Whispers

'No!'

I was screaming, shrieking, protesting in every way, shape and form. Yet, my protests went unheard. My protests went unseen. Maybe I was only imagining my protests at all. Maybe this was all only a dream; some horrible nightmare that I couldn't escape. There was one thing I was certain of, though.

I couldn't control myself. And my eyes felt hot, intensely hot to the point of burning. It was like I had been under chlorinated water for far too long with my eyes open, or maybe like I hadn't gotten any sleep in days. Either way, they were burning and I couldn't stop it. Couldn't blink.

My body was moving itself through our front hallway and in passing, out of my peripheral vision I saw, or rather didn't see, anything but my corneas. It looked as if all trace of my blue irises and my pupils had vanished. While it could be argued that I didn't see them because it was just a glance out of the corner of my eye, I was sure they were gone. Maybe they'd been burned away? Were my eyes going to burn away entirely?

I was in a panic and trying desperately to get control of myself. To stop myself before anything bad happened. Why I thought something bad was going to happen, I didn't know. It was just that gut feeling that tells you when bad things are going to happen; that instinct that tells you to high-tail it out of there before it's too late to turn back. I definitely felt it to the point where it was making me nauseous.

'What's happening to me?!' I wailed silently.

'Kill…'

If I had had control of myself, I would have stopped to listen to see if I had actually heard that whisper or not, like I had done earlier. I could have sworn that I had heard someone whispering around me as I sat in the living room watching my favourite television show, but there had been no one there. And before I knew it, I was walking through the foyer, heading towards the kitchen where my parents would no doubt be making supper.

It hadn't been the first time I heard whispers. Oh no, but it had been the first time in a while. When I had told my parents about hearing voices that no one else could hear, they had become concerned. Sent me to a child psychiatrist even. I became aware that it was a bad thing, a very bad thing, to hear voices that shouldn't be there. So, I blocked them out. Blocked them out for a long time, yet that day they had mysteriously returned.

'Kill…'

I was sure then that the whispers had returned. Suddenly aware that they were the ones controlling my body, sending me to the kitchen.

'What do you want from me?!' I demanded. 'Why do you want to kill?!'

'Hurt me… Kill them now…' I heard the broken words being said.

'Stop this!'

But my body wasn't stopping, continuing down the hall until I reached the kitchen doorway. I saw that my parents hadn't even heard me coming, probably because of the television in the room there. They were too wrapped up with that and with the items they'd placed on the stove. It smelled like pasta.

The whispering voices said nothing through my body, only proceeding to the kitchen drawer where I knew the knives lay. My parents had trusted me enough not to go hiding them somewhere else and they had never really 'childproofed' things. At least not that I remember. Though, maybe they should have.

'No! Don't go in there! Leave it alone!' I screamed. The voices seemed to be ignoring me. I turned my efforts to my parents instead. 'Look at me! I'm right behind you! Mom! Dad! Why won't you look at me?!' I silently willed them to look towards me, and for a moment I thought they had heard me, but then I realized that they turned because they heard the drawer open.

"Honey, what are you doing?" I could barely hear my dad's voice, as if he was on the other side of a wall.

'Yes! Yell at me! Stop me! Just do something!' I was crying, though not displaying it. My heart was wrenching now, as if it suddenly knew what was going to happen.

"No, no. Leave those alone," my father continued with clear question and concern in his voice despite the fact that he was trying to discipline me.

He handed whatever he'd had in his hands (I didn't see it) to my mother, who was staring at me with just as much concern. Both were wondering why now, why after all this time, why now was I disobeying their commands to stay away from the drawer? I had an answer to give them, but they couldn't hear me.

I saw my dad recoil, taking an alarmed step backwards. At first, I wasn't aware why. Thought maybe it was just the sight of my eyes. 'Cause, hadn't he stopped me in time? I had heard the drawer shut, but then it dawned on me. I had also heard a sound like a hand sifting through objects in the drawer. And then the knife came into my view.

'Stop it!' I screamed again.

'Kill…' the whisper replied.

'They didn't do anything!'

'Hurt me…'

'It wasn't them!' I was trying to get it to listen. I didn't want my parents dead! Never! I had to do all in my power to prevent that from happening. For a moment, I was convinced it was listening because my body had stopped moving and my parents exchanged a glance, their guard down slightly.

'Kill.'

'No! Let me go! Go away! They didn't do anything! It wasn't them!'

My body began to move forward again, approaching my parents. I was trying desperately to resist it, trying to dig me heals into the floor. Trying to grab the counters. Trying to at the very least make my hand drop that knife. None of it worked, and my screams were only ignored. The voices weren't listening.

'STOP!'

But again I was ignored. The next thing I saw were my parents' forms laying on the ground, their blood around them. The white tiles of the kitchen's floors were stained with the blood and the pasta had somehow been upset and was strewn all over the floor as well. The boiling water was steaming and the noodles were everywhere. Their bodies were crumpled, lying together with nearly identical horror stricken looks upon their faces.

Blood seeped from their mouths for certain. All the other blood, I wasn't sure where it was coming from. Had they cracked their skulls off the counter? There was indeed a smear of blood. Maybe the knife had cut them? There was blood on that, too. Blood on their clothes. Blood in their hair. It seemed to be everywhere.

