter the grip on my small body got. My mouth was open and I was screaming in pain and terror, but I couldn’t even hear my own screams.

Then finally I felt gloved fingers place a small oval pill in my mouth. I swallowed. It was almost twenty minutes later when the pill began to take effect. Slowly I could feel my body again. The room came back into focus and I could hear the staff talking to me in gentle soothing tones.

I was lying on the floor of the living room. My face was covered in tears and snot, and I had rug burn on my arms from struggling while in the restraint. My throat burned from screaming. I was a slimy sweaty mess, but I no longer burned. I no longer felt the pulse of poison pumping through my body.

It was over. The hallucinations were gone. I was experiencing the same reality as everyone else again. My sense of reality was once again whole and connected. I felt safe again. I sighed, but even as I sighed I knew I wasn’t out of the woods. I knew the hallucinations would come back and that my reality would rupture again. That’s the way it is when you live in a fractured reality. That’s the way it is when you suffer from a psychotic disorder. That’s the way it is when you’re me.