Suddenly, the world collapsed around me, like water flowing from a newly broken damn, like a significant pressure suddenly on my body. I could feel the world around me again. My eyes hurt, but were no longer burning. I felt tears falling down my cheeks, felt the sobs wracking my chest. Felt the knife in my hand and then as it clattered to the floor and splashed in the blood.

'Dead now…' I heard the whisper fade around me.

I screamed then. A horrible, cracking sound that flooded around me. My voice was beginning to ache, but I screamed anyway. Surely the neighbours heard it; I don't know how they wouldn't.

I backed away from them, my form shaking uncontrollably as I looked around at the blood. I nearly fell with every step; in fact, I don't know how I stayed standing. I clung to the counters, my bloodied hands slipping with each grasp as I made my way to the phone. I had to call an ambulance. Surely someone could save them. They couldn't be dead. No, just badly injured.

'Dead.'

"NOT DEAD!" I screamed at my own mind and began to sob.

My sobs continued as I pressed the buttons to dial the appropriate number, good thing it was only three numbers, or else I wouldn't have been able to. I couldn't stop my hand from shaking as I held the phone to my ear. I couldn't stop my sobs long enough to speak when someone picked up on the other end. Instead, I only sank to the floor, clutching the phone to my ear to the point where the plastic creaked and I kneeled there crying.

This continued even when I heard people banging on the door, even as I heard the door being forced in and many people swarming into my house. One of them was giving commands to the others and then footsteps drew closer to where I was.

What the men said as they saw me, I don't recall. Maybe I was too distraught to even hear what they said. But I dropped the phone and clung to the man that was suddenly crouching before me in his police uniform. My sobs intensified as they began to take me away from my parents' bodies.

"No! NO! Mommy! Daddy!" I hadn't called them that since I was four years old, but the words were falling out of my mouth before I could do anything about them.

The police carried me away. Days faded into a mush. Time didn't matter anymore.

I remember when they told me my parents were dead. When? I don't know. I remember crying and calling them liars. I remember screaming to take me to my mommy and where was my daddy? I wanted to see him, too. But they were gone. I could never see them again.

Where they brought me didn't matter. I didn't even want to go home anymore, too horrified of what I might find there. I might see their faces, contorted in fear. Might feel the blood coating my skin. I might not be able to escape it. But away from there… I didn't hear the whispering voice. Was it gone? Had it left me alone?

I'd have rather not been where I was taken, though. I'd rather not be in this asylum where they stare at me every day and try to find out what made me snap. What made me kill my parents. What mental illness could they pin on me and say that's why I did it? Maybe it was schizophrenia. Yes, I heard voices – had a history of it even – so maybe schizophrenia. Or maybe there was something else out there that could give me reason. They didn't seem to believe anything I told them, though. They didn't believe that I was possessed. Had I been possessed? Maybe. They didn't believe me, regardless.

So after a while, I just stopped talking. I'm not here to hear myself speak.

"Bethany," the lady looked to me again as she spoke to me in that condescending tone. "You've got to help me, here."

I only scoffed. Damn right I was angry at that woman. At all of them. I've been explaining what happened for seven years. They didn't believe me when I was seven and even now at fourteen they don't believe me. There are only so many times I can explain something without going mad. Or was I already mad?

Like many sessions before it, it ended with me heading back to my 'room'. More like a prison cell. They don't trust me with the others. Probably because I don't play nicely. So, they mostly keep me locked away from them so that I can't hurt them, or myself.

I sat now in that room, reading one of the few books that I'd been permitted for maybe the billionth time. I could probably recite the whole thing by heart, but reading it over and over gave me something to do.

After a while of reading, I rubbed my eyes. My eyes had never hurt from reading, so what was this nonsense? Then it struck me. A cold fear gripped me as I could no longer feel what was around me. I couldn't feel the plush cot that had been beneath my form only a moment before, and I was sure I hadn't stood. At least not of my own volition.

I wanted to rub my eyes again. They were burning and hurt even more. In the reflection of the Plexiglas, I saw that my pupils and irises had disappeared. I saw my lanky form standing, my short auburn hair hanging over my shoulders. The book had fallen to the floor, the pages bending under the weight of the cover. There was no weapon to be had this time; what was going to happen?

'Stop it,' again, I began to plea. Just as last time. One would think I'd have learned that my pleas go unheard. One would think. 'Not again.'

My form was moving closer to the Plexiglas. I couldn't feel the material of the garments I had to wear shifting on my skin. I couldn't feel the floor under my feet. I was growing nervously nauseous again.

I tried to escape, tried to suppress the voices I knew would come and gain control of my body again. Tried. Feebly, but tried.

'Out of here…'

This voice sounded different. Definitely not the same as the others had been. It was new. It might not kill, but how could I know?

My fist was suddenly pounding against the Plexiglas. I wasn't the one doing it, but like hell they would believe me later when I told them that.

"LET ME OUT OF HERE!" As much as I concurred with the statement… it definitely wasn't me that had said it…

END

Author's Note: This story sound somewhat familiar? This is a revision of a previous story of the same title